Does 5, 7, and 9 inch tiers sound right for a 60 serving wedding cake? Will it look silly being that small. I've already had issues with the bride trying to "bargain" on the price and i have a feeling she's expecting a a giant 3 tier cake even though she only wants to pay for 60 servings.

What about doing the layers larger but do one as a dummy?? I wouldn't be cutting back much on cost though, but if it's the look you're after that might be a consideration. Just my opinion.

I can;t help with the # of servings for 5 and 7" pans because I don;t carry them. For consults sometimes when I get the sense that a bride is questioning the size, etc I either stack pans or dummies for her so she can see the proprtions, etc. I find most people are visual. Also if you want to give her a bigger presence maybe you could do a design with interesting spacers in between tiers to give more height to the cake.

it's practically 60. If your slices are 1"x2"x4" (8 cubic inches), it breaks down to this:

pi x radius squared x height = cubic inches for your tier

5" round:
3.14*(2.5*2.5)*4= 78.5000

7" round:
3.14*(3.5*3.5)*4= 153.8600

9" round:
3.14*(4.5*4.5)*4= 254.3400

254.3400+153.8600+78.5000= 486.7000

486.7000/8= 60.8375

make sure each tier is at least 4" high and you're good

Yes, it's a perfect 60 servings, no it won't look silly. All of these wedding cakes below were 60 serving cakes (don't often have big weddings here):

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1736875.html

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1464711.html

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1438330.html

and the servings in each tier are 5=10, 7=18, 9=32

Another CCer posted this website to help determine how much cake you will need for X amount of servings (a cake calculator). Here it is.....


www.shinymetalobjects.net/cake/calculator/cake_calculator.cgi

HTH

Thank you for responding!! Im only charging her $3 a serving because it is just solid white tiers and she's providing the flowers. So i don't think it would save any money to do dummies : ( I tried to look up serving amounts on the wilton chart but it doesn't list serving amounts for 5 or 7 inch tiers : (

Whoops posted my reply before i saw the last few postings! Thanks so much!!