I'm not married, so I spend a lot of time thinking about my wedding cake-to-be. I often thumb through Martha's book on wedding cakes on the floor of Barnes & Noble, and I can't pass a window full of them without gazing longingly. They're just so beautiful.

In all of this fantasizing, it's never occurred to me to think about having a cake made out of something other than cake. Like, for example, cheese. But apparently cheese cakes are becoming trendy in countries like New Zealand -- layers and layers of gorgeous, decorated cheese. Has anyone ever actually witnessed or tasted one of these? Would you consider having one?

Spoilers! Tivo-users beware!

So there's been some speculation lately, some whispers around the blogosphere regarding a certain Bravo television show. I've heard the rumor that Top Chef's going downhill, that it's dated. I've read comments accusing the show of being bland, even boring. Well, I'll put it out there loud and clear: Top Chef is still hot hot hot.

I saw a preview for the new season of WE's Bridezillas, and I thought two things. One, I'm a guy so why am I watching WE so much lately? And the other thing I thought was, I am never going to have a big wedding if this is what it does to women.

But June is the month for weddings, and congrats to anyone out there who is getting married in the next few weeks. The Boston Globe has an article about one of the most important parts of the reception, the wedding cake. These aren't basic cakes, of course. They're elaborate desserts from shoppes with names like The Chocolate Tarte and Le Beau Gateau.

These people aren't just bakers, they're artists.

Hopefully, you were able to secure a stunning location last year and already have your perfect fairytale princess dress at the tailor's. Now all you have to think about for your big day is...wine?

Trust me, though everything about a wedding matters to you, everyone will think you looked gorgeous and that the wedding was "nice." In other words, most of the details are forgettable.

However, you can change that with the help of Beaulieu Vineyards (BV), which will personalize the wine bottles that sit on your guest's tables at the reception. My Wedding, My Wine allows you to customize the labels for Cabernet, Merlot, or Cabernet Sauvignon with the bridal couple's names, a message (my favorite is "The Perfect Blend") and the date of the wedding. They'll even create tasting mats and place cards that match the wine's label.

I don't recall the 2nd amendment being written into the standard set of wedding vows, but then again, I'm also not from Texas, where this cake was prominently featured at a real wedding this past weekend. The gun was carved from a chocolate cake layer and stacked on top of the chocolate cake base, then decorated with rich frosting. The base is actually the shape of a target from the IPSC, a group that supports sport shooting and marksmanship.

Perhaps it's a less-than-common choice for a wedding cake, but all things considered, it's great that people are taking these celebratory cakes in new and unusual directions. After all, there is no reason why you have to have a plain white cake with flowers when you can have wedding cupcakes, snack food towers or anything that you (and your new spouse) really enjoy.

[via boing boing]

I am nowhere near getting married, but if I could somehow get cupcakes for a wedding delivered here from Australia, I might consider it.

These gorgeous cupcakes are made by Kylie Lambert for her bakery Le Cupcake...in Sydney Australia! I am sure the cupcake itself tastes great (it looks like vanilla), but it is the soft, subtle blue, and the detail of what is on top that got me. I suspect that Kylie pressed some sort of lace into fondant to create the look. Her other cupcakes are similar, some with the same lace impressions, others that are simply frosted, but have beautiful sugar decorations. I love the butterfly.

She doesn't have a website, but this photo, along with photos of all her cupcake artistry, is on Flickr.

How does a celebrity Manhattan chef who has two restaurants, both with two Michelin stars and who has catered over 400 weddings, do a wedding for himself? He takes it to Montlouis-Sur-Loire France and makes it a five-day celebration.

Chef David Bouley packed himself, his bride-to-be Nicole Bartelme, 80 invited guests, a staff of 20, and specialty organic foods from all over the world, and headed out to two leased chateaus in the Loire Valley. The multi-day feast of "organic haute-cuisine meals washed down with fine wines that included some from their birth years" was also a self-catered event, with some foodie guests bringing gourmet delicacies to add to the table. Here are some highlights:

• Wine, cheese and artisanal bread baked in an oak-fired oven by Jacques Mahou, a seventh-generation French baker.
• Classic French bistro food, including roasted veal, blood sausage and cured meat.
• 55 pounds of rare tomatoes cultivated on chestnut stakes in the garden of the chateau for an improvised lunch.
• Harry Snady brought 1990 Nuit Saint Georges Burgundy wine
• A guest drove 12 hours from Barcelona with 11 kilograms of fresh tuna
• A chef from Kyoto carried a suitcase filled with special wasabi, fresh green gingko and other ingredients not normally available in France.
• The officiating priest, Father David, offered fruit jams from his monastery, the Abbaye de Sept Fons.
• One evening, a Spanish-themed meal, cooked by the Barcelona-based chef Roger Martinez, was served in the stone-lined moat of the chateau
• Of course, there were desserts and wedding cake.

Now I just wonder what they're doing for their honeymoon.

Sure, the easiest thing to do is write a check. The second easiest thing to do is place your order online with the happy couple's registry at Macy's/Bloomingdale's/Dillard's/Crate & Barrel/Williams-Sonoma. It's probably easy on the couple, too, since they can *ahem* return all that stuff for cash to pay for the wedding.

