So You're EnGAYged, A Gay Wedding Blog

A very funny thing happened! Joe, from Turn Loose the Art, one of our Pro-Gay vendors who sent me a book to display at our Pride booth, sent along these pictures and I was looking at them thinking….hmm….something seems very familiar. One of the girls is one of our new bloggers that I haven’t introduced yet!! So we are very excited to see these gorgeous pictures.

Having fun in New York City, playing with all the wonderful lines and colors you can find makes these pictures hard to stop looking at.

Name/Blogger Name: Monica
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Contact info: lesbi.yinzer@gmail.com
Date of wedding: 5/14/10 (legal ceremony in CT) & 5/22/10 (commitment ceremony in Unitarian Universalist church in Pittsburgh)

About me: My fiancée and I recently bought a house and are trying to keep up with the craziness of being first-time homeowners and planning two wedding ceremonies in different states. We’ve been together since March of ’05 and share our home with our three cats. In planning our ceremonies, it seems that finding our perfect balance between tradition and non-tradition is our biggest obstacle. We want it to be unique and different, but at the same time, we want people to know they’ve been to a wedding.

I like to say Dana and I met through a mutual friend. Which is sort of true…if our mutual friend was match.com. We met on my birthday, had a first date at the romantic spot that is Denny’s, and ended up spending that day, the next day, and part of the following day together. Of course, those three days included birthday cake with a bunch of my friends (including my ex), an Indigo Girls concert, and me meeting her two cats. Why wouldn’t they?

Fast-forward two years later, and we were signing the lease on our new apartment together. She and the cats made the move to Pittsburgh from her home an hour away, and it went so well, we adopted a third. Three years after that (and a week before we celebrated our fifth anniversary), we bought a house for us and our boys, Promise, Zippo, and Graham, to share.

Walking in her favorite park one night, we decided to get married. She was adamant about having a legal ceremony, and I was just as focused on the local commitment ceremony with all of our family and friends. We have booked a date with a justice of the peace in Connecticut (that we chose sort of at random on the internet) and a church in Pittsburgh – a Unitarian Universalist church, which I insisted on joining because “if it’s good enough to marry me, it’s good enough to join.” Sorry, Catholicism. I didn’t want to abandon you, but you turned your back on me first.

I’ve never been the kind of girl who dreamed of her wedding from the age of an embryo, but I’m really enjoying planning the kind of celebration that will reflect our unique personalities. Dana has made a rough sketch of what kind of dress she wants to buy, and I am insisting that I’m not picky about the suit I’ll wear, but I really want to order Chuck Taylors to match it.

And when I said that, she just smiled and said, “Okay, honey. Sounds great.” I’ve definitely found a keeper. And I can’t wait to marry her. Twice.

I was searching flickr for cute DIY goodness and stumbled on this wedding. It’s not a gay wedding, but it blew me away. Especially place cards with little yellow butterflies on them if you had a gluten free meals(yay for gluten free wedding food).

She made heart doily reserved seating for all her guest. Unfortunately, right before the ceremony it rained and soaked the doilies. But they still look killer.

See the little yellow butterflies? As someone with celiac disease, I would just go up to the couple and give them a huge hug. A wedding can be chaotic, but little touches like these really remind the guests of how much you mean to them.

Look at the wedding invitations, bright and totally fun!

If your dieing to read more about this awesome wedding and get some insight into how Mithi made all of this, check out her blog.

One of the coolest things about Heather Toupin of heatherjeany’s work is that she does all the printing herself, color by color, one by one, and pays very close attention to detail at every step of the way. Check out our interview below!

Please provide your business’ mission or vision statement.

My goal at heatherjeany is to work with you to create the wedding invitations of your dreams. Whether this consists of customizing one of my current designs or creating something brand new and unique I strive to make the perfect invitations and paper goods to set the tone for your wedding. Since I began making invitations for my own wedding in 2005 my little business has grown into a full time job. I’ve worked with so many wonderful people and every day i feel so fortunate to have the job I do.

What do you love about what you do?

