Here's my question: Did any of you practice making wedding cakes before hand? And did you use cake dummy's or make actual cakes? (can you reuse cake dummy's ?) I feel like a dummy asking this question...

I've only done 2 wedding cakes, next week will be my third... BUT I would like to keep practicing techniques and have limited space in my fridge/freezer to accomodate cake that I have no intention of eating. That's a lot of cake (I don't eat it anyway) and I think I would feel weird going to a stranger and handing them a "wedding" cake just to get rid of it. I've donated cakes, but a wedding cake??? How does one handle this?

Thanks and sorry to ramble...

Yes, I've practiced on dummy's. They are re-usable. I just pop mine in the dishwasher. Come out clean!

I use dummies to practice all the time. I just did a practice cake of gel flowers that I put on the cake free hand..so need to practice that! LOL
I cover my dummies with plastic first

When I first got started, I never made a practice cake ... I'd actually never heard of doing that.

I use BC directly on my styro's. When I want to change it, I just run a knife under the hardened icing and it pops right off. I wipe down with a damp rag and it's ready to go again. (my styro's would never fit in my home dishwasher and since I know they can just be wiped down, I see no need to run them thru my comm'l dishwasher.)

Styro's are a great tool to practice new techniques on. When you're finished, take a pic for your file, then scrape it off and do another.

Yep, just pop them right in my home dishwasher! Easy peasy. Once one of them had some fondant still left on it, but I ran it through another cycle when I had some dishes to wash, and voila!! All clean. I learned that from B. Keith Ryder, at one of his classes. Best tip ever!