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 =)

The usual tier is 2 - 2" layers, with filling/frosting in between. Now whether or not you torte each layer and add filling or frosting is up to you. When I put the two layers together, I carve out a slight indentation in the bottom layer so there is room for more filling/frosting and it cuts down on that irritating middle bulge. That way, nobody suffers from frosting deprivation.

I nearly always leave my layers at 2" with only icing between the two layers. I've gotten no complaints.

I always torte my 2" layers , make the dam and put filling. I don,t just gob the filling on. You don,t want it to run over or squash out. Always works for me. Make sure the dam is stiff.