Wedding Cake

SOME PEOPLE believe that allowing same-sex couples the right to say "I do" will mean the end of marriage. We don't. But it may no longer matter what anyone thinks now that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has found - in a forceful opinion - that the state constitution allows for gay marriages. Gay marriages -for all intents and purposes - will now become a reality in the United States. People might as well get used to it. While the state's high court declined to give the gay plaintiffs in the case the marriage licenses they were seeking, and even gave the state legislature six months to respond to the court's ruling, time will work against conservatives who want to keep marriage a straight affair.

Like so many aspects of Chelsea Clinton's spectacular wedding Saturday, the cake was remarkable. The nine-tier vanilla cake, filled with dark chocolate mousse, frosted in white fondant, and decorated with 1,000 edible sugar flowers, was also gluten-free. That's because the former first daughter is allergic to the gluten found in most cakes and breads. The creation was a triumph for Frances and Maarten Steenman of La Tulipe Desserts in New York's Westchester County. The Steenmans, who have owned and run their business for nearly 12 years, specialize in all kinds of exquisite tarts, pies, cookies, and of course cakes, not just those that are gluten-free.

For her wedding Trista Rehn is getting a nice suit - a lawsuit, that is. Rehn, who showed off her sweet-girl-next-door-with-a-sexy-edge thing on ABC's Bachelorette, is being sued by her manager for $200,000. Entertainment Tonight reports that Kevin Allyn wants 20 percent of the $1 mil Rehn negotiated from ABC to air her wedding to Ryan Sutter, who won her heart on the "reality" show - and has subsequently helped her expand her bank account. The wedding - a $1 million affair ABC is paying for - and preparations for it have been featured in a series of specials, including one scheduled to air last night on the couple's bachelor parties.

THOUGH FALL foliage has already peaked and the holiday season is nearly upon us, the wedding season is still in full swing for many cake designers. With no air-conditioning breakdowns to fear, and no melting butter cream to stress over, autumn can be an ideal time to schedule a wedding. According to cake designer Polly Schoonmaker of Polly's Cakes in Portland, Ore., (www.Pollys cakes.com), the season brings not only more comfortable temperatures but flowers with deeper, richer tones that can beautifully complement wedding cakes.

Gina Nicolo perches on a Louis XV chaise at Miel Patisserie in Cherry Hill. She is fretting over the final details of the five-tiered cake that the shop's chef-owner, Robert Bennett, will create for her wedding on Saturday. The two agree on a pain de genes, a French pound cake, with rolled fondant piping accented with blown-sugar butterflies (because butterflies are the theme of her wedding) in pink and lavender (to match the bridesmaids' dresses). Then Nicolo, 31, has another idea.

The challenge, flung like an arrow, skillfully hit its mark. Artists who have tasted true love, bitter rejection, betrayal and bliss felt its barb and began to bravely reveal their hearts. "Target love with original art," Karen Chigounis, a curator at the Hopkins House art gallery, wrote in letters to 400 members of the Network of Visual Artists, a South Jersey group. "Create a valentine. " Chigounis and the other officials who run the gallery out of a historic stone house in Haddon Heights did not expect the flood of creative works they received.

The mere mention of wedding cakes most often conjures up visions of dry pound cake glued together with shortening-heavy icing. But there's good news. During the last decade - bakers and food experts say - an increasing number of couples with developed palates have begun putting more thought and work into choosing - or even making - their dessert of desserts. The range of choices and concepts showing up at weddings nowadays is challenging those old notions of frothy predictability.

If you're looking for excuses to hate Rod and Bob Jackson-Paris, you don't have to look far. You could dislike them for political or moral reasons. The Jackson-Paris guys are gay. They're gay and they're married. They're gay, married and making a pretty good living publicizing it. As if that weren't enough, they're gorgeous. Bob and Rod are buff. They're hunks. Bob, formerly Bob Paris, is a former Mr. Universe. He has curly brown hair and a voice as gravelly as a country road.

Marissa Hill, 3, of Ocean City, holds her feathered and costumed crab before a crowd gathered for the 24th annual Miss Crustacean crab beauty contest in Ocean City. Behind Marissa are her mother, Marlena, and brother Tyler (right), 7. The winner was a critter named Crab Cake, who was decked out in a 5-foot-tall wedding cake.

