Hi, i am going to make my very first 4 tier wedding cake and what i am wanting to know is where can i get the extra long dowels to put through the whole of the layers? The cake has to travel a long way fully assembled so i need the extra support, i have looked on the internet and can only find 12" long dowels which will not be long enough. I am in the UK by the way

one more thing is i was thinking to do was to assemble the first 3 layers and leave the fourth layer to be put on at the venue as i thought this might make the cake more stable for travel.

any help and advice would be much appreciated

Hardware and/or craft stores.

The center dowel doesn't support, but it can help to prevent the tiers from sliding apart from one another by adding extra stabilization.

I get mine from craft stores or from our general everything grocery store (fred meyers here)

When my cake is too tall for my center dowel, I put one rod through the bottom tiers, and then another rod from the top.

Do like Jenn. I like to overlap where they cover like one into the board which goes through bottom tier, third tier, and part of second tier then stack the top tier and add another (make sure one is more left and one more right obviously) that's only hammered to the top on the top tier and runs down through second tier and part of third tier. Very sturdy. The cake in the link below was assembled in my bakery, center doweled this way, and driven 5 miles to the site.

The dowels that aren't made and packaged for food have not been treated as such during the manufacturing and especially the retail process. Do you think the guys at the hardware store would think twice about handling a bunch of them, dropping them on the ground, and just putting them right back on the rack? Heck no.

Also, sometimes you can find packs of 3' bamboo skewers made for toasting marshmallows.

http://www.spdak.com/web%20galleries/wedding/wgc_media/source/Swept%20Away%204.JPG