Ok, sometimes the simple things concern me.
I'm doing a wedding cake next weekend, three tiers. The bride brought me the cake stand she wants to use...the pretty silver platform that I've seen used a lot. It's 14". The bottom tier of her cake is 12", so it will have to go directly on the cake stand. I figure I need to at least put a 12" cake circle underneath to keep the servers from cutting/scratching the stand. But, don't I need to somehow secure the cake circle to the stand? (I don't want the whole thing to slide or shift off the stand during delivery). I thought a/b royal icing, but will it hurt the stand? I don't want to ruin it...again the board is to try to protect it.

I personally never deliver a cake ON the stand. That is always separate and gets stacked at the venue. But if this is your normal practice, a small circle of the rubber shelf liner will keep it from moving and it won't hurt the stand.

Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way. I haven't delivered a cake ON the stand since I was actually new at this. ALL my cakes go on a silver drum the same diameter (or slightly less) than the plateau. When I get to the venue, I just place the drum with cake onto the plateau. I even quit having the brides bring me the plateau. They just took it to the venue and left it there. One less thing for me to keep up with.

All my cakes that have a stand get delivered on the stand. You'll have the 12" cake on the standard 12" board and you can secure it to the base with royal like you thought, it will not damage the plateau. You could also use non-skid, but I prefer the royal. One thing to think of is that some of those stands are sunken in a bit in the middle (whyyy????!!!!) so I will but a 6 or 8" cardboard or 2 if needed under the middle of the cake so it doesn't crumple (sandwiched with more royal)

Wanted to add: I really think it takes away from the look of the plateau to have a cake drum type base between that and the cake. A custom base (covered in fondant, ribbon on the sides) doesn't look that bad tho.

Thank you all. I too, would prefer to place on a drum and deliver that way. But in this case the stand would not be seen on the top due to the size, and I didn't want that. I'll go with the royal icing method since I have leftover from this weeks project.

thanks again!