Mrs. Penguin, Sacramento
Age and Occupation: 26, Video & TV Producer/Director/Editor
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Doctor of Physical Therapy
Engagement Date: January 29, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: September 14, 2007
Venue: Winery in the Gold Country
About Me: I'm a silly mess of a girl who, above all else in this world, LOVES the Spice Girls. I eat sushi at least 3 times a week, and feel guilty about how much it costs the other 4 days a week. I love designer jeans and cheap accessories. I don't like sweets, but I love the UCLA Bruins!
Our groom’s cake was one detail I simply could not just gloss over! Groom’s cakes are a less heard of wedding detail here in California. I’d never even heard of the concept until I started reading Weddingbee, and I didn’t think much of it until I started thinking about how much Mr. Penguin would appreciate his own groom’s cake. I had asked our bride’s cake baker if she would think about whipping up a second “themed” cake for us, and she agreed with hesitation, as she typically makes normal, tiered cakes. I didn’t want to push her limits, so I eventually gave up on the idea, until I met Lien from the Crazy Cake Company. At the time, Lien was new on the cake scene here in the Sacramento area (she’s based out of Davis) but her portfolio was impressive and I knew I had to give her a try!

Image: Sarah K. Chen
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Miss Coconut, Tallahassee
Age and Occupation: 27, Soon-to-be Lawyer (once I pass the bar!)
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, phD Computer Science
Engagement Date: March 2007
Wedding Date: November 2008
Blogging Since: May 20, 2008
Venue: 1930s Historic Building in Lakeland, FL
About Me: I never thought about weddings until I got engaged. Now, I can't stop thinking about them! Planning the wedding has really opened the floodgates to my DIY side. If there's anything I can do to avoid hiring someone else, I will do it! Mr. Coconut is my financial advisor, he tries to keep me budget-conscious! We've tried to make wedding planning a team effort!
Continuing with our wedding planning excursion, we stopped at our baker and picked up our cake tasting. We get the option of picking a different flavor for each tier, but I had no idea the cakes would be this huge! Since we were 35 minutes away from home, and just couldn’t wait any longer, we did a drive-by cake tasting just outside our wedding venue!

We didn’t have a knife, so we just forked it. Ya know.
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Mrs. Bee, New York
Age and Occupation: 29, Weddingbee Publisher
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 33, Internet
Engagement Date: May 7, 2004
Wedding Date: March 5, 2005
Venue: Westside Loft, New York
About Me: Yes, my name really is Bee! I love my blogging, wikis, and tabasco sauce!
Weddingbee reader Kara won a custom cake topper from Lily’s Design in a giveaway we hosted in May of this year. Today she emailed us some pictures of herself with her hubby on their wedding day, and of course their wonderful cake topper!
I promised to send pictures of the AWESOME custom cake topper that I won on weddingbee.com and that Lily made for me. Lily was such a pleasure to work with and very responsive — and, as you can tell, she did a great job!!! Below are some pictures of the topper — isn’t it awesome? I also included a few pictures of Joe and I so you can see how much it looks like us. I HIGHLY recommend Lily’s cake toppers to everyone, especially the wedding bees!!!
All the best (and thanks for such a supportive and inspiring website)!!
- Kara
Thanks Kara! I have to agree that the cake topper really looks like you and your hubby! If you’ve won a Weddingbee prize in one of our past contests, please email us pictures from your big day and you might see them featured on the blog!


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Miss Margarita, Boston/Los Angeles
Age and Occupation: 26, Healthcare Consultant
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Doctor
Engagement Date: March 21, 2007
Wedding Date: August, 2008
Blogging Since: June 18, 2008
Venue: Saddlerock Ranch
About Me: I grew up in Southern California, moved to Boston for college, New York for grad school, back to Boston and now I travel the northeast every week for work. When I'm not on the go, I love to read, draw, shop, sleep and spend quality time with my fiancé, family and friends. We're long-distance planning for our "big fat brown wedding" in California and are excited to unite our Sri Lankan and Indian cultures and Buddhist and Hindu religions in a unique and modern way.
I’m sorry I’ve been MIA lately—I’m in a last minute scramble for wedding stuff and I will have many things (programs, favors, escort cards) to share in the near future. In the meantime, I’ll give you some visuals of fantastical wedding cakes that make me hungry every time I see them.
Choosing our wedding cake was quite the process. My Mom used to bake/decorate cakes in Sri Lanka so she is obsessed with having an elaborate cake for the wedding. I think she’d make it herself if she wasn’t doing a zillion other things before the wedding. Our inspiration cakes were all elaborate and sari-like:
I have no idea where this image came from- let me know if it’s yours!

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Miss Sweet Tea, San Diego/New Orleans
Age and Occupation: 26, Graduate Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Web Monkey
Engagement Date: December 1, 2007
Wedding Date: December, 2008
Blogging Since: July 14, 2008
Venue: Small church ceremony, museum reception
About Me: I'm an East Coaster living on the West Coast, planning a wedding in the South. I teach, study and write about pop culture, race, and sexuality for a living- now if only my dream job paid! After Mr. Sweet Tea, my other loves are scuba diving, traveling, being a semi-pretentious foodie, and fighting for social justice. I can't wait to have our best friends and family together in our favorite city to
celebrate with us!
After our tasting with Pigéon’s last Friday, Mama ST, my lovely DOC, and I were on to our next task: cake tasting! I could not wait to get some yummy red velvet cake in my tummy, since it’s been impossible to find good red velvet west of the Mason Dixon.

