I love the idea of a display cake. Wedding cakes are beautiful pieces of art and it honestly breaks my heart a little when I see them cut into. Display or "dummy" cakes solve that. They're fake cakes for show and then you serve sheet cake (which truthfully most people only serve anyway). This way you pay less for the actual wedding cake AND don't have to pay for cutting and plating fees from your baker/caterer. I think it's the best of all worlds.
I recently found this company MyDreamCake. It's based in Utah and it allows you to rent display cakes (even less expensive=wonderful) and her work is lovely. You can get your display cake and a matching cut cake to smash in your man's face for much less than most brides spend on their main wedding cake alone. She'll even design one just for you if you don't like any of the ones she has. Bonus- if you're having two different receptions like I did, you won't need to choose between getting two cakes ($$$) and going without a wedding cake at one of them. Here's some of the examples that I loved from her gallery.
There are a ton more pictures to look at on her site, but I decided to try to tone down the numbers of pictures I posted this time. Enjoy!