Exclusive: Cookbook Author and Content Creator Justine Doiron Spent 3 Months Creating 4 Different Cakes for Her Spring Wedding in New York City

If you ask Justine Doiron, cookbook author and the content creator behind the popular Instagram handle @justine_snacks, and Eric Lipka, fate has a funny way of putting you right where you're meant to be. The two met in December of 2017 at a Christmas party that neither was meant to attend. "We both decided to come last minute and both arrived alone," Justine recalls. Needless to say, they didn't attend parties on their own after that special night.

Five years later, in March of 2023, Eric proposed at the Prospect Park Boathouse in Brooklyn, New York, a spot they frequent on the weekends. "We live in the area and have always taken a weekend walk around the park," Justine explains. "When Eric and I were in the early days of dating he lived in Flatbush, and on one of our first weekends together we stumbled across the Boathouse. It has been one of my favorite parts of the park ever since." That made the location more than just a fitting engagement location—the two returned spot on May 3, 2025, with 85 guests in tow for their late spring wedding. "I love that we got engaged and married in the same place," the bride adds.

With help from their close friend and professional wedding planner Caroline Taylor, the couple planned a warm, minimal celebration that felt more like a dinner party and less like a traditional wedding. With that in mind, they also chose décor that let the natural beauty of the Boathouse shine. "The whole event had a feeling of casual, relaxed warmth, because we wanted it to feel like one big dinner party at our home," Justine explains.

Naturally, food was a top priority for the bride and groom—from bread and butter from Justine's favorite New York City bakery at cocktail hour and a dinner menu of all of their favorites to the four wedding cakes the bride spent three months perfecting—but so was the overarching feel of the day. "We always said we wanted to make our marriage feel bigger than our wedding, so the wedding was designed for how it would feel, not how it would look," says Justine. And their "low-flower, high-candle" design helped achieve just that.

Ready to see more from Justine and Eric's warm, intimate celebration? Ahead, every photo of the big day—and their rehearsal dinner at a beloved Bedstuy eatery—from Brian David Weddings, shared exclusively with BRIDES.

The night before their wedding, the couple invited their closest loved ones to Daphne's, a restaurant in Bedstuy, for a rehearsal dinner. Justine wore a Sabo sundress and Eric wore a shirt his soon-to-be wife had thrifted in San Francisco—the evening had a casual dress code, as it was most important to the bride and groom that everyone felt relaxed and comfortable as they came together for some quality time and great food.

Justine, her sister, Eric's best man's wife, and the couple's wedding planner created all the décor for the rehearsal dinner themselves. They sourced roses from their local bodega, Mr. Kale, and arranged them in thrifted bud vases. "I wanted red to be a part of our wedding somewhere since my siblings and I grew up in Hong Kong, and red is such a lucky color," Justine explains.

"The restaurant went all-out with the food," Justine says of the evening's menu. "We had a cut down version of their menu, and while they are phenomenal at pasta, they had a chicken they par cooked and then finished on the stove that I think every person who attended told me about. I'm a pescatarian but all I could hear about that night from our guests was the chicken."

They also prepared the bride's favorite cocktail from their menu, the Verona, but she was so nervous about having to go home and finish her wedding cake that she could only enjoy a few sips.

The friends who introduced Justine and Eric at that fateful Christmas party offered speeches during dinner, offering their perspectives on the night the duo met.

The two posed for photos around their neighborhood before heading back home—Justine still had work to do on her wedding cakes!

Justine wore a sleeveless two-piece Besa wedding dress with a column silhouette and chiffon overlay. What most guests didn't know was that she bought this gown just two months before the big day, after deciding the original wedding dress she bought nearly two years earlier no longer matched her vision. "I had selected a dress that I really thought was the one, but when it arrived, it just felt so wrong to me," she explains. "It looked so different than what I tried on and seemed too stiff and formal for our wedding, but I was fully ready to just smile through it and use that dress."

Luckily, her good friends refused to let her settle. "It took a few conversations with friends to pull me out of my 'everything's fine!' phase and realize I can go back to the drawing board," Justine says. So, she stopped by an Anthropologie Weddings store on her way home from Manhattan one evening and told herself she'd see if a dress she had been eyeing happened to be in stock. "They had it and no one had tried it on yet," she remembers. "I put it on and immediately felt like I was home. It was at my door two weeks later and the only alterations we did to it was the hem. It was so perfect."

