Some words of advice on planning a destination wedding halfway around the world, in a country you’ve never seen, in a language you don’t speak, without the help of a wedding planner or a travel agent: 1) Breathe deeply. Keep breathing. This is a very important step. 2) Prepare to become one with the internets. 3) Understand that the time difference between wherever you are and wherever the people you are communicating with are is not the 7 hours (or whatever) you thought it was. It is really 7 hours plus two weeks. REALLY. So remember tip #1? Keep breathing. And add two weeks onto whatever the appropriate response time is. 4) It is ok to scream at your computer. Loudly and often. I promise – it helps. Just try not to throw it at anything; you’re going to need those internets again.

Before I walk you through my own equally exhilarating and infuriating planning process, let me present you with the guide I wish I’d had beforehand:

How To Plan A Destination Wedding (by a Proud yet Haggard Survivor)

Step 1: Pick your location. As in, the country and general vicinity of the wedding. If you already know exactly where you want to get married, that’s great. But all you need to know right now is approximately where, geographically, you will tie the knot.

Step 2: Pick the date(s). The more flexible you can be, the better, because this is going to be the hard part. No matter what date you pick, someone is going to have a conflict. And the more people there are on your “must be present” list, the harder the date part will be. We started with Spain in July-September, with mid-August as the preference.

Step 3: Now comes the tricky part. Make a list of the people who must be at your wedding. The shorter this list is, the easier your planning will be, so choose wisely (or develop the patience of a saint and the organizational skills of a circus stage manager). That cousin you haven’t talked to in two years? Not on the list. Your girlfriend’s best friend from high school that she only hears from once every other Christmas? Not on the list. The list should only be the people you would not emotionally be able to get married without. It’s possible that your list only includes you and your fiancé/e. If so, congratulations! Your planning process is going to be so. much. easier. than mine.

Step 4: Go talk to everyone on that list – figure out if they will be able to come, and then map out which dates in your spectrum of possibility will work for everybody. If any of them cannot come, you have a decision to make: scrap the destination plans, or scrap them from the must-have list. But the more notice you give, the better the odds that everyone can make the trip AND agree on a communally accepted date. (Considering most of our friends are young and fairly broke, and quite a few of them are in grueling time-and-money-consuming grad school programs, we started talking to them about Spain 16 months before the wedding, and sent out unofficial STD’s with budget information one year ahead – waaaaaaaaay earlier than etiquette sites will tell you you’re “supposed” to notify guests.)

Step 5: Once you’ve checked in with your group of must-have’s and agreed on a date range, you’re ready to start figuring out specifics. Before you start sourcing locations, work out a rough budget of what your guests can afford. It’s no fun setting your heart on some amazing, totally remote location, only to realize that no one can come because they can’t afford the rooms, and there aren’t any cheaper alternatives nearby! (Trust me, we did this. No Fun.)  When you do end up finding your dream site, make sure there are accommodation options for every price range on your guest budget list. Your family and friends are flying around the world for you; it’s the least you can do to figure out the details for them.

Step 6: If you don’t speak the language of wherever your destination is, find a friend who does. If you don’t know anyone with the requisite language skills, go put an ad in the paper and trade services for a new friend (“will wedding plan for translation skills!”) Or, perhaps more realistically, find an online buddy in a language exchange program who is willing to occasionally translate for you. Google translate works really well for certain languages, and hardly at all for others. If you’re using a wedding planner, you have a built-in support system. (Your w.p. should definitely be experienced in planning weddings in the country/region you’ve chosen. Otherwise you may as well be doing it yourself.) But there are few things as frustrating as sending the same e-mail over and over without getting a clear response, especially as reservation deadlines are whooshing by. It will bring you to tears.

Step 7: Know that even after you’ve carefully confirmed your list of must-have guests, checked and triple-checked all of your plans with them, and performed a fandango to accommodate everyone’s needs, people will still cancel. Some will cancel because of genuine unforeseeable circumstances – the loss of a job, a family emergency, an unavoidable conflict.  Others will just flake out – not plan ahead, not purchase tickets in time, forget to save, and then all of a sudden realize they can’t afford to go. (If you managed to plan a destination wedding and not have this happen, I salute you. I am equal parts shocked and jealous.) Our friends and family are pretty wonderful and amazing, as people go, but some will still flake. Just accept it, and let it go. Try not to let their absence affect either the wedding, or your friendship. Chris and I have decided that, at the end of it all, the only two people who really have to be present are her and me. If we have to, we can marry ourselves. Anyone else who is able to come is just an extra blessing.

