So You're EnGAYged, A Gay Wedding Blog

Raven Bio | Posts

Dear readers, please forgive me.  You see I’ve only had a few serious relationships in my life.  I chose to spend a good chunk of my life living alone and not dating so I could figure out who I was and what I really wanted.  This is why I am so inept at this relationship business at times.

Take, for instance, the other day when our friend Angie asked Liz and I if she could come over on the Sunday after next to catch up on Project Runway and I immediately said “sure!”  Angie did the math and said “oh, but that’s Valentine’s Day.  I’m sure you two want to have the evening to yourselves,” to which I replied — oh, it’s almost too embarrassing to admit, dear readers!  I replied… (gulp)….

“Nah, it’s just another day, come on over.”

*sigh*

It’s not that I’m not a romantic.  I am.  And it’s not like I haven’t spent dozens of Valentine’s Days alone wishing I had someone to wine and dine or even to just cuddle with on the couch while watching a lesbian romantic comedy.  But Liz and I just feel so solid that, well, every day feels like a celebration of our love to me.  I may be dumb, but I’m not blind; the look on Liz’s face shortly after Angie left quickly told me that she was a bit disappointed by my dismissal of the holiday.  I reassured her that we would celebrate it, just maybe not on Sunday the 14th.

Shortly thereafter I stumbled across A Valentine Supper Club via Facebook — a local event in San Jose featuring a prix-fixe dinner, entertainment including the fabulous Molly Bell and swing band Joie de Vivre and dancing in The Corinthian Club’s grand ballroom.  The website says the evening is “a throwback to the classic Hollywood of the ’40s & ’50s, set in a nostalgic dinner & dance club.”   It just so happens that Liz and I plan to start Swing dancing lessons soon so we can perform our first dance at the wedding without me embarrassing myself.   So we get a nice meal, entertainment and a chance to see some talented swing dancers up close and even try our hand at it.  Perfect!

To seal the deal, my best man and his wife will be there for the dance portion of the evening and they might show us a step or two.  And best of all?  It’s on the Friday before Valentine’s Day.  We can still have the friend over for a nice quiet supper and a surfeit of Project Runway episodes saved on our Tivo.

Kelly and Ali got married at the Ruddington Grange Golf Club in the UK with just a handful of friends and family. Their photographer, Rob Bird Photography, was nice enough to send these images along.

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Kelly Prizel Bio | Posts

I’m lucky enough to have been with my now wife for 6 years prior to us getting married. We, like most couples, exchanged a lot of cards, love notes, love emails, and the such over the years. Our first anniversary, Natalie printed out all of emails we had exchanged in our first year of being together. So when I took a bookbinding class(I eventually took 3 I love it so much!) I knew I wanted to make a book that showcased our love notes in some way.

I ended up making a flag book, but went with simple layout. Instead of trying to pack our hundreds of notes into hundreds of handmade mini envelopes, I picked 6 from the 6 years we had been together. The last one was the card Natalie gave me after her proposal.

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Kelly Prizel Bio | Posts

Are you an LGBT couple planning your wedding?

So You’re EnGAYged is currently looking for bloggers to join our team!

Bloggers:

• So You’re EnGAYged expects a certain level of commitment from our bloggers so we can have fresh content as much as possible. You must be able to blog at least once every week.
• We expect all our bloggers to share some personal information with our readers such as pictures of yourself, your wedding, your DIY projects, where your wedding venue will be, etc. If this makes you nervous in any way, please reconsider blogging for SYE. We understand outness is an issue for our community and want to respect privacy, so please be aware if you blog for SYE you are really opening up your wedding planning process to a lot of people.
• Our actual bloggers must be from the lgbt community. We love our straight allies, but want to highlight the lgbt wedding planning process.
• You must be getting married in 2010
• You must have a digital camera to post images

We would love to have you join our team! Please send an email to kelly {@} soyoureengayged.com (remove the {} we put them there for spam) with the following info:

• Name
• Email address
• Partners Name
• Wedding date
• Where you live and wedding location
• Are you willing to post images of yourself
• Do you feel you have time/ability to blog once a week until your wedding?
• Do you have any blogging experience?

Lara Swanson Bio | Posts

Dana Pleasant is offering a 10% discount on her 8 or 10 hour wedding package if you mention So You’re EnGAYged!

Alyia Bio | Posts

How do you know you’ve picked the right dress?  Well, one way to tell is if you squeal like a twelve-year-old when you get the email telling you that your dress has shipped.  And oh, did I squeal.  It’ll be here on Thursday, and I’ve already arranged to head to a bridesmaid’s house to try it on that night.  I also got what I’m planning to wear as my wedding necklace this week, meaning that I can take my first look at myself in the actual things I’ll wear on my wedding day.

Here’s the necklace and earrings I plan to wear:

Photo by us. (We forgot the date-stamp was on!)

(Worn with the dress I’ll be wearing to someone else’s wedding in a month or so.  Imagine I’m wearing something white and strapless instead!)

Here’s a closer shot of the necklace:

Photo by Stacy.

They’re available on Etsy for a really reasonable price, and the seller can change the length of the necklace and the color of the pearls to suit your taste.

And these are my beloved rainbow shoes:

Photo by Stacy.

I saw these on a style blog and immediately knew I had to have them– something I don’t say often, but I mean it here.  Aside from the obvious pride reference, they’re deeply meaningful to me because my middle name is– literally–Rainbow, and wearing rainbow colors makes me feel carefree and happy like I’m a kid again– definitely a feeling I’d like to inspire my wedding day.  My dress is long and fairly full, so these shoes will be a hidden flash of color (a modern trend I really like).  Plus, they cover my “something blue”!

