I have been decorating cakes for five years and I have never been asked to include a cake dummy in a wedding cake. How do you price a wedding cake that includes a "fake tier"? I think I read on here once that you include it in your serving size just as any other cake. I have searched and I can't find any information on here regarding this issue, so any help is much appreciated. THANKS!!

Hello,

I did one last year and I have a client who may want a wedding cake like that for this year as well. The people who did it last year wanted a beautiful looking wedding cake with only the 8 inch topper real cake so they could do the traditional cutting and feeding to each other and then they had 100 cupcakes made to match the cake.
I charge approx $2.25 per serving (I still calculate the size of the cake based on servings) and for real cake I charge about $3.25 per serving.
It is the same amount of work to decorate and same amount of fondant, etc, the only difference is the actual cake There are a few places around me that do the cake dummy rentals and they start their rentals at $225 which will include a top real cutting cake.
In my pictures, the wedding cake that is 4 tiers, white with purple ribbon and flowers is a cake dummy with top layer cutting cake

Have you priced styro? It costs as much or more than real cake.
Everything else is the same - cost and work - so why should the cake coast less because it is a dummy?
What ever you usually charge per serving is still what you charge for this creation - nothing less.

I charge less for a dummy cake because I am not spending the time baking all those layers of cake nor do I have to torte and fill them. The cost of styro usually is about $5 each at my cake store and it costs me much more for the ingrediants of cake and filling not to mention the time to prepare, bake and clean the cake pans