Next post:  Planning a Destination Wedding, Part 2: Virtual Site Visits and the Wonders of Google

Just what does “legal” even mean?

If you are lucky enough to live one of the seven countries which both perform and sanction same-sex marriages, what legal means to you is pretty straightforward. (And may I say, congratulations.)  If you’re unfortunate enough to live in one of the 80 countries in which homosexuality is still illegal, you probably also have a solid idea about what your marriage certificate is ‘worth.’ But what about those of us in the places in between?

First, there are domestic considerations. Even if you happen to live in a state that thinks your marriage is swell, thanks to the patently unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act, no other state has to be bothered acknowledging your rights. But even though the states get to fly willy-nilly in the face of the law (take that, Constitution!! How do you like that Full Faith and Credit Clause now, hm?), we mere citizens do not have the same privilege to, how do they say, “go rogue”.  This leads to the conundrum I like to call “legal vs. legal-legal.” As in, ‘yeah, we got married in Iowa, it’s totally legal… it’s just not legal-legal.’

What’s the big deal about legal-legal? To start, there’s the 1,138 federally conferred rights which accompany the distinction ‘married’, but which only count if you’re ‘married-married’. There’s also another problem which hardly gets mentioned at all. What is the international status of your ‘legal’ marriage if it isn’t ‘legal-legal’?

This is the question I spend the most time mulling over. Some countries, especially in Europe, will accept couples on some version of a ‘spousal visa’, regardless of the relationship’s legal status in their home country, usually by asking that they prove previous co-habitation for (x) amount of time. But the standard international precedent for marriage law is that a marriage is only valid if it’s legally recognized by the country in which it is performed. Some countries go further and recognize a marriage only if it was 1) legally recognized in the country in which it was performed, and 2) legally recognized by the home countries (countries of citizenship) of BOTH partners in the marriage. So a Dutch man and an American man legally married in Canada could still be denied immigration rights EVEN in a country which generally recognizes same-sex marriages, thanks to America’s stubborn insistence that Jesus/MLK didn’t climb on a cross/take a bullet for no queers, or whatever they’re preaching these days. In these cases, it’s often better to have a civil union or domestic partnership than a contract titled “marriage”, since even though C.U.’s and D.P.’s differ enormously from place to place in terms of rights conferred, their legal status is usually more drama-free.

So what’s a queer couple to do? Get a legal-but-not-legal-legal marriage in the states? Head over to Canada or Belgium, or spend a few months in Spain or South Africa to establish residency? Screw the system and work out the appropriate health proxy/living will/beneficiary paperwork with your favorite LGBT-friendly lawyer? Have a ceremony with no regard for legal sanction? (After all, how much value do you attach to the legal approval of a government whose basis for denying your marriage is itself constitutionally illegal?)

This is obviously an area where we are all going to hold strong and maybe contradictory opinions. What do you all think? What choices have you made for your own weddings? How important are the different levels of distinction for you? Do you and your partner have different ideas about what ‘legal’ means, or how important it is? And has it been a source of friction?

With the additional time (and, hopefully, additional saved money) to rethink our original plans, we started to analyze what we were really looking for in a wedding location. I knew my two musts were ‘beach’ and ‘intimate’. I also really wanted it to be outdoors, although I was semi-willing to compromise on that. But ‘intimate/beach’ leaves a pretty wide geographic swath of possibilities. We also wanted to pick a place that would double as our honeymoon, or at least be geographically near wherever we decided to go. Chris’s honeymoon must was castles. And then there was that question about legality and what, exactly, it meant to/for/about us…

Originally Chris pushed very hard for Jamaica, but I was (and still adamantly am) very opposed to the idea of having our wedding in such a proudly homophobic country. The community/resort she was interested in, where our  friends were married a few years  ago, is very gay-friendly, but I did not want to be responsible for bringing such a significant amount of tourism dollars into what is arguably one of the most homophobic countries in the world, particularly not for my wedding. (Although, admittedly, it would be a very fun political ‘f*ck you’.)