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The last time Alex wore a dress it was a requirement of her high school graduation. She looked stunning of course (I tell her I so would have known I had crushes on girls sooner if we went to the same high school!). Since then she has looked even more stunning in button-up shirts, blazers, and waistcoats in particular. Tell me, she shouldn’t wear waistcoats after this picture:

Photo by Erica and Alex

Ok, it was the only picture I could find and you can’t even see all her outfit, but still!

Since her sister got hitched last year to the Erica of her dreams in trousers, shirt and neck scarf from Gresham Blake, Alex has been drooling over the same tailors in Brighton. Spending the last three years designing the perfect women’s suit–complete with cuffs that kick-out at the ends of the jacket–Gresham Blake knows what they are doing and Alex has dreamed of getting something made by them.

The flip-side of that dream were also some supporting facts: the shops on the high street (or the mall, by US equivalent) are difficult for Alex to navigate. At 5′2″, she wears a 14-18 depending on where we go (and which country), and the number of tailored pieces for women are slim pickings anyway. Reiss, New York & Co., J. Crew, and John Lewis just weren’t going to have what she was looking for or what would fit her (gorgeous, I have to say it!) hour-glass figure.

All that in mind, we made a date with her mum to down to Brighton and have a look at Gresham Blake!

Known for their combinations of stylish wools with bright accents, walking into their shop is like walking into a candy store. So many cuts, combos, accessories and options. Once the manager of the women’s department copped on that we meant business, she led us through the variety of options:

Off the Peg: The tailor carries a stock of trousers, shirts, waistcoats, and jackets in set fabrics & linings that you can buy ‘off the peg’ and have altered (at an additional price) to fit you just right. The suits are, of course, stunning, but Alex didn’t want navy with white pin stripes nor green & purple plaid–which led us to the sample books of fabrics.

Made to Measure: For ‘Made to Measure’, you take the standard style of Gresham Blake’s women’s suit and change the fabric, alterations included. Initially, Alex wanted a cream suit. The manager (who also makes the suits herself) fished up a sample book with a few cream fabrics, but with those it was going to increase the price by about 40%–and Alex would probably only wear it for the weddings, and rarely after. After consideration that it would be really nice for Alex to have a suit she could wear over and over again–leisurely and professionally–she picked out a beautiful light brown wool, with lilac lining. And then she hummed and hawed over it while we continued the discussion of options.

Even more suit options (more…)

Wasabi Bio | Posts

Around the time we got engaged, I asked myself questions like, “Why are we getting married,” and “what will change after (almost) a five year partnership, and living together for years? Anything?” The answers, at the time, seemed vague and hard to articulate. I knew it was important to me, but it was hard to pin point exactly why.

Now that we have been engaged for a year, one reason in particular is clear to me: to blend our two families together, and establish our new family unit. There was a touching moment at Thanksgiving this year where I started seeing concrete ways that our engagement is impacting our families. My parents were at Ginger’s parent’s house for Thanksgiving for the first time. Before dinner, all 20+ of us (she has a big, Jewish family) went around the room saying what we were thankful for. When it was Ginger’s mom’s turn, she said she was thankful for the new additions to her family. She went on to explain what the yiddish word “machatunim” means to my Episcolpalian parents. It’s used to acknowledge the relationship between the parents of an engaged couple. She concluded that all of us are all already family. This really touched my parents, and since then, there has been a new closeness to our parent’s relationship with each other. Blending our communities together and getting their support is definitely one of the main reasons that we are getting married.

image of rings by Lara Swanson

One of my favorite bloggers, Meg, recently wrote about “Marriage Ambivalence.” She asked some tough questions about why we get married, and why some people feel ambivalent about marriage.  I definitely hear wedding ambivalence from some of my friends. Being gay, it common to be asked, ”What’s the point of a ceremony without state or Federal recognition?”

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Ms. Sparrow Bio | Posts

Obviously, this is not a new DIY. Originally I wasn’t even going to write it up, however I ran into problems.  Below is the picture of my second try at Pom Poms.  I didn’t even have the heart to take pictures of the first trial.  For the first one, I used 8 pieces of tissue paper as per Martha Stewart directions and it was the saddest, most pathetic looking paper ball.

I was surprised and discouraged.  It seemed like every bride on the Internet had made the Martha Stewart Pom-Pom and not to sound arrogant, but I usually can do DIY projects (see here, here and here).  So after a couple days, I tried again with 14 pieces of tissue paper.  As you can see, there is a big gaping hole along the side and the Pom Pom is oval shaped.

I almost gave up at this point, but after a week I still had 1,000 sheets of tissue paper in my bedroom so I tried again.  Here are my overly detailed directions.

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Sar Bio | Posts

I spent the first 18 years of my life growing up in a small town in Michigan. Most of my family still lives in the very same town I grew up in and at least once a year I head back to visit. One of the stops that I rarely miss while visiting is a local fabric shop that I’ve been going to since I was first learning to sew with my Dad and Grandma. A few years ago I found a fabric that I loved and snagged up a couple of yards to hold onto for the perfect project. That project turned out to be our wedding! The fabric is brown and aqua blue with a damask pattern, and it has become our muse for all things wedding related.

The first project that I have really had a chance to work in the damask pattern and the aqua/brown color scheme is our save the dates. At first we were thinking of going with some sort of magnet that people can leave on their fridge, but the more we thought of it the less we liked the idea. Even though this won’t be a destination wedding for us a lot of people will be travelling to attend. So after digging around the internet for some ideas on DIY save the dates we found one idea we loved: luggage tags!!

As we waited for our shipment of plastic tags to arrive I designed an insert for the front and back so we could print them out. Here are the front and back designs:

Here they are all printed and assembled! I love the way they turned out, and I hope our guests actually use them!

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