And, since her original wedding dress wasn't altered yet, she was able to help another bride-to-be find her dream look by reselling it via LoveTwice Bridal. "This is my formal argument that your wedding dress does not have to be the most expensive dress," she says. "It just has to be the dress that feels right."

Justine and her go-to hair and makeup artist Cherry Le chose a low bun hairstyle for the wedding day, both because it's a look Justine regularly chooses and feels comfortable in and because they knew it would hold up well during a 12-hour wedding day. Cherry also gave her a natural, glowy beauty look with a bright pink lip, which was intentionally selected to offset her emerald jewelry, including the drop earrings Eric gave Justine as a wedding gift to complement her emerald engagement ring and wedding band.

Eric wore a classic tuxedo with a white dinner jacket for the ceremony and reception. "The white dinner jacket was significant to me as it was what my dad and his dad got married in on their wedding days," he explains.

The couple decided to get ready at at their Brooklyn home, with Eric on the first floor and Justine on the second. "It felt so communal, warm, and kind of old-school to have people milling around the house, with the best man's wife helping me with last-minute flowers outside to our planner making sure the cake bearers were all prepped to carry the cakes from our kitchen to the venue," Justine remembers. "We couldn't have asked for a more fun atmosphere that felt more like us, and I'm so glad we chose to do everything at our home."

Prepping at their house meant that their French bulldog could be part of the fun, too. It also allowed them to share a first look at home, which was Justine's long-awaited dream come true. "I always had this dream of walking down our stairs to our backyard for the first look," she explains. "It was just immediate tears. That's the moment where you realize, 'Wow, we're really getting married.' We both wanted the first look to be much longer than it was."

Justine's big pre-wedding DIY project was creating the couple's four delicious wedding cakes, which she spent over three months perfecting. "We got married in May but i had been working on the cakes since February," she admits. "It was truly a labor of love." Her vision was to create four different cakes for the big day: one "old," one "new," one "borrowed," and one "tiramisu." "I never had any intention of doing a traditional tiered cake, so doing four layered ones gave me an out," she adds. "I documented the process on social media, and it felt right to be bale to go all-out on the flavors in a way that I don't think I would have if I went the traditional cake route."

First up was her "something old" cake, which was a chocolate bourbon pecan pie cake made from a mixture of the chocolate confection she prepared for Eric's 30th birthday and the bourbon pecan pie they make each holiday season. Justine's "something new" cake was what she called her "wild card." "I wanted it to be this fluffy, over-the-top coconut cake," she explains. "After testing a few coconut cake recipes, I knew they weren't going to be as moist as I wanted, so I developed a malted milk powder based one for the cake layers."

For her "something borrowed" cake, Justine looked to her sister's big-day confection—a classic hummingbird cake—and made her own tweak on that with pineapple filling and graham cracker crumble. Last, she made a raspberry tiramisu in a trifle dish, "which I loved," she says.

The couple's three "cake bearers" hand-delivered the treats from the couple's house to the venue without so much as a frosting smudge taking place.

"We didn't want our wedding venue to be a place we'd go to once and then never see again, so it felt right to choose something that we've loved for years, and a place that's so beautiful but such a part of our neighborhood," Justine says.

Before their ceremony, the couple strolled the park like they would any other weekend—the only difference was that photographer Brian David Weddings was with them snapping sun-soaked portraits.

The couple opted to keep their ceremony space very simple, allowing the Beaux Arts-style building and the Lullwater of the Lake to shine. Though they initially planned for the entire celebration to be flower-free, Justine and Eric decided to add two white floral arrangements to their backdrop at the last-minute. "I really wanted a flower-free wedding, but late in the process we decided to switch from wedding parties to just the best man and maid of honor, and since it was going to be so small and intimate at the front, we wanted flowers that mirrored that," the bride explains.

At the ceremony, the two friends who invited the couple to the Christmas party where they met served as their flower girl and ring bearer. Then, Justine's brother walked her down the aisle, something that the bride says was "incredibly special," as their father had sadly passed away in 2011. In tribute to him, she walked down the aisle to a cello arrangement of "All I Ask of You" from Phantom of the Opera. "My late father used to play and sing this on the piano, and since he couldn't be there in person, I wanted him there in spirit," the bride says.

