For those of you using tree slice cake stands...especially homemade ones-make sure it is food-safe.

Just to add to this, DH and I cut and made our own (not for the cake but for our centerpieces). Seriously, this was the biggest nightmare in all of the planning. The tree was dead but still standing when we cut it so it was mostly dried out. However, the wood cookies started to mold!! We had to spray them with bleach and wire brush them about once a week in the 3 months leading up to the wedding. They finally dried out but would definitely not have been food safe!

If you do this, allow A LOT of time to spray and brush them as they dry and also to make them food safe if you are using them for the purposes in the above post.

My friend had a wood slice as her guest book. I guess it got moldy or something, because it smelled like puke when we started to set up the night before. I wouldn't want food anywhere near it.

Oh yes, the slab we have now started showing mold spots on top two days after I brought it home, so I had to spray it down with bleach and scrub it down. It is just now drying out completely.

Even with the butcher block oil you have to leave 30-1 hour between applications to allow it to penetrate the wood. Luckily, we have months to let them dry and cure.

We had a wood slice cake stand, but just left the styrofoam round underneath. It was painted to match the cake, so it really just blended in.

We bought ours at Crate and Barrel. It's technically for cheese and crackers (wedge server), but our cake isn't too big, so it works. I didn't want to risk having it mold, crack and non-food safe and then be completely unusable, so I spent a little more on it. Here's the link for it. http://www.crateandbarrel.com/acacia-wedge-server/s468332

@ Mary-I looked at those and some others on another site that a WW user sent me the link to, but the majority of the reviews talked about the smoky smell that comes from the wood which they all loved for their cheese, but I was hesitant about putting a cake on it. Does yours have any sort of smell?

**Sur La Table was the other site**

...just a side note, but the bride I bought the slab from is a nurse. I was kind-of shocked that she would just slap her cake down on an untreated piece of wood-her brother-in-law cut down the tree it came from. She is on one of my local FB forums, and she had also planned to use fresh hydrangea flowers from her grandmother's house to create a waterfall effect on the cake that her mother was baking for her wedding until someone said..."uh, I think those are actually not safe to use on food!" She is probably lucky to have made it through her wedding reception alive (just kidding)....I doubt any of this stuff would have actually killed her.

@ Sarahdell- Yours did turn out super-cute so it was worth the effort!

An alternative to treating the wood is that cakes can sit on a cake board before going onto the stand. The board can be pretty much the same size as the base of the cake, so you wouldn't be able to see it. Cake boards are usually just foil covered cardboard.

Hmm.. weird that a lot of people had mold issues. We cut ours and let them thoroughly dry in our basement for 14 months. We didn't coat them with anything (just used them for our centerpieces) and we only had one crack and no other problems. Maybe because we dried them in a cool, dark place we didn't have problems? I don't really know.