We started researching our options for ‘legal’* marriage (Canada, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, and Spain are the only countries which legally perform same-sex marriages; in the States, marriages are performed in CT, VT, IA and MA, with NH joining in January, and D.C. possibly following suit.) All these countries except Canada, however, have a residency requirement which we couldn’t meet, and Canada didn’t meet our honeymoon criteria. **Editors note- Connecticut does not have a residency requirement. Vermont does require a license you must apply for, but no residency requirement.

What we did discover during all of this was that: 1) it was less important to us that our marriage be ‘official’ than it was important that we have our ceremony somewhere that was supportive of lgbt rights in general; 2) we definitely wanted to honeymoon somewhere that was gay-friendly. As much as I wanted to take Chris up on her offer to honeymoon at the Green Magic Treehouse Resort and travel around Kerala and South India, we eventually decided that the restrictions it would entail (no touching in public, potentially having to lie about our relationship) weren’t our idea of honeymoon

And then one brilliant day Chris came home from running sound for the fabulous Miss Coco Peru, whose new show involved a lot of Miss Coco bragging about her sexy Spanish husband.

“You know,” Chris mused, “Spain has beaches.”
My ears perked up.
“And…. Spain has castles.”
My eyebrows raised.
“And Spain has progressive lgbt rights protections!” she finished proudly.

At which I calmly leapt off the couch, squealing and dancing in circles, screaming:”Omg omg omg we’re getting married in SPAIN!!!!”

Now all that was left to do was find a castle on the beach… hmmm, and perhaps a fairy godmother?

———————————————————————–

*And what the hell does ‘legal’ mean anyway? Check back, this is the topic of my next post.

The fabric was a silk charmeuse watercolor print, and it came in three dress options:

All images by BarJay Collection

Discarding the third one immediately as too casual, that left me with two choices – neither of them perfect. But this fabric is everything I’d been searching for. After a lot of consideration, and advice-seeking from friends, I decided on the middle option. But there are some cons: I’m not crazy about the beading detail or the cut of the back. However, I think I can alter both of these things myself with relative ease. Also, it’s a $600 dress – which is my entire “outfit” budget. A bigger con is that I cannot find a single store that carries this dress within a three state radius of Texas. I’ve called everywhere to try on a sample, with no luck, and since it is a “special occasions” design, bridal shops won’t order a sample for me. So I’d have to commit to the purchase blind.

Here is a picture of the back as is, and an example of what I would like to change it to:

All images by BarJay Collection

Still, despite the extra work, I was sold… and then came my recent bout of flu-inspired dress hunting. I’ve always loved the “Amara Royale” dress by Maggie Sottero, but since it only comes in white, ivory, or scarlet (a color I wasn’t really considering), AND it boasts a $1000 price tag, I hadn’t given it serious thought. However, in my flu-induced delirium, I was suddenly craving “white”… and then I found the dress, in ivory, in my size, on two different resale sites for $600, the same price as my floral dream-dress above.

—————————Crisis!!————————-

Here is the Maggie Sottero dress -   (there are no pictures of it in ivory/gold, so use your imaginations… basically, the bodice is the same as the ivory  dress shown below, but with the lace train and underskirt from the red version…)

All images by Maggie Sottero Collection

Confused yet? Because I sure am! Which dress to choose? The pros of the ivory gown: I actually got to try it on at a bridal salon, and it fits me PERFECTLY. My body was apparently designed by a trumpet gown as its ideal mannequin. (Unfortunately pictures were forbidden.) It obviously meets my “must” of being wedding-y – but although I could bustle the bulk of the train, I would still be dealing with a lot of excess fabric throughout the night. And it definitely fails the re-wear criteria….

So, why, oh why, am I so in love?

Thoughts? Comments? Opinions? I would love to hear ideas and observations! Which do you like better, and why?

Now, I must admit something: ever since I can remember, I have sworn I would not wear a white wedding gown. Too cliche, too traditional, too wedding-industry – not to mention, I am pale as a ghost and, after beige, white is the least-flattering color on my skin. Yet secretly (and now very publicly), I covet a ridiculously whimsical white gown. Preferably a ridiculously whimsical white gown with a train as long as 5th avenue and enough fabric to smother a baby whale.

