Wedding cakes aren't very tall?

The depth of the cakes (& overall height of the stacked cakes) will depend on how deep the cake tins were that was used. You can also use pillars between the layers to add height, rather than the cakes sitting on top of each other.

If you cant find what you want, what about using a cake stand? Using M&S cakes then hiring the stand is much cheaper than £350!

This is my cake:

The bottom layer is a dummy layer, its not real. That gives extra height. So does the layer of flowers between two layers and then there are the flowers on the top.

I think these are quite convincing cheats to make a cake look bigger :-)

It costs more than £350 for this cake but I think the cheats would work for any cake! :-)

I'm looking at my sisters making mine a 3 tier too, but she will make tiers to whatever height I want and we both love this sort of shape:

I'd really recommend looking at Faye Cahill designs for inspiration. If you go for smaller diameter cakes you can get greater height without impacting on the price too much xx

Ask around.. my Mum did ours for free (it's cost her about £150 and it's amazing). We're only having a small wedding so the bottom and middle tier are real real fruit cake, then pillars, then a dummy on top. We're serving the bottom tier at the breakfast and the middle tier at the reception, along with vanilla cupcakes for anyone who doesn't like fruit cake. We're going to have the top tier preserved and kept safe as a keepsake. Personally, I think £350 is a rip-off for a wedding cake, if this makes sense how much of it is due to the word 'wedding'?

Also, how about making a sort of stage thing for your cake? prop it up on a cake drum, add some flowers, maybe a nice silk tablecloth etc. Small cakes sometimes are better as they're less likely to topple (have you seen the way they fall on You've Been Framed, nightmare!) but you can always dress it up. if you really want to, you can get cake stands which have an empty centre that you can put lights in. It will raise your cake up and make it stand out, but it could be difficult to make them look classy as they're made of clear perspex. Consider the length of your pillars too as you can add more height that way, though it could add more to the price.

It obviously dependent on who is making what type and detail of cake but £350 is actually very reasonable for a 3 tier cake, knowing how much the ingredients cost and how many hours are involved when hand making sugarpaste flowers etc- it doesn't work out at much of an hourly rate once overheads are taken into account.

One of the cake companies I contacted told me this piece of information: An average cake should be around 3" in depth, so the three stacked together should be approximately 9". I don't know, just to me a cake totalling 9 inches seems on the mighty small side. I don't want it getting lost somewhere in a corner as no one has noticed it! But thanks for all the info guys, perhaps I will put it on a raised cake stand or something! And going back to prices, I haven't see ANY wedding cakes anywhere for less than around the £300 mark (based upon feeding 100 ish people)?

There are special calculations available online for cakemakers to work out what they should be charging. Take a look at the Cakeulator (I think that's how it's spelt) my sister has a small business making cakes, jams, mustards etc and now also does amazing celebration and wedding cakes. She doesn't charge what she's 'supoosed' to because she thinks locally at least that people will hear the price and run a mile! She usually only ends up having been paid an hourly rate of £3 ish- well under the minimum wage, which is a shame really because she works so hard on them and they really are super delicious as well as beautiful. I know another local baker (in fact at least 2) who charge seemingly bargain prices but use ready mixes and their cakes are pretty dire to taste. Whoever you go with, regardless of price, see if you can have a taster session before you commit to anything. As for 3" per tier as a rule, that's pretty limiting for designs- you should be able to stipulate what design you like, work on the final idea between you then get a quote. Or say, here is my budget, these are the styles I like, what can you do for that cost. Either way, it's your cake, your money and your wedding the cakemakers should work with you to come up with something you're after and if it's not within their means to do it, move on or be happy with some compromise.

Like you said, 300 is a fairly typical price for 100 servings so if you are confident in their baking and decorative abilities, providing they are flexible on the design front, stick with them :0) xx

You can get a lot more for you money from somewhere like M&S. Yu could get this one and still have £100 left to decorate it ...