Hello, I spent a lot of time searching for a way to control the look and feel of a date field and its variables through CSS and didn't find any great solutions but was able to get my desired results through combining a variety of different posts. If there is a better way to do it, that feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Here is how I was able to create a custom look and feel for the different variables pulled from my date field "field_event_date" :

	<?php
  // Start Date - Since the cck date field is not in UNIX timestamp format, convert first
  $timestamp = strtotime($field_event_date[0]['value']);
  $month = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'M');
  $day = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'd');
  $year = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'Y');
  $hour = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'g');
    $min = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'i');
	$ampm = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'a');
?>
	<?php
  // End Date - Since the cck date field is not in UNIX timestamp format, convert first
  $timestamp = strtotime($field_event_date[0]['value2']);
  $month2 = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'M');
  $day2 = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'd');
  $year2 = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'Y');
  $hour2 = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'g');
    $min2 = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'i');
	$ampm2 = format_date($timestamp, 'custom', 'a');
?>

<p><div class="eventDate">
<div class="event-calbox"><span class="event-month"><?php print $month; ?></span>
   <span class="event-day"><?php print $day; ?></span><br>
	<span class="event-year"><?php print $year; ?></span></div>
	</div>
 </p>
  <div class="eventDate2">
  <div class="event-calbox"><span class="event-month"><?php print $month2; ?></span>
   <span class="event-day"><?php print $day2; ?></span><br>
	<span class="event-year"><?php print $year2; ?></span></div>
	</div>
</p>

I am sure there is a lot of room for improvement of this code but it seems to be working for my needs so far. Hope it helps others...