"We first had our hearts set on a land ceremony in Sorrento, Italy," says Traci Catalano-England, 45, an insurance service marketing director and mother of two girls. But that was not to be. She and Paul England, 53, a British-born hospital marketing director, exchanged wedding vows at sea last summer aboard the two-year-old MSC Fantasia cruise ship. It was the second marriage for both Hartland, Wis., residents. They met as members of an executive dating service and dated for more than a year before discussing marriage.

Cruise-ship wedding ceremonies are increasing at a surprising rate, according to the Cruise Line International Association, the trade group for 25 major cruise lines. More and more couples, including gay and lesbian ones, are going that route, buying wedding and civil union ceremony packages and getting built-in honeymoons at the same time. Carnival played cupid last year to more than 2,000 couples who purchased its various wedding deals, and expects a 10 percent increase this year, says the cruise line's spokesman, Vance Gulliksen.

By Ellen Scolnic and Joyce Eisenberg On Friday, Prince William of Wales will marry Catherine Middleton. This wedding of the century will be watched by millions and chronicled by thousands. But even though the royal wedding is much grander than others, the basic decisions involved are the same. For example, today's young couples have to decide whether to have a trendy destination wedding, a stripped-down eco-conscious event, or something more in keeping with tradition. And it's no surprise that William and Kate went traditional.

You could take all of the raw material from Monday night - half hour backstage, three hours on stage, 15 cupcakes to decorate, one wedding cake, autograph signing until the stroke of midnight - and edit it down to 22 minutes. After all, the actual Cake Boss show does 90 hours of filming for each 22-minute episode, according to the boss himself. But the 1,800 fans who filled the Merriam Theater for "Bakin' with the Boss" (a misnomer as there was no baking, not a vat of fondant in sight, and a mere sampling of modeling chocolate)

Like so many aspects of Chelsea Clinton's spectacular wedding Saturday, the cake was remarkable. The nine-tier vanilla cake, filled with dark chocolate mousse, frosted in white fondant, and decorated with 1,000 edible sugar flowers, was also gluten-free. That's because the former first daughter is allergic to the gluten found in most cakes and breads. The creation was a triumph for Frances and Maarten Steenman of La Tulipe Desserts in New York's Westchester County. The Steenmans, who have owned and run their business for nearly 12 years, specialize in all kinds of exquisite tarts, pies, cookies, and of course cakes, not just those that are gluten-free.

DEAR ABBY: A few months ago I became suspicious that my wife of 40 years was having an affair with an old high-school friend. At first I thought I was misreading the signs. Then I found an unfinished e-mail on our computer making a date to meet him "at our special place," and I was crushed. I began gathering information and found it was true and that it had been going on for some time. When I confronted her, she denied everything until I told her about the e-mail and everything else I had found.

I'M BROAD STREET Bully, inviting all orange-blooded diehards to keep our Stanley Cup spirit going strong by e-mailing your Flyered-up family stories/photos to: Lifelong diehards Lorraine and Al Eschert, both 44, of Harrowgate, did such a great job passing on their Flyers love to sons Albert, 24, and Christopher, 22, that Albert's recent wedding in the Philadelphia Protestant Home chapel was totally Flyered up. At the rehearsal, all the...

IT'S been an interesting couple of weeks, so here's a roundup of my thoughts on a whole bunch of those stories. S. Philly High mess Asian students are targeted at a Philadelphia public high school by African-American classmates. Some people tried to minimize the violence by pointing out that, in some cases, the Asians allegedly started the fights. So that somehow justifies one group of kids roaming from classroom to classroom, as widely reported, looking for random kids of another ethnicity to hurt?

AS A RULE, DIY is a concept that most brides don't want to apply to their wedding. But then again, rules are meant to be broken. For some couples planning to tie the knot, the notion of a personal, intimate wedding, an affair they control - and often pay for themselves - is a perfect fit. And what better place to have that wedding than at home, or at the home of a dear friend? Not only are you saving the facility fee, which can run $5,000 and up at big-ticket venues like the National Constitution Center or New Jersey's Grounds for Sculpture, you're celebrating at a place that is meaningful to you. After figuring out logistics like chair rentals and linens, the big question is, what about the food?