Ok, I'm gonna make the first wedding cake (I'm very excited and very nervous at the same time). It's for a friend of mine and she is having small wedding, about 20-30 people. She knows nothing about cakes and she wanted to have 3 tier cake-6, 8 & 10 inches. I told her it's way too big for such number of people and suggested 1 tier as dummy cake so she gets the look (the main reason for 3 tiers) and doesn't end up with tons of leftovers. So here comes the question: is it better to have dummy part as bottom or middle tier (because of cutting and stability)? Thanks for help.

anyone?

OK...I'll jump in...never did this before but it seems as though you would do it as the middle tier. The middle and top can be removed and the bottom tier can be served. The top tier (if real) can be frozen to be eaten later.

Of course, I may be suggesting something that totally breaks all the rules...

I was thinking along the same lines. The bride and groom usually cut the bottom layer and they usually take the top layer home for their 1st anniversary. So..... middle layer?

I would rather have fake for the bottom. That way you wouldn't have to dowel or put supports in the bottom tier and you could also hot glue it to the cake board. You could really do it either way depending on how many servings you needed to achieve.

In my pix under the "towering inferno" cake I used dummies for the bottom tier and the top one. The bottom one because I didn't have a cake pan or an oven big enough and it added extra strength to holding up the cake and the top one because she flew in fresh flowers from Bogota (who knows what they sprayed on them) and I flatly refused to let those flowers touch my cake so I did the top tier as a dummy as well. In your case I would go for the bottom tier as a dummy, but make sure the other two tiers will feed the number of guests.

Thank you for all of your comments, I will probably go for bottom tier as dummy but I'll have to discuss with bride so they would not end up cutting into the dummy