So You're EnGAYged, a LGBT wedding blog

Another West Coast feature this week! This one comes from another pro-gay vendor, Blaine Photography via Two Bright Lights.

My wife and I got married on 10.10.10 in a beautiful ceremony held in a private home in La Jolla, CA. We had a very limited budget of under $10k but knew that with our creativity and the love, support, and help of our friends and family, we’d be able to pull it off AND make it look like a $30k wedding. Doing the wedding planning ourselves we found the best approach was to pick a place like a private home which we rented out (even better if you find one for free) and had our ceremony in the backyard as well as the reception. Our guests loved that they didn’t have to drive to another location and could instantly snack on appetizers and cocktails while we took our family portraits immediately following the ceremony. I think we were very successful in putting together a wedding that very classy, modern, and unique, but that still had our own personality in it with tones of casualness and laid-back feel like my wife and I both are.

We bought just about everything off the internet and saved a ton of money in doing so, and just about everything in the wedding was a DIY project we, our friends, or our families helped us with. Because we were able to find amazing deals on things online and assemble or make everything ourself we saved a lot of money on things like lighting, wedding favors, centerpieces, place settings, etc. Also, since we rented the house for the weekend, we had quite a few friends and/or family ask if they could stay with us at the house instead of renting a hotel. We were more than happy for them to stay in the house with us since it was very large AND they didn’t have to pay for lodging. The catch, they had to help us set up the wedding on our wedding day (c: It totally paid off because we had tons of helping hands on the big day doing things like hanging up all the paper lanterns, putting my hand-made LED lights into the lanterns, hanging up all 998 cranes all over the backyard, setting up the tables and place settings, etc etc. They were all happy to help and they didn’t have to worry about getting to the wedding since they were already there!

We also added a lot of our own personal fun touches to the wedding. For example, we had our guests sign a giant blank urban vinyl art toy as our guest book since we collect urban art. We had a giant cardboard cutout of my wife and I made with a digital camera near it so our guests could take pictures with our cardboard cutouts wearing props. We had our guests submit their song requests on our website when they RSVP’d so they could listen out for their favorite songs at our wedding. And in addition to having an open bar, my wife and I each made our own personal signature couples cocktail for our guests to drink which definitely contributed to them getting out on the dance floor.

All in all we couldn’t be happier with the outcome of our wedding, it really was the wedding of our dreams and it didn’t require fancy wedding planners or a big expensive budget to do it. We were worried about dealing with people who would be against gay marriage, but we did not have a single negative experience. If anything, everyone was so excited for us more than helpful with everything throughout the entire process. For us personally we were the first same-sex marriage for our friends and family, and we hope to see many many more.

It is so hard to say what my favorite moment of the day was because it seemed like every moment was my favorite moment. When my wife and I started planning this wedding back in January with a very very small budget ($7K very generously donated by my wife’s Dad) I was so worried that nothing would come together. Our goal with planning the wedding was to make it look like as real of a wedding as possible. Sure we have our groups of gay and lesbian friends but for the most part majority if not all our guests would be going to their first same sex wedding. We didn’t want them to think our wedding wasn’t a ‘real’ wedding just because we cannot legally get married. Which by the way was another we came across, we had a lot of people wanting to call it a commitment ceremony or a domestic partnership or other creative words, and my wife and I always made it a point to call it a ‘wedding’ just like we call each other ‘wife’ as opposed to ‘partner.’

Anyway, I knew we’d have to get creative with a limited budget and I knew in the end we just had to make sure our friends and family would know how serious we are about each other and how strong and amazing our love is. Did I mention we are both androgynous females who are very laid back and casual. We aren’t fans of dressing up, and neither of us plays a more butch or femme role. Like many of our families assumed that whoever was wearing a dress would be the bride and whoever was wearing the pants was the groom. In my mind, we are BOTH brides because we are both females. I wore pants, my wife Julie wore a dress, but we are both brides (c:

Overall I guess my favorite moment was really just coming back to the house after our photo shoot just minutes before the ceremony and seeing how everything came together. Every little detail we worked so hard on paid off and despite all the stress, frustration, and moments of wanting to give up, I truly saw in my wife’s eyes how blown away she was with everything and that I magically and miraculously pulled off giving her her dream wedding.

