Dummy wedding cake?

People don't just walk up after you cut it and eat it lol I have heard of loads of people having "fake" tiers, where you only have 2-3, cut one and then you serve the slices in the evening and people are none the wiser as the cake is usually taken away after you cut it!

I wouldn't worry and would go with that to fit in with your budget.. I have also heard of people having a small cake/tiers and then just having a "cake cutting slice" that is a slab of undecorated cake that is cut in the kitchen and served and people are still none the wiser.

I think this is a great idea if you like the look of an amazing cake. It's not something I've come across so have no idea in practice how budget friendly it is. It's an interesting idea tho. X

We had two dummy tiers!

My mum made the cake & it took a long time to do the sugarcraft decoration so the bottom two tiers were homemade fruit cake and the top two were polystyrene. We cut the bottom tier and then it was taken by the venue to be sliced. It came back on a tray with the fruit cake cut up along with two M&S cake bars (victoria sponge and chocolate). No one was any the wiser that it hadn't all come from the cake!

I believe that during WW2 ( i wasn't there ) due to the shortage of ingredients people used to have a dummy cake which was a decorated wooden box but hiding underneath would be a much smaller real cake made with the scarce ingredients

I made the above for a friend last year, the bottom is a real fruit cake, the top 2 tiers are fake. I like to think it looks convincing, the bride was thrilled. One word of warning is to make sure you choose either square edge or bevelled edge fakes, I wouldn't personally mix both on a cake.

Roger

Edit: How on earth do I rotate the image on here!?

Yes this is true due to sugar being rationed. I only know that because I had a teacher who got a 'proper' wedding cake because his mil worked on the black market.

My cake was made with the top 2 tiers being polystyrene. My aunt made the bottom tier and my mum iced and decorated all 3. No one knew they werent all made of cake nor did anyone come to grab a piece after cutting. The staff take it away to cut up before bringing the actual edible cake back.

Dummy cakes are great and I do get asked this a lot but just be aware that most cake decorators will tell you there is minimal difference in the price as the time spent on decorating the dummy tiers is just the same as a real cake, thus the only real saving is on the cake cost itself

I've ordered a 4 tier cake with the bottom one being fake... wondering if I've done it the wrong way round now? It's quite a tiny cake, so thought the bottom fake one might make it look a bit more impressive. If you're DIYing, I'm pretty sure hobbycraft sell the polystyrene tiers.

Thank you all for your help. That cake looks fabulous! I am also doing a dummy cake to save time I can make the fake tiers a week or so before the wedding. It's not that expensive to do each tier is no more than £5 on ebay am having a really simple decoration on it so nothing too fancy.