I love the design process; working with different people to come up with just the right design, but the real icing on the cake for me is the printing. I love the repetitive nature of screenprinting, with the music in my studio turned up loud it’s so satisfying to see my designs materialize on paper, layer by layer.

How did you get into doing what you do?

I have always had a love of printmaking. In college I took as many printmaking electives as I could fit into my textile design major. I learned the ins and outs of screenprinting at that time and I’ve been doing it ever since. For 10 years after I graduated college I worked as a textile designer, during that time I started up heatherjeany with a small run of screenprinted folded cards. As my little business grew fate stepped in as my “real job” ended with the closing of the mill I was designing for. At that point I decided it was make it or break it time, and look at me now! I’m making it! I’ve been doing heatherjeany full time for 2 years now.

What do you wear when you’re doing what you do?

A lot of things that I probably shouldn’t and as a result i have a lot of ink on some pretty cute clothes :) besides that I like to wear shoes with no laces, tank tops, short pants and short skirts but never shorts or long skirts. My hair is crazy corkscrew curly so I usually have that up in a pony with a big flower fascinator.

How is your business “green”?

I try to use recycled cardstock and envelopes whenever possible, I’m excited that my paper supplier is adding more and more recycled options as this is something important to me and many of my customers. I also like to stress that I do all the printing myself, color by color, one by one, and pay very close attention to detail at every step of the way.

If you have done work for at a gay wedding, what is one thing you had to change your assumptions about?

Honestly I didn’t have to change any assumptions about the gay weddings that I’ve done invitations for. It thrills me to be part of the union of two people in love, no matter the gender.

Do you have a favorite “moment” that happens while you’re doing your job?

Yes! When I’m printing the final layer of color and I finally see all the time spent designing/editing/prepping/printing all come together. It’s so satisfying.

Rave time!

“Other than the “marrying my best friend” part, these invites are my favorite aspect of the wedding! Heather is so talented and I couldn’t be more pleased.”

“Heather is the greatest thing that has happened to our wedding so far! Creating wedding stationery with her has truly been the most enjoyable part of planning the wedding by a long shot. Heather is creative, intuitive, and responsive, and she really cares about getting things done right. Best of all, she is a genuine pleasure to work with! I would recommend her services to anyone without hesitation or reservation. Thanks again, Heather!”

“I GOT THEM!!! YOU ARE A F-ING ROCK STAR!!!!!! You are TOO MUCH. I love you Heather.”

Ms.Grrrl Bio|Posts

Phew.

We did it.

We got married… and lived to tell the tale.

I’m so overwhelmed that I’m not quite sure where to begin:

1. I cried.  a lot.

2. I felt completely overwhelmed by emotion from the moment we walked down the aisle until the afterparty started post-reception.  Completely overwhelmed. Like beyond overwhelmed. Perhaps that is why I cried. a lot.

3. Beau’s vows were perhaps the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my entire life.

4. I feel like I could sleep for a month and still be tired.

5. I realized that you can plan and plan and plan and plan, but you will never be prepared for the actual event… it was like I was swept up in a tidal wave and pushed along at a breakneck pace, held in the arms of everyone in my life that I love, until finally landing gently at a bar and handed a beer and told to relax.

This painting, The Blue Veil by Edmund Charles Tarbell, inspired this post. I know lots of brides struggle with the idea of whether they should wear a veil or not. But there is more than the cathedral length, white veil out there now. There are TONS of poofs for your head, headbands, birdcage veils and more.

But one thing I don’t see too much of? Colorful veils. Blues, pinks, purples, greens, yellows…they don’t come up that often. Birdcage veils became huge in the last two years because people realized “I can wear a veil and still have fun with it?” I honestly think they are so popular just for the fact that many couples don’t realize they don’t have to take the beaten path of everyone else.

Etsy is chock full of fun headpieces. If you look carefully, you can find some fun colorful veils too, like this purple bow ensemble.

This hot pink poof worn in England, is making me go crazy with ideas.

TigerLilly, a high end veil/hairpiece shop even carries blue birdcage veils.

I love this black birdcage veil for it’s drama. I can just imagine the ‘Ohhh’s that would come from guests as they see the veil for the first time.

