Just This Week

LOS ANGELES—It seems safe to say that a wedding event isn’t worth its salt—or rice, as the case may be—if it’s not ridiculous. So it was with some excitement that a reporter ventured to Culver City for The Most Ridiculous Wedding Event Ever 2, a mini-convention arranged by Mindy Weiss, the celebrity-wedding guru. Besides, as everyone in Hollywood knows, a sequel is always bigger, better and more fun than the original.

Ms. Weiss has planned over-the-top nuptials for Fergie and Josh Duhamel, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, Nicole Richie, Pink, Jennifer Lopez and many other OK Magazine cover subjects who’ve made a profit off their wedding photos.

At The Bookbindery, an event space, Ms. Weiss planned a full eight hours of wedding talk, encompassing such important topics as invitations, cake decorating, floral bouquet making and, naturally, eyelash enhancing. There was food, too: breakfast, lunch, mini donuts, cupcakes and a bar featuring various varieties of chips, including potato, corn, Cool Ranch and Sun. And what would the Most Ridiculous Wedding Event Ever 2 be without a pop-up Pinkberry stand? There was one of those, too.

Ellen Black, of the Beverly Hills stationers Lehr & Black, was representing what’s new and current on the invitation market. Ms. Black showed off a birthday invitation accompanied by its very own Gucci bag, a wedding invitation for Shaquille O’Neal complete with pop-up castle and crown, and the piece de resistance: a bobblehead of Seal and Heidi Klum for their fifth anniversary party. Ms. Klum did not come off easy in the figurine.

“It’s actually gorgeous for a bobblehead,” said Ms. Black who estimates her invitations can cost between $75 and $300, with the Gucci bag or tiara at an extra fee.

“When Jennifer Lopez was getting married, I had to get inside her Bentley because there was an exact color in it and some art deco details she wanted,” Ms. Black continued. She has been in the business for a while. “My mother did Dean Martin’s wedding and Liza Minnelli’s first. Half to three quarters of our clients are celebrities. I get to dream the most elaborate things I can think of.”

On the wedding cake front: Joan Spitler and Leigh Grode, otherwise known as The Cake Divas. The duo, no strangers to the baking reality show circuit, created several styrofoam confections for the day. “They’re faux cakes,” Ms. Grode said. “They actually take a lot of sculpting. Cake tends to be more crumbly. Styrofoam is more flakey.”

The Cake Divas are particularly anxious about the debate between fondant and buttercream. “If a person in this industry making cakes cannot do with buttercream what he can do with fondant, then he’s not worth much,” explained Ms. Grode. “We’ve gotten calls to teach how to make flowers out of buttercream. That’s the first thing you should know when you bake. It’s like Yiddish: a dying art.”

The Cake Divas also bake special cakes for movies. The craziest baked good they’ve made: A full bedroom of furniture cake. “Last week on the spy drama ‘Undercovers,’ one of the actors had to remove a bomb out of a cake,” Ms. Gartin said. “That was ours. It was a tiered Russian.”

“We have to create magic,” Ms. Grode added. “This is Hollywood. They keep coming up with wild ideas we have to accomplish.”

Ja’maal Buster was the self-described eyelash guru to the stars. He said he works with Beyoncé, Martha Stewart and Rihanna. “Any celebrity on top has worn my lashes,” he said. What did he teach the brides? “I educated everyone to the importance of eyelashes as an accessory to your wedding,” he said. “Women shouldn’t be intimidated by them.”

As soon as the last speaker finished, the DJ cued up the Black Eyed Peas and Ms. Weiss and Randy Fenoli, of “Say Yes To the Dress,” started an impromptu dance party for the brides and planners in attendance. Many cupcakes and mini donuts were consumed.

“I have a sick gene,” Ms. Weiss said, as the event came to a close. “Parties, parties. All day, all night. This is my expertise.”

Monica Balli, a wedding planner from Italy came over to pay her respects. “This is amazing, really ridiculous,” she told Ms. Weiss. “We don’t have a Mindy in Italy. I’ve done a lot of weddings, but they’re not as great as hers.”

What did Ms. Weiss take away from this long, exhausting day? “I learned that I might have to do it again,” she sighed.

The “Entertainment Tonight” and “Insider” families came together to celebrate the TV icon’s big day by turning the newsroom into party central thanks to Executive Producer Linda Bell Blue — complete with hundreds of balloons, a piano player, omelet bar and a nearly 6-foot-tall cake from the Cake Divas, which six people labored over for 18 hours.