Ok, so I guess I was not in the thinking game today and I'm pretty sure I have messed up royally! I am making a two tiered cake for saturday, the bottom layer is 8x4 round and the top layer is going to be 3 8x2s stacked and carved into a cupcake. Welllll ... normally I just bake my 2in rounds and stack them without using boards in between if Im only going two high ... but I guess I got caught up in the excitement of "collaring" my cakes for the first time and got some of the height I was looking for, and then I cut my two cakes into halves so now I had four pieces of cake to work with instead of just two, and so I put the frosting in between each layer and was super excited at the height of my cake so I crumb coated it and got ready to put it in the fridge but noticed its definitely more wobbly then any of my other cakes .. Now I don't know if I should take half of it apart, and put in a cake board? Should I do it while its chilled and cold, or before it gets fully chilled? Im really nervous about transporting this baby .. I had planned to use one long dowel down all the cakes at the end ....

Definitely take it apart and put a board and dowels in the centre. Better to be safe than sorry.

do you think it will seem odd that they are going to have to take apart the cake to get the full size slices? If I have the cake board in there, their pieces of cake are only going to be 2in high ...

It's just a regular cake that you split the layers? If it is, then I wouldn't board and dowel it. This is how I do all of my cakes - they are torted to 4 layers with 3 layers of filling and end up about 5" high. Just chill the cake before delivery so the icing is solid.

The general rule of thumb is to dowel (therefore board) anything over 4-5" tall. The reason it seems wobbly is because of the smallness of the rounds. If you had started w/8" rounds you wouldn't have the problem

well I did start with 8in rounds ... I baked two of them and then I cut each one into half again, so I ended up with four layers of cake with three layers of icing ... It seemed pretty wobbly to me so I asked my dh what he thought I should do .. he said leave it be ... later last night I took it out of the fridge to show him and once it had chilled it was very sturdy so I'm not as nervous ... the cupcake on top will sit on top of a cake board and also be supported by four plastic dowel rods going through the bottom cake, there just won't be a cake board inside the bottom layer at all ... my dh reassures me this will be fine ...