We went to two bakeries and were so into it that I forgot to take pictures besides this one of my crazy face! Whoops…
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Miss Avocado, Seattle
Age and Occupation: 23, Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Consultant
Engagement Date: July 27, 2008
Wedding Date: October, 2008
Blogging Since: June 30, 2008
Venue: LDS Seattle Temple & Hotel 1000
About Me: Somehow this little farm girl found herself a genuine Pole to fall in love and eventually move away to Poland with. I am an LDS bride attempting to plan a private religious ceremony, ring ceremony, seated reception for 100, and an open house while coordinating for guests flying in from across the United States and as far away as Poland. I try to avoid fads, excess waste, and saturated fat. I strongly endorse photography, DDR, calorie counting, rss feeds, cooking, and utilizing your resources.
After the Hotel 1000 tasting came cake tasting time. I don’t think I realized how much I love cake until this experience. I, sadly, ended up throwing a lot of this cake away because I was attempting to finish all the cake on my own as I live in a household full of gluten/dairy/egg free people and I could NOT use the rule of moderation when it came to this stuff. From left to right, chocolate white chocolate, strawberry white chocolate, and chocolate fudge cake.

Simply Desserts in Seattle gave me a list of flavors and I am overwhelmed by the 17 options I have to choose from. So you choose 8 flavors for us.
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Miss Pomegranate, Sacramento
Age and Occupation: 27, Technical Specialist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Software Engineer
Engagement Date: August 23, 2007
Wedding Date: October, 2008
Blogging Since: June 5, 2008
Venue: R.H. Phillips Winery
About Me: Hi, I'm Miss Pomegranate and I'm a shopaholic. I have a weak spot for the chic cheap - especially anything I can re-create on the DIY. Shoes are my vice, music is my passion in life and technology is the medium by which I live and work. When I'm not scoping out a sale, I'm spending my quality time training for a marathon, playing Wii with my fiance and snuggling with my Silver Labrador and Teacup Panther - and oh yeah, planning my wedding!
To answer Miss Seabreeze’s comment on yesterday’s cupcake post, why yes, I WILL be making some cute little signs to guide guests to their flavor of choice! In fact, I’d like to showcase each flavor on our cupcake table, which will be front and center on a table in the foyer. I think it’ll make a fun, creative entryway arrangement for guests to ogle upon their arrival before heading up to Olive Hill.

The foyer in the R.H. Phillips Winery Tasting Room - our cupcake table will sit where the large barrels currently reside.
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Miss Pomegranate, Sacramento
Age and Occupation: 27, Technical Specialist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Software Engineer
Engagement Date: August 23, 2007
Wedding Date: October, 2008
Blogging Since: June 5, 2008
Venue: R.H. Phillips Winery
About Me: Hi, I'm Miss Pomegranate and I'm a shopaholic. I have a weak spot for the chic cheap - especially anything I can re-create on the DIY. Shoes are my vice, music is my passion in life and technology is the medium by which I live and work. When I'm not scoping out a sale, I'm spending my quality time training for a marathon, playing Wii with my fiance and snuggling with my Silver Labrador and Teacup Panther - and oh yeah, planning my wedding!
I fell in love with the idea of a cupcake wedding dessert after seeing a few gorgeous cupcake designs at a wedding show last December. The striped fondant ribbon-topped creations shown below will be paired with a couple different custom versions of the famed Hostess cupcake inspired designs shown underneath. With the decorations decided upon, the next step was to schedule a tasting!

Image via Cakeworks
Imagine these with black and white striped bows. Adorable, eh?
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Mrs. Milkshake, Seattle/Vancouver, BC
Age and Occupation: 23, Pharmacist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Pharmacist
Engagement Date: May 2007
Wedding Date: August 2008
Blogging Since: December 6, 2007
Venue: Victorian Mansion
About Me: Despite the fact that I’ve invested many long years of my life studying the sciences in college, I’m glad to be out of there and I would never do it again! I’m super artsy at heart - I run an indie craft site, I grew up shooting and developing my own film, doing jazz and ballet, and the whole gamut of art classes. I’ve been called a Jane of all Trades… but I was also told many years ago not to make my passion my career because it’d suck the fun out of it. Hence my choice of day job. We live in Seattle but are having our wedding in Canada to be fair to all our family and friends.
I dragged Mr. Milkshake to Snohomish, a small town boasting antique stores near Seattle, one weekend in the wicked heat to check out their antique stores for random bits of furniture. I walked away at the end of the day with a sweet vintage hat and a rekindled desire to use a milk glass cake stand at our wedding. Most varieties are white, but it might be neat to nurture my passion for complementary colors by featuring an orange mango cake on a 9″ blue stand. A white one can certainly double as very classic, functional, collectible…. and while the white is very understatedly simple, I am in love with their undersides. Here’s a smattering from a few I’m following on ebay.

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Miss Pineapple, Pittsburgh
Age and Occupation: 24, Graphic Designer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Student Affairs Administration
Engagement Date: August 4, 2007
Wedding Date: October, 2008
Blogging Since: April 14, 2008
Venue: The Rivers Club
About Me: Being a transplant from sunny south Florida I am learning to live with all four seasons while playing with our cat collective, line dancing, and doing a ton of DIY projects for our wedding (seriously, like a thousand)!
Last night Mr. Pineapple and I traveled to Plum, PA to meet our baker at Jennuine Cakes and Cafe. We did not know quite what to expect because the cake was included in our venue/catering package. We were pleasantly surprised, the cafe was adorable and the cake was delicious!
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