We tailored our ceremony to reflect who we are as individuals and who we are united as a couple. We were fortunate enough to work with a great minister who actually specializes in same-sex ceremonies and she helped us make everything go over very smoothly. Folding the final 2 cranes in the ceremony was what really made our ceremony unique, meaningful, and memorable to our guests and to us.

I’m a graphic designer, so I really loved how everything turned out. We had some sort of creative input in just about everything. Right away we know the colors of our wedding, we actually picked them from one of my pairs of Macbeth shoes that are black and turquoise. We thought perfect, we’ll wear Macbeths as our wedding shoes and have the wedding party wear them too. Macbeth doesn’t make white shoes at all so I actually contacted them and took a long shot that they’d be willing to make us a pair. To our surprise they were excited and custom made us our very own white and turquoise Macbeth shoes. From that point on we knew everything in our wedding had to match the black, white, and turquoise color scheme.

We also wanted to pick a theme to our wedding and in researching traditions for our ceremony I came across an asian tradition that involves folding 1,000 origami paper cranes. They say that if a couple can fold 1,000 cranes leading up to their marriage they can survive an actual marriage since the patience, communication, etc in folding 1000 cranes is similar to elements needed to sustain a successful marriage. So after we decided we liked that, we started implementing the crane theme into a lot of what we were doing for the wedding. I used them in the invitations, all the display signs I made for the wedding, the centerpieces, the bamboo trellis, and the overall decor. One of the nicest compliments I received was when one of my best friends told me that she loved our wedding because it looked like I “graphic designed” it.

My advice to readers is to pick something that means a lot to the both of you. Whether it is something you do in your ceremony, a tradition you both like, something you both have in common, anything that represents what the both of you are. I wouldn’t say that cranes necessarily is something we both have in common, BUT we loved the story and meaning behind the cranes tradition, and we used all 998 cranes in our ceremony/reception. The last 2 we purposely did not make and we made them during our ceremony in front of everyone.

1) Pick 1-3 things for each of you that is the most important to you on your wedding day and don’t stress about the rest. For example, my wife really cared about her dress, the food, and a theme, so she focused on those things with wedding planning. I really really cared about the photography, the music, and the ceremony and obviously the design work, so I really focused on those things. Little things like our bouquets, neither of us really cared about so we didn’t put a lot of time or money into them and for us in the end nobody really noticed them so it was less stress. It’s so true though what people say, in the end nobody remembers or notices what the centerpieces look like, the wedding favors, the bouquets, or any of those small things. They noticed that we looked so happy, they noticed we had a meaningful ceremony, and they noticed that they could feel all the love and emotion throughout the whole day.

2) Get your family and friends involved. Having a small budget we had no choice but to enlist their help, BUT fortunately, they all WANTED to help. And it made the wedding so much more meaningful to us and to them because they all felt like they had a part in making our day perfect. Big tasks, little tasks, your closest friends and family want to be there to support you and help you and it makes them happy to do so, so don’t be shy to say yes when someone offers their help.

3) Book early!! We did a lot of last minute booking with things like the DJ, the Minister, etc, and fortunately for us everything turned out amazing, but we were both very nervous about things not working out because everything was booked even 4-6 months ahead of time. Once you pick a date, book everything that you can. Those websites like theknot.com or weddingwire.com are really helpful because they give you checklists and timelines that suggest when to have things done by. We unfortunately did not listen to some of them haha.

Vendors:

Planner: My wife and I! (c: Our friend Alex Brice helped us out with a lot of things we weren’t familiar with though (ie: flowers, bouquets, etc). The internet, SOOOOOO much information online these days, we learned A LOT.

Photographer: Blaine Photography

Venue: Vacation house rented through Blue Water Vacation Homes

Florist: Us. We purchased flowers at a wholesale flower and supply company in San Diego and created and designed the centerpieces and bouquets ourselves.

Caterer: We called a few restaurants in San Diego to get quotes for food and found the best price and tasting food and negotiated free delivery into the deal. Our friend’s parents luckily have their own small family catering business so they gave us a great deal on help with serving and setting up the food and providing the food warmers, and serving utensils.

Linens: http://www.smartyhadaparty.com/default.aspx

Cake: http://heavensentdesserts.com/

Hair: http://www.mishmucho.com/

Dress/Suit/Accessories: The dress was custom made by family friend of my wife’s mother for I think around $200. Most of my outfit was from Banana Republic, with the exception of my tie from www.skinnyties.com. Both my wife and I wore custom made vegan shoes from Macbeth Footwear.

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