I'm getting ready to start on a wedding cake this weekend. While surfing the web for tricks and tips I watched a video of a gal that did not slice her cakes in half before she stacked them.... so I dug a little deeper and watched a couple more videos and noticed that most of the videos people had very tall cake pans and they instructed you to measure at 2 inches to divide the cake to layer..... well... my cake pans are pretty shallow and most of the time are only about 2 inches..... I have always divided them..... some trouble with the larger pans with some trouble. I would LOVE to hear someone tell me that they do not split their 2 inch cakes and just fill,stack and frost them! Would make my life so much easier! LOL but I'm worried that there will be too much cake and not enough frosting? Although.... and maybe I'm using too much filling.... most of my cakes have been kind of mushy in the middle and it usually just falls apart.... so maybe if I don't split the 2 inch cakes it will hold up and people might actually get a "slice" of cake instead of a pile of crumbs and frosting?

Any helpful hints? Expert advice? Warnings?

Thanks fellow cakesters =)

p.s.
My goal is to have each tier be a little over 4 inches tall =)

I am not completely sure I followed you 100% but I think you're talking about to torte or not to torte a cake. This is a bakers personal choice.

No matter what you do, the general rule is you bake 2 cakes that are each 2 inches high.

If you torte, you take each 2 inch layer and slice it in half horizontally which will result in 4 one inch layers of cake. You place 1 layer on the board, fill, the next layer of cake, fill, next layer of cake, fill and final layer of cake on top.
You should have 4 layers of cake and 3 layers of filling.

If you do not do this, then you just level each 2 inch layer and put filling between the two. I find that I get a prettier, straighter cake when I do it without torting but I do put in a pretty thick layer of filling.

If you want your cake to be exactly 4 inches high, you have to level them to be slightly shorter to account for the filling.

i typically dont torte either. i guess it all comes down to what your looking for
however, a simple answer, because it seems as if you are asking if you have to... absultutely not