I have a very specific request and am having trouble envisioning anything. This is for a special day for a 17 year old girl who just finished this study with her parents called the Princess Journey, and she will be presented with a Claddagh Ring this day. That is the ring with the hands holding a heart with a crown on it. Each piece of the ring stands for something: the hands stand for Friendship, the heart represents Love, and the crown Loyalty. They have the Wilton tier pillar cake stand that they want me to use (the 3 offset tiers, 14, 12, 10 inches).

Each tier is supposed to represent one of the meanings of the ring. There's a lot they want me to do, but I think it will look way too busy. Please any ideas are helpful . . . Here is what they sent me:

Ivory icing (which I will probably do fondant). The only colors that should be woven in are black, ivory, silver, and/or shades of greenemerald or darker. In the Claddagh Ring,the hands stand for Friendship, the heart represents Love, and the crownLoyalty. You can even use words on the cake for further explanation, but I would love for each cake to represent each characteristic. So, the bottom cake would be Friendship (hands), the middle cakeLove (heart), and top cakeLoyalty (crown). You can also write Princess Journey somewhere on one of the cakes as well.

Hi,
wow! This is a lot to get in isn't it?
Is this the ring you mean?
http://www.americana-music-and-memories.com/irish-symbol.html

Ok, so I would take the ivory colour, and make this the base colour, colour each of the 3 tiers in ivory fondant, so this links the whole cake together.
So how about this for the decoration,
Bottom tier: friendship: Decorate with fondant cutouts of two hands, together, the hands could be outlined in the black colour
Middle tier: Love: Decorate with fondant cutouts of hearts, the hearts could be the emerald colour.
Top Tier: Loyalty: Make a gumpaste crown for the top, the crown could be the silver colour and around the top of the top tier you could pipe "Princess Journey."

Hope this helps, good luck

I like JamAndButtercream's suggestions. You could do one half side of the cakes with the cut-outs and images and, leave one half with no decoration and pipe the words on each layer. So, looking at the tiers from one side, you see the image representations of the words and, from the other side, the words.

Yes that is the ring, and those ideas are great! I just sent an email to the mom to see which direction she's wanting to go. What you've said is almost excatly what I've sketched out, but in my head I'm seeing something more elegant: damask on all tiers so that it's black and ivory.
Then I see layering rectangles of fondant (like matting for a photo) with the meanings of each (friendship, love, loyalty) piped on with a tiara on top tier and maybe some fluffy on top of each tier (like from a boa) just to make it more girly and elegant. I can bring the green in with the layers under the words and maybe even with the fluff.

Then I just have to figure something out for saying "Princess Journey" I really wish I could do some type of banner than flows from top tier down to middle down to second with "The Princess Journey" written on it (kind of like a sash or something), but I can't quite figure out how to do it. What do you all think?

Yeah those are great ideas! go for it and remember to upload a pic!

Maybe add some celtic filagree there's lots you can look up some have hearts in the filagree that might be pretty.

Here's a cake I found on the internet that has all the words you want, maybe you could interpret them into separate tiers, but maybe this can be a starting point?

I like the ring around the cake and the cute little shamrock border:

http://kelliscakes-sweetdreams.blogspot.com/2010/03/claddagh-cake.html

Good luck!!

I guess, being Irish (and Galway where the Claddagh ring was born to boot) I'm having a little bit of difficulty with the idea of 'splitting' the elements of the ring across the cakes.

My first thought was Ivory covered cakes, each with a model of the Claddagh ring on top in silver but a specific element of the ring in emerald green so a silver ring with the heart in green for the love tier, the crown in green for the loyalty tier and the hands in green for the friendship tier and then maybe using the black icing to pipe the words pertaining to each element if that makes sense and maybe silver on black or silver on green ribbon trim.

Here is my suggestion. It is part of other ideas above. Ivory cakes with the ring around each cake in silver except on the love cake make the heart green, on the friendship cake make the hands green, and on the loyalty cake make the crown green. Write the corresponding words on the cake in ivory in different fonts on the cakes. Make a gumpaste banner that would flow up from the lowest layer to the top with princess journey on it. To make the banner use the stand with books stacked up on each tier to represent the height of the cakes. Cut out the banner. Use tissue help form the banner so it flows up. Write princess journey in black. Good luck and post pics!