There are several routes you could go down.
The easier option is to use the Webforms module. While this gives you similar fields to cck, they are not exactly the same, and if you have a module that implements a specific cck field type, it won't be available to webforms.
The second choice is to write your own module using the forms api. This can mean a lot of learning, add it takes time to get up to speed, but ultimately you have total control over how your form will look and behave. The forms api doesn't give you exactly the same fields, but all the tools are there to create them. Sometimes you need to hack open a module to find out haw a specific field is implemented.
A third option would be to use cck itself. You could create a content type and add the field types you want on your form. You would them give users permission to create but not view or edit the content type. The form submissions would them be nodes on your website. This would make me slightly nervous, so make sure all your permissions are correct!
The second part of your question: you can use a theme file to override the appearance of most forms and make them pretty.
James
