Archive for July, 2010

Cake Tasting

Posted on July 30th, 2010 by Jen. No Comments

Jen

My mother and I met up with Sam and her mother to test out two different bakeries on Saturday. Sam and I were leaning toward red velvet cake with cream cheese icing but open to trying anything.  Bakery #1 had many gorgeous cakes.

We looked through a book to see our design options. Each type of design (scrolls, dots, flowers) was priced differently.  The pricing was explained to us in detail, but I have to admit that I wasn’t really processing it all because I wanted to taste some cake.

During the price per slice plus additional fees per flower conversation, we realized that our cake guide was referring to Sam as the groom. She wasn’t being lazy. She just thought Sam was a guy. It happens every once in a while. Aside from creating an awkward moment with our mothers, it wasn’t a big deal. There weren’t any pauses in our cake guide’s pitch, so we just let her talk. When she was finished, she started writing down the details of the event, including our names. Sam just gracefully answered “Samantha” when the form asked for her name. This is where it got weird. Our cake guide stuttered and asked if she had “said the wrong thing.” Well, technically yes, but no harm done. For a second I thought we were all set until I realized she now thought that we weren’t getting married and was confused about who Sam was. Then we all kind of got confused and stumbled through reintroductions. Awkward. This is the only time anything like that has happened since we started wedding planning.

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Destination Wedding Themes: TRAVEL

Posted on July 29th, 2010 by Brian. 2 Comments

Brian
Bio: Date of Marriage: Civil Ceremony in New Haven, CT on September 7, 2010 and Wedding at Las Caletas in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on October 17, 2010. About me: I’m a college counselor living in NYC with Tom, my partner of 10 years, and two cats, Toby and Maude. I’m a traveler, an activist, a teacher, a favorite uncle, a knitter, a blogger, and a now - a husband. I’m a lover of all arts and a passionate pursuer of dreams and beer.

In keeping with the tradition of wedding themes, Tom and I decided on “travel.” Afterall, everyone was going to have to really travel to get to our wedding!

For the “Save the Dates” we decided to create a magent of a postcard-type photo. With the help of Photoshop and Vistaprint, we created this:

Then it was on to the invitations. With travel in mind, I knew what I wanted to create right off the bat! I wanted to create invitations that looked like Passports – with a few alterations of course. So, I started designing in Photoshop (with the help of a few friends because I had never used it prior to this – really). After about four months of running to my friends asking how to do this or that and spending countless hours at the computer, I finally had it. My favorite part of a real passport is the watermark-like photos inside. So I used the pictures from our trip in March for our own version of the passport invitation. They came out great and really added that extra oomph while simultaneously hinting to our guests some of the charms of PV (whether they knew it or not).

Then all I needed was to find a company who could gold foil stamp my covers. After a bit of searching online, I found this company in NYC and e-mailed them. Michael at Gailer Stamping & Die Cutting contacted me stating that he’d be happy to stamp them for me so I met with him and voila – complete. (Photos below by Marta Regulski)

The cover:

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The Top Eight Reasons To Consider Reselling Your Wedding Dress

Posted on July 28th, 2010 by Alyia. 1 Comment

Alyia

Photo used via m kasahara flickr photostream

8.  It’s environmentally responsible. When someone buys your wedding dress, that means that the energy, materials, waste, and carbon cost from shipping that would come from making a new dress are cancelled out.

7. It discourages unfair labor practices. It’s great if you can find a vintage dress you love or have one custom-made by a seamstress, but most wedding dresses are made in countries that have a history of treating their workers terribly.  By offering someone else the chance to buy your gown, you are lodging an act of protest for workers worldwide.

6. It saves you money and space. Cleaning, preserving, and storing a dress can eat up a lot of money… not to mention the space in your closet.  Who knew tulle could take up so much room?

5. Your children will have their own taste. Wearing the dress one of your parents wore when they wed is tres romantique, true.  But fashion changes, and who’s to say your kids will have the same passion for ruffles, rouching, or rhinestones that you do?  Come to think of it, what if they never get married at all?

4. It’s easy to resell. I’ll be selling my wedding dress through PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com because they make it simple and inexpensive, get tons of traffic, and are gay-friendly.  (I know because the founder told me so!)

3. Share the love! If you love it, chances are that someone else will too.  Why not pass on the joy of discovering THE dress?

2. “Trash The Dress” photo sessions can be expensive. More power to you if that’s what you choose to do, but I find something a little off-putting about deliberately destroying a symbol of your marriage.

1. Get the most out of your investment. Frankly, who couldn’t use a little more money in their pocket after their wedding?

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Real Gay Wedding Atlanta, GA: Jon and Geoff

Posted on July 28th, 2010 by Kelly. 4 Comments

Kelly
Bio: Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of So You're EnGAYged

Today we have not just one person but both Jon and Geoff writing about their Atlanta, GA wedding.

Jon and Geoff met in Atlanta and were friends for a year and a half before taking that next step. They got engaged on a surprise anniversary trip to Puerto Rico (Jon planned the surprise trip, Geoff had the surprise rings). They were engaged for a year prior to their big day on September 6, 2009, in front of about 125 family and friends in Atlanta, GA. With the long Labor Day holiday weekend, Jon and Geoff decided to have the ceremony on a Sunday, which allowed for a few days of festivities, including a private dinner for family, a big rehearsal party for all invited guests at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant (the margaritas and cheese dip were flowing), and a wonderful ceremony and reception at The Foundry at Puritan Mill.

