Wedding Cake - What I did

I am happy to share with you how I put this together. I'll warn you now that I am no baker and don't really know what I am doing. I read other blogs and then just kinda make stuff up as I go.

I wanted to make the cake look like this cake from Real Simple Weddings. It was very helpful to have a clear vision before starting.
I baked my cakes the day before using THIS recipe. I was able to fill a 12", 9" and 6" pan with each batch of cake batter. I made three batches. Each tier had three layers. I wanted the middle layer to be a little taller, so I filled that pan a little fuller each time.

After they cooled I trimmed the tops, stacked them (with parchment paper in-between the layers), wrapped them in plastic and put them in the freezer.

While my cakes were baking I made 3 batches of fondant using THIS recipe. I really only needed two batches, but I wanted extra incase there was a problem.

Once I was done baking and making fondant I started constructing the decorations. The flowers and outer edges of everything else was made of fondant mixed with TYLOSE. I found this tip from Janel at MacKenzie's Crafty Mom, mixing Tylose powder with the fondant makes it harden. I mixed 1/4-tsp with 1/4 a batch of fondant.

Janel also used a pasta machine in her post. Can you imagine how thrilled I was to find a pasta machine in my basement a few weeks ago. My moth-in-law gave it to me years ago and I forgot all about it. This machine made all the difference in making my decorations.

I rolled out my tylose fondant, ran it though the flat part of the machine a couple of times to make it thinner. Then I ran it through the noodle cutters to get these long strips.
I used the long strips to form all my shapes. A paint brush and water worked great for glueing my pieces together. When I was done I let them dry over night.
The next morning they were hard and I started piping the lattice work. I would recommend doing this the day before too, but I was too tied. I piped the lattice work with royal icing and it took a couple hours to dry. Since it was on parchment paper once the icing dried the pieces could be picked up and used as I needed. HERE is a good post about royal icing lattice work. I made mistakes, if I couldn't live with them I would break off the lattice work clean up the shaped fondant and pipe it again.
For the flowers I ran another piece of tylose fondant through the pasta machine machine until it was quite thin. Then I used Wilton circle cutters to cut three sizes of circles out. I glued one on top of the other (off centered) with water. Then I laid them in various spoons and things to dry over night.

While my lattice work was drying I frosted the cakes and covered them in fondant. To stack them, I used straws dowels. They were a lot easier to cut than wood.
My fondant was my biggest problem. When I did my practice cake it was the easiest part, so I wasn't worried. I think I may have tried to rush myself and rolled it a little to thin. I was really embarrassed at how bad it looked. I was grateful to have big decorations to cover it up.

Take your time and don't skimp on the fondant.
Once everything was dry I could put it all together.
I hope that made sense. Let me know if you have any questions. I'll try and answer them. I couldn't have done this without the great tutorials in blogland.