Polystyrene Wedding Cake?

I think that sounds a really good idea - my tip would be to not tell anyone, not even your best friends, as you wouldn't want word going around the reception about your fake cake. Best to mega impress them and don't let on.

We just found out last night that my fiance's family friend has offered to make our cake which I'm really pleased about

I use dummy ones for photographing cake flowers on - they can be decorated as ordinary cakes can. My Mum-in-law ices mine!

Thanks all for your replies!

I may consider this then if you think it's quite a good idea to save money, but agree it's probably best not to tell anyone!!

Just be careful not to cut that bit! Can you imagine the teeth-gritting noise it would create!! Makes me shudder just thinking about it..

? I know - it makes me cringe when I touch mine - finger nails and blackboard come to mind1

My advice would be to get quotes for a suitable size cake with all real cake tiers and then compare it to the price of either the same cake or a cake with more/larger tiers for show as you may find there's not that much difference in price.

I do dummy tiers on occasion but to be honest the price difference isn't that great because good quality dummies cost almost as much as a sponge cake ingredients. The cost of the actual cake inside is your wedding cake tiers is negligable really. The largest proportion of the cost of a wedding cake is the cake maker's time - the time it takes to for consultations, the correspondence, design work, shopping, covering the cakes and the largest part on the decoration and all of this is the same regardless of whether the tiers are real cake or dummy.

It's a good way to have a larger cake than you actually need without having loads of cake left over afterwards but it's not always that much cheaper.

HTH
Catherine

Catherine beat me to it...

It can save a bit, but not a lot.