Old newspaper photo of humongous "wedding cake" with multiple O-gauge trains, what was the story??

I want to guess mid 1980's. Basing it on the hair and jacket of the man on the far left and the F3 in the center. If all those things piled on the tiers in the foreground are Beenie Babies then it could be early 1990's.

This photo has a lot more questions than track diameters. I would like to know if this photo is 60+ yrs old then why when I blow up the photo is the man to the left of the groom (I presume) look and dresses California style, no tie 80's hair style, open collar and a "Hutch " type vest or jacket?

Note the name under the photo, "Audrey Sommers".  I did a quick search and turned up some in the photography and news business.  If you are willing to delve into some of those, you may narrow it down to some time in the present, as well as location.  Somebody on here was asking if he'd be crazy to have trains at his wedding, but this may be a different wedding. 

The 60+ years old figure was a rough guess on my part, based on a general impression. I'll welcome other ideas.

I'm somewhat suspicious of the way the caption is cut off, as if to deliberately create a mystery. For all I know it may be a hoax or spoof. The reference to a "wedding cake" may not necessarily refer to a marriage event. It's difficult to conduct a search on "Audrey Sommers" without knowing the time period or location of the photo. The top of the photo has an irregular boundary which is curious for a supposed newspaper clipping.

Is that a Northern Pacific E-unit locomotive halfway up the cake?

There is an old-fashioned metal column with street-light style fixtures which somehow seems out of place. The whole scene seems rather bizarre.

In the center is a Lionel Shay pulling Lionel standard O flat cars with 3 logs fastened with chains. It might be the Northern Pacific log car set. The F3 pulling passenger cars are in Northern Pacific colors. This photo is from a wedding from about 20 to 25 years ago.

Andrew

The tops of the letters cut off, say: reception for

Then either Cl, or Ch, or Ol, or Oh

   Out of those Charles is the most likely name because of the length to the next unidentified capital letter beginning the last name

    The last name contains three tall lower case letters in a row. the fist and second of those is h or k, the third h,k,i, or l (i is iffy on dot height, W(cap) would be narrower as it is in "Wedding". If it was set with metal type, a variance is possible. Phototypset, highly unlikely. Era the type changeover occurred is the same as the wedding)

The border says it is likely photo-type era. That type of boarder is used more often in magazines, but newspapers used them too, depending on the style the paper used. That was a bold time for print, shaking off old rules and standards became a goal of the young graphic artist of the day. Though most newspapers still held fast to them, some small papers were pushing the envelope on style. Even if it broke traditional style, a border might be used for special accent, or in certain sections to help pre-identify sports from deaths from weddings..etc. quickly and without thought.(part of the job is making you look where we want you too. You don't have much say in it )

Try early People magazine, I think they used the boarder early on.

Article may have been about what happens when a train collector marries a beenie baby collector back in the 80s or early 90s...definitely not 60 years ago...

I remember seeing that photo in one of the magazines, maybe Model Railroader(?) at least 10 years ago, probably more.

Hello all, I originally posted the photo and unfortunately I can't really tell you anything about it. I was poking around on the inter webs one day and came across it somewhere and thought it was interesting, to say the least. Maybe try looking up the photographer? It says it was taken by one "Audrey Sommers" I would agree about the time period though, the trains date the photo pretty well. Either way, I would agree that it is very "over the top"!

The train peaking out behind the cake on the bottom line appears to be an allegheny, and the shay and NP F-units are on the top lines. Since we are all a bunch of train freaks, we can certainly use the locomotives in the picture to accurately date the photo. I think it's also safe to assume that all trains in the picture are made by Lionel. Possibly early TMCC era?