Each of the grooms had a Best Man and Best Woman, (our best girl friends and our brothers), and Geoff’s maternal grandmother made the trip from FL, along with tons of relatives on each side of the family, which made for a day made ever so special by all the love in the room. Guests were greeted with passed champagne before the ceremony, and the guys were walked down the aisle by their parents to “Today” by Joshua Radin. They ran back down the aisle after the ceremony to the upbeat “Love Today” by Mika, and danced their first dance to “Better Man” by James Morrison. Guests ate and drank the night away, which included a duo of Thai-Braised Short Ribs and Roasted Halibut with a Lemongrass Buerre Blanc, and in lieu of a wedding cake, their friend Chuck (IT guru by day, cupcake baker by night) contributed two varieties of cupcakes for guests, a lemon cupcake with white chocolate icing and a chocolate cupcake with fleur de sel caramel icing. Jon and Geoff jetted off the next morning for two weeks in Thailand for some much needed relaxation and time together!

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Finding Budget Friendly Invitations

Posted on July 27th, 2010 by Michelle. 3 Comments

Michelle
Wedding Date: November 10, 2010
Bio: I'm a teacher, reality TV addict and avid theatre nerd. My fiancée, Deborah, and I met during a production at a local theater a little over three years ago. She pretty much tap danced her way into my heart. We are planning a slightly off-the-wall but mostly traditional wedding in our hometown deep in the heart of Texas.

Since last August, we have been planning on using Golden Rectangle Press for our invitations.  This is an amazing company based out of Brooklyn that specializes in letterpress invitations.  I adore them.  I adore all letterpress invitations. For me, letterpress invitations ooze old fashioned charm.  It makes sense then that the design we chose was titled Vintage Postcard.

Photo from Golden Rectangle Press Etsy Shop

They are classy and I like to think of myself as a classy gal and part of a classy couple. Plus, Golden Rectangle Press even has a same-sex wedding invite on their etsy shop homepage, which I think is huge.  A lot of people are LGBT friendly but aren’t that keen to advertise the fact.

Are they expensive? Well, yes.  Letterpress is hella expensive, but this company was more reasonably priced than the giant wedding invitation websites.  The invitations with RSVP cards and envelopes (with letterpress return addresses) were under $10.00 per invite, which I couldn’t find anywhere else online.  And they were so gosh darn pretty. Excessive? Probably.  We rationalized that since we were about $500 under our dress budget we could re-allocate the money to the inivtation section of our budget.  You have to understand that my love of letterpress undermined any rational thinking about just re-allocating the extra money into our savings account.

And then life went ahead and smacked us on the head and deemed it appropriate that all that money go elsewhere.  Apparently, Deborah’s youthful years as a gymnast have caused some early on-set arthritis in her lower back– but that’s another story.  The point is that a major casualty of the medical bill onslaught is the money we set aside for invitations.

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Two Weddings & a Fun Table

Posted on July 26th, 2010 by Erica. 3 Comments

Erica
Wedding Date: 17 April 2010 and 16 October 2010
Bio: My wife Alex is the medic, the Brit, the music & book lover, and the most compassionate woman I've ever known. I'm the writer, the pancake maker, the American living with her in London, and completely smitten with her. With the help of much family and friends, we've already thrown one amazing wedding in Cornwall, England, and now we're gearing up for a 'country kitsch' ceremony & party in Northern California--we can't wait for October!

Whenever I thought about a wedding as a kid, I didn’t really think that I’d have two weddings to plan, let alone two in one year. It has actually become a bit of joke with our families. Alex’s mum has decided that with two women, you just have to have two of everything: two dresses (just for me), two rings (we thought about a ring exchange for both weddings), two bachelorette parties (one for each country), two cakes at each wedding, so on and so forth.

My mom and dad are blaming it on my birthdays: when I was 3 ˝ my dad started celebrating my ‘un-birthday,’ the day that marked when I was officially 6 months older. With a Christmas birthday, I think my parents felt a little sorry for me so I got a summer ‘un-birthday’ too—along with multiple celebrations in December with much of our family scattered around different parts of California. Regardless of our of multiple celebratory tendencies, Alex and I like a good party and, well, we want to celebrate our love with everyone we love—no matter which English-speaking country they happen to live in.

Aside from the long-distance complications, this brings us to another dilemma: how do you throw two unique ceremonies and celebrations that are at once relevant to the location and the people and retain the essence of who we are and hold as the center of the day that we are getting married? So far, we’ve attempted this balance by remembering the key words that come to us when we think about us getting married: love, acceptance, and people. (Dancing does come into that equation for me, too, although it is less a catalyst for how to plan a wedding and more a requirement of the day. I know that some of you might not feel this same way, but I’m not hitched ’til I get to dance afterward!)

Those three words breakdown what our day is about: our love manifesting through a union and a commitment to be with one another as a family; the acceptance of ourselves, each other, and others, as human beings and a same-sex couple; and the people in our lives who have made us who we are, share with us in our joys and sorrows, and who want as much time as possible with on such a momentous day.

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