So You're EnGAYged, a LGBT wedding blog

Erica Edsell and I (Emily Danforth) were married on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at the Five Bridge Inn in Rehoboth, MA. (http://www.fivebridgeinn.com)
The Five Bridge has lush green grounds and an on-site wedding tent, so we were able to use part of the ground (the birch cluster) for the actual ceremony, then have our guests stroll (with flutes of champagne provided immediately post-nuptials) over the the pool area for cocktails and drinks, before we all entered the official wedding tent for the reception and dancing.

We did much of the planning and actual “work” for the wedding ourselves (which is one of the reasons that it was so special to us)–we bought our flowers the morning of at 6am at the huge flower market in Boston, and then spent the better part of the next couple of hours arranging them in galvanized tins for the tables and shepherd’s hooks along the aisle; we strung the lanterns (in our wedding colors of celery green and cream) amongst the branches at the roof of the tent the day prior to the ceremony.

Erica’s fave moment:  Saying the vows, followed, closely, by eating approximately 12 home-made cupcakes in flavors ranging from red velvet to carrot cake to chocolate with white butter cream.
Emily’s fave moment: The moment immediately after the kiss (though that was amazing, as well) when hundreds of tiny, cocoa-sized marshmallows were flung at us from either side of the aisle.  (My family has a bit of a passion for marshmallow “wars” at family gatherings, and we thought this was a fun way to work that into our ceremony–and the resulting picture is our very favorite!)

Erica’s pastor from grade-school, Reverend Steven Crabtree, officiated, which was particularly meaningful to Erica and her family.  Friends of ours read passages they’d chosen specifically for us, on our big day, which was meaningful because I’m a graduate student in fiction writing and obviously the written word is very important to me.  We walked down the aisle (across the lawn) to a string trio playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D, each of us with a parent on either arm, which was amazing.  About four minutes in, a bee flew down the front of Erica’s dress, causing her to announce, loudly, the much-repeated words of the day “Bee in the dress!  Bee in the dress!” and all of the attendants, as well as her mother and I, then crowded around her, blocked by Crabtree’s black robes, as we tried (with no success) to remove the bee.  It was very funny and the perfect, lighthearted moment to start-things-off, especially because the two of us are such ridiculous goofballs.

We stamped dozens and dozens of paper bags for the candy buffet (which had all of our childhood favorites) with E2 (E-squared) in navy blue ink (our third wedding color); we had family members with good cameras take pictures for us, and ended up with hundreds and hundreds of excellent shots

*So You’re EnGAYged note: All of the photos were edited extensively by Kelly(who’s a photographer) so they could appear on the blog because most were hard to see and would have shown poorly on the blog. Normally I would never edit wedding photos submitted, but in this case, it had to be done to show these lovely ladies!!*

We did many of these things because we enjoyed doing them, but we did some to be economical so that we could splurge on other attributes of the day: the venue; the catering; small gift bags for our guests, as practically everyone (including us) had to travel to Massachusetts for the wedding, etc.

However, in regard to vendors: Our caterer was AMAZING and almost every single guest, without exception, commented on our food being amongst the best food they’d ever eaten at a wedding, hands down.  After a cocktail hour with passed hors d óeuvres, we had a wood-fired, choose-your-own-topping pizza station, fresh seafood and grilled veggie kabobs, and a huge, mixed salad.  Ellen Loconto is a pro and terrific and every detail was handled impeccably.  (Erica’s grandmother and aunts baked our cake and huge selection of cupcakes, so that was the one food detail (other than the candy buffet) that Ellen and her staff didn’t prepare.) Just Ellen’s Inc.

Also–I have a collection of vintage, Large-Letter postcards and we modified an MA postcard I had to use as our save-the-date card, and then had guests wish-us-well on dozens of similar, vintage postcards from the area (in lieu of a guest book.) We purchased those from local dealers, ebay, and vintagepostcards.com

My wedding dress and the guy’s ties came from J-Crew.

We got an AMAZING, handmade ring-bearer wedding band bowl from the Etsy website and a dealer named Paloma’s Nest.  Very beautiful and simple and perfect.

Our candy for the candy buffet came from www.candywarehouse.com (everything from candy “cigarettes” to long, red-vine licorice ropes to every mini-sized candy bar ever made).  We displayed everything in large, glass jars and more metal buckets, and supplied guests with paper bags and metal scoops to take away all the candy they could possibly want.

Our galvanized buckets for flowers and candy and favors came from www.redhillgeneral.store (they have good prices, cheap shipping, and lots of sizes)

Favorite design element of your big day?  The hydrangeas in metal buckets.  The ceiling of the tent–lighted branches and lanterns.  It all felt magical and beautiful but not overdone or too-fussy.

Three adjectives that describe the day are:  Perfect.  Laughter-filled.  Too-short.

Our vintage-style wedding cake topper and cupcake wrappers came from www.fancyflours.com–an amazing bakery business out of Bozeman, Montana.  (A friend of ours in dental school (with high-tech, but precise, tools) somehow managed to pry the “grooms” away from the brides so we could put the two ladies together atop our very simple, homemade carrot wedding cake.

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• Real Gay Wedding Topsfield, MA : Katie & Alyssa
• Real Gay Wedding New York, New York: Lisa and Alex
• Real Gay Wedding San Pedro, California: Michael and Kyle