But aside from just birdcage veils, you can more tulle veils in colors other than white or ivory.

Via Flickr.

Kelly Prizel Bio|Posts

So a little more than a week ago, Natalie and I got legally married. We got dressed in our new home and headed out to Lighthouse Point Park, which is a really awesome beach about 15 minutes from us. We took a ton of portraits from swinging on the swings to getting knee deep in the water. It was only about 830 am, so we were the only people there practically, which made for a super romantic and stressfree morning.

We then headed to City Hall in downtown New Haven, CT and got legally married. It felt a little weird that no one had congratulated us or said anything to us as we walked hand and hand in wedding dresses in a downtown area. As a wedding photographer, I know anytime I go anywhere with couples all dressed up for their wedding, it’s like you can’t stop people from coming up to couples and congratulating them. So when we go into City Hall to actually get the certificate and have to Justice of Peace marry us, it felt really really good that this obviously not well off woman with two kids who had enough to stress about, just gushed and gushed about how wonderful we looked and how happy she was for us. It made my day.

So we got to raise our right hand to swear the information we wrote on our marriage certificate was real. I had never raised my right hand to swear anything, so it felt really incredible and official. Then the Justice of the Peace took us up the stairs and married us.

I grew up Catholic but had converted to Judaism by the time of our wedding last year and we had a very traditional Jewish wedding(a year ago 9/21/08) in the sense of we tried to take all the customs of a wedding and fit them into our lesbian wedding without straying too far from thousands of years of other couples getting married. But in Jewish tradition, there is no “I Do” moment. I was like ‘WHAT? I didn’t know that!’

So I never got an “I Do” moment until the courthouse! We said I do, we exchanged rings(again!). And hearing those words, “…by the power invested in me by the state of Connecticut…” I burst into tears.

Getting the marriage certificate was amazing. We felt the official seal. And I can’t tell you, since then, it has been sooooo much easier to inmesh our lives. I honestly feel like I got a club card or something.

Ok, ok, you want the pictures right? I’ll post more soon but go take a look at the awesome slideshow Lara put together for us:

http://www.laraswansonphoto.com/clients/Prizel/

THIS saturday our very own Ms.Grrrl is getting married. I’m lucky enough to be photographing her, so I’m packing up right now and headed out to Massachusetts.

I plan on twittering pictures and what’s happening all day tomorrow! So follow me @kprizel or @soyoureengayged. Natalie, my wife, will be their DOC, so hopefully she’ll twitter a little bit over @soyoureengayged.

Wish Ms.Grrrl lots of luck over at her last post before getting hitched: Staying Calm While Planning a Wedding.

Having an older sister who knows what you’re going through rocks–because even if she hasn’t read the book, she will still pass it on to you. Such was the way Alex and I came by Nicola Hill’s A Very Pink Wedding: A Gay Guide to Planning Your Perfect Day.

The more in-depth, paper resource to the online, UK site Gay Friendly Wedding Venues, the book has advice on  everything from the UK Civil Partnership Act of 2004, the engagement, the big wedding decisions (venue, catering, registrar), suppliers, to-do lists and, most importantly, you.

While it is so refreshing to be reading about wedding planning by and for gay couples (*cough* like So You’re EnGAYged! *cough*) it is also rather frightenly thorough (even including ‘ice sculptures’ and ‘drag king/queen’ on their budget list!). This, however, is probably more to do with my fear of budgeting than any fault of the guide’s.

What I appreciate most about the book is that it is a hands-on guide about wedding ettiquette, traditions (gay and straight), and a checklist Alex and I can reference for our ‘perfect day’ that is written to reflect our union–not all ‘gay wedding guides’ actually do this. It is also handy for us because our home and our first wedding is planned for the UK.

So, if you’re looking for a book to snuggle up with (and get down to business with), this SYE blogger highly recommends A Very Pink Wedding. If nothing else for the wedding wishlist, timeline and budget checklist.

Budgeting, yes, I think that will be my next step (and post!). Wish me luck!

The domestic scientist cooked up these awesome sour cream looking pouches that she whipped up for wedding favors.

1-2-3 Instructions are right over here