I have tried to find an answer to this question and I can't find it. I am doing a wedding cake in a few weeks and the client wants a dummy cake for the bottom 2 layers and then a cutting cake for the top layer. It should be a very easy cake(assuming that the fondant goes on the cakes easily), with just some ribbon on the bottom and different sized fondant spots on the cakes. They are friends of mine and I don't do this regularily, so it won't be a $300 cake, but I do want to be fair with my pricing, for both of us. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I am sure that there will be a million different ideas of what to charge. You still have to decorate the cake, which is the difficult part and where the majority of the cost is. I would say add up the cost of the two tiers and then subtract 15-20%.

For dummy tiers, I charge 60% of what that tier would cost in real cake. A lot of people price it differently, but this is how it works for me.

Many people charge 80% the cost of a real cake because dummies can be nearly as costly, especially if you have to have them shipped to you, and the amount of material and time to decorate them is the same.

HTH
Rae

Yep. 80% of the real cake price is pretty much standard.

I price my dummies at 80% of the cost of that same design in actual cake.

Thank you everyone. That helps a ton! I really appreciate your quick responses. I will price accordingly.

Hmmm, maybe I need to up my prices!