However, the Chicago Tribune has an excellent idea for a memorable wedding gift - a case of wine for the happy couple that is entirely hand picked by you, or perhaps with the help of a wine expert. A mixed case will allow the couple to learn together what they like while enjoying it. If the newlyweds are also new to wine, you could include some helpful information along with each bottle. Each time they crack open a bottle, they'll remember you. The article has some suggestions for wines, and I may use this very idea for the many weddings I will be attending this summer.

I love/hate the pastel candy-coated Jordan almonds as much as the next wedding guest (is there anyone else out there who thinks those almonds are somehow preserved and can last 20 years?), but I'm always impressed when a bride and groom can come up with something a little more creative and whimsical.

Instead of individual wedding favors at each guest's place at the table, a recent wedding had set up a "candy bar" with 5-gallon jars of different candies like caramels and saltwater taffy in the wedding colors (pink and brown). Guests were given empty bags with the couples' names on it and were given freedom to take as much or as little as they wanted.

If you're getting married this summer, then you should already have a bakery lined up to do your wedding cake. Do you have any idea how long those things take to make?!

However, if you're planning your wedding for a little bit later, Flour Girl bakery in New York City has cakes that go beyond the white fondant, lace and pearls with fresh flower decorations. The cake decorations are cute and kitchsy, like theblack and white cake pictured at right.

Heck, even if you're not getting married, you can order a cake for any occassion, and who wouldn't want a birthday cake called "Think Pink," made of red velvet cake and pink-tinted raspberry buttercream? 

I used to be skeptical when friends or acquaintances would tell me about their dating on the Internet via dating sites or even "meeting" someone in a chatroom. But this was five, six, seven years ago. With such things as Match.com and eHarmony now, online dating doesn't have the same weird, creepy, somewhat desperate, stigmas attached to it.

Then along comes the food blogosphere, and one beautifully photographed, beautifully written blog, Orangette. Molly, the voice behind Orangette has recently posted the story of how her just over-a-year-old food blog brought her true love. A man was inspired by her blog about a year ago, emailed her, they communicated, met, visited each other frequently (cross country!) over the course of a year, and now, they are...engaged. What a beautiful story!

And they say a way to man's heart is through his stomach! How right they are...

April is high time for summer wedding planning fever. By this time, you should have a venue, a dress (or tux), a caterer, a cake bakery...and wedding favors.

I recently went to a wedding where the bride and groom, instead of giving guests some useless trinket that will get thrown away within three hours of the last dance, or a tiny tulle and chiffon sack filled with disgusting pastel candy-coated almonds, simply left a small slip of paper at each person's place-setting with a note that said in lieu of spending $3 a person on a wedding favor, they had chosen instead to donate to a charitable organization. They had listed three organizations and each guest was allowed to choose which organization they wished their $3 to go to. That is awesome. (By the way, I chose the Red Cross.)

If you're having a wedding with 100 guests, you could be sending $300 to a charity that aids in hunger relief.

While obsessively trolling the many wedding-planning blogs late last night, I came across these darling decorative accents for your wedding cake.

OK, I lied. I'm not sure how I found these. I think I plugged cake into a search engine. Either way, they're a hoot. I'd like to see it taken to the next level, though. Oh, say, a limited-edition bad celebrity marriage version.  Dennis Rodman-Carmen Electra could be the first set. Kinda like Homies. Then again, maybe not. 

Since it is Friday the 13th, it seems an appropriate day to look at food superstitions. Every culture has many of them, some stretching back hundreds of years. What are yours? Did you twist an apple stem to determine the first name of the person you were destined to marry? Were you expected to set the salt shaker down instead of handing it directly to someone? There are so many food myths and legends, I won't pretend that this is the ultimate list; it is just a starting point. These are simply 5 famous food superstitions:

• Throwing rice at weddings ensures fertility
• Throwing spilled salt over your shoulder keeps the devil away
• Garlic keeps evil away
• Push a spoon through the bottom of a boiled egg to “let the witches/devil out”
• Eating specific foods on the New Year will bring good luck

You know this, right? The latest thing in wedding cakes - and by, "latest thing," I mean, "the fashion that began in Martha Stewart Weddings years ago and has now landed firmly in middle American weddings" - is to set cupcakes on wedding-style cake tiers. They can be artsy or prosaic, bold and beautiful or pasty pastel.

Best part about the cupcake tower is that it doesn't require any special skills beyond figuring out where to buy the plastic Romanesque tiers to set them on. You could even (yikes!) make your cupcakes with a mix. Got someone with passable baking skills in your wedding party? You no longer need to worry about whether your crucial middle layer will fall, or if you'll build a grand masterpiece only to have it crumble to pieces on the way to the reception. Get your friends a couple packages of cupcake liners and a bunch of baking pans, and you're golden. (Or, silver.)

Some might ask, does this make wedding cakery too accessible, with lovely creations available to the masses? Does this mean any amateur can get into the wedding-cake-making business? I say, as long as the cake is moist and the icing has lots of butter - go for it, middle America. Just make sure and get that invitation in the mail to me...