Writing their own vows was a non-negotiable for the couple—they both agreed this aspect of the ceremony was the most important of the entire wedding day, and speaking their own promises was hugely important to Justine and Eric. Instead of waiting until the big day to share their vows, though, they opted to read them at home a few days before the wedding first. "We did it to make sure they were similar in length, but also because we wanted them to be just ours first," Justine explains. "It was really special to read them just us, in our living room. And yes, we cried both times."

After being pronounced husband and wife, the sun broke through the trees offering the couple and their guests a surprise sunset view. "That will forever be a favorite photo," Justine says. The two kissed before recessing to "Such Great Heights" by The Postal service.

Guests moved straight to cocktail hour, where breads and compound butters from Justine's favorite bakery, Lost Bread Co., were on full display. "Crackers are great, but bread is objectively better," she notes. The couple also had a full raw bar with shrimp cocktail and oysters. "That plus good drinks meant everyone was happy."

The newlyweds served two signature drinks: a Basil Paper Plane for Justine and a Whiskey Lemon for Eric. Beer, wine, and an array of other spirits were also available for anyone who preferred a different type of cocktail.

After everyone had their fill of bread, shellfish, and cocktails, guests found their seating assignments on green tented escort cards from Minted.

The couple snuck away from cocktail hour to take a look at their celebration from the nearby Lullwater Bridge. When they returned, they shared their first dance on the patio to "Let's Get Married" by Bleachers. "We arranged it so it was the acoustic version that led into the regular version, and we used the upbeat transition to bring people from cocktail hour into the reception," Justine says.

Long tables were arranged throughout the Boathouse, and each was topped with white linens and dozens of pillar candles in a variety of different sizes, in keeping with the couple's low-floral, high-candle vision for the big day. "Our wedding was in early May which can still be a bit crisp in New York," Justine explains. "I was excited about candles all over our tables first, to make the room feel warm, but to also physically warm it up a bit. I was not expecting it to be one of the hottest days of spring! While the candles were my favorite part of the wedding, I did run around telling guests they could blow them out if they felt like they were baking!"

At each place settings, guests found the evening's menu, something that the couple worked closely with the catering team at Purslane to personalize to their preferences and tastes. "The food was important to me at the wedding, but I knew I had to be realistic. I’ve heard so many brides and grooms say, 'The food at our wedding was the best, everyone keeps talking about it,' and I’ve been to more weddings than I can count where the food was not the best, so I resigned myself to being a realist and expecting that our food would be middle of the road," Justine admits. "But wow, did Purslane work magic for us."

First up on the menu? Buttermilk biscuits with caviar and creme fraiche. "I knew buttermilk biscuits would have to be somewhere on the menu, since it's one of both of our favorite foods," Justine explains. "When I floated the idea to the team at Purslane, they met me right where I was and pulled together the most gorgeous and delicious starter."

"We wanted a menu that was filled with both of our favorites," Justine adds. "Eric grew up in the South and I grew up with strong Cajun influence in my family, so that's where our menu gravitated." Their family-style meal—another non-negotiable for Justine, who believes food tastes better this way—featured roast chicken and fingerling potatoes (Eric's favorites), shrimp and grits (Justine's favorite), and charred cabbage with Italian salsa verde (a nod to a recipe in the bride's cookbook).

"It felt like a big family gathering," Justine says, "but, you know, with ten tables and a bunch of caviar."

After dinner, the couple stepped away from the party to change into their party outfits. Justine traded her gown for a two-piece mini look from Campbell Bridal. The fringed details were perfect for dancing. Eric traded his white dinner jacket for an emerald green one.

"The cakes were actually eaten at our wedding!" Justine gushes. "Cakes, for me, are always an afterthought at weddings, so I wanted to go crazy with our flavors so that people would want to try them all. A lot of tables chose to divide and conquer, so I feel lucky the cakes were all (actually) devoured."

"We always told each other our marriage is bigger than our wedding," Justine says, which leads her to the piece of advice she'd give any other couple: "Plan your wedding for how it will make the start of your marriage feel, not how it looks on paper. "