In a world where thousand dollar bills rained out of the sky, here a few of my all-time favorite dresses:

Amy Michelson, "Peaches and Cream"

Amy Michelson, "Grace"

Anjolique Couture, Style 930

Maggie Sottero, "Sabelle"

Apparently there is something about having a skirt the size of Rhode Island that I cannot stop lusting after… however, even on resale sites, these dresses are (usually WELL more than) $1000+ each.  And my “outfit” budget – outfit meaning shoes, dress, undergarments, jewelry, make-up and headpiece – is $600.  Still, I feel the final vestiges of illness fleeing in the wake of all that satin…

Stay tuned for my next post: how all this white-dress-lust has sent me running to the bridal salon, and questioning all my previous attire decisions…

Let me back up and say that we have a lot of friends who are very supportive of our relationship and are thrilled that we’re engaged. The problem is that those friends are not necessarily available. Two of my four closest friends are traveling abroad for the year with only intermittent internet access, and the other two live on opposite sides of the country. We’ve just relocated from Los Angeles to Dallas, Chris’ hometown, and the only people I really know here are her (mostly male) friends. While they’re also wonderfully supportive, they’re less than interested in hearing about dresses, flowers, linens, or my latest idea for save-the-date cards. One of their wives has already made several snarky comments about my ‘bridal brain’.

The rare conversations I have with my family are worse. At any mention of the word ‘wedding’, my aunt acts like I’ve suggested murdering her youngest child. My mother either changes the subject, or says something vague like, “Well, that’s far away. We’ll see what happens.” Which is great progress, considering we started with lectures about how same-sex marriage leads to legalized bestiality. Chris’ initial engagement announcement elicited an equally vague response from her mother, and she’s yet to talk to her parents about the wedding. Although they’ve been very supportive of us as a couple, they are staunch Texan republicans, and we have no idea if they’ll embrace the wedding or refuse to attend.

The planning isolation is putting stress on Chris as well. By nature, she is a big-picture-only girl. She has the vision, and I execute it. This system usually works well for us, but a wedding is a bigger than average “vision”, and it involves a hell of a lot of intricate planning. Since I have no one else to bounce opinions off of, or to share ideas with, she is stuck listening to me gripe or gloat over every detail. She feels bombarded and overwhelmed, and I feel unappreciated and slighted (and my less noble inner child spends a lot of time stamping its feet and shaking its fists: ‘But this is your idea!! I’m planning YOUR vision, remember!!’)

Wondering whether I was turning into a bridezilla because I was lonely and stuck stewing in my own boredom, or if I was lonely because I was already a raging bridezilla and my friends were jumping ship, I did a google search for bridal blues. And it turns out? I’m not alone!

According to Emotionally Engaged, a counseling service for brides-to-be (and engaged couples), the bridal blues tend to hit 3-6 months before the wedding, in the lull that comes after all the decisions are made, but before it’s time to send off invitations and troubleshoot the final to-do list.  Although I’m still a year out from the wedding, we’re also 15 months into our engagement, so that time frame sounds about right.  The ‘blues’ are characterized by emotional instability, increased anxiety, irritability, panic, and most significantly, an overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness. AND IT’S ALL NORMAL.  I immediately ordered their book, but while this was all (very!) comforting to hear, it still left me with the most important question: what’s a blue bride to do?

Why, become a Wedding Goddess, of course! Enter Reverend Laurie Sue Brockway, author of Wedding Goddess, and my new best friend. An interfaith minister specializing in multi-cultural, non-denominational wedding ceremonies, she is also an expert in bridal stress and a leading officiant for same-sex ceremonies in NY. This wonderful article from her website lists five major bridezilla-inducing pitfalls and counters each with a Wedding Goddess antidote to keep you sane (and likeable). My favorite advice from the site so far? Honor your planning process as a rite of passage:

Treat every step of it as sacred. From the day you become engaged to the moment you say “I do,” make every moment count as a special occasion to be savored. The first time you try on dresses, the meeting with the caterer, the day you get your license–these are all the small steps you take to the Big Moment. Cherish them. They are just as important in getting you ready for marriage. You need all the things that happen in between the engagement and the wedding day to get your soul ready to be in a committed relationship that will become the foundation of your life.

Suddenly my endless to-do list seems more manageable, even if I do have to brave it alone. I ordered the Wedding Goddess book as well (they have them for a penny on Amazon!) and came up with a personal antidote to carry me through until my new books arrive: a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream. A chance to combat the use of Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone and the bridal blues in one sitting?

I feel calmer already.

(Disclaimer: I haven’t read either of these books yet, but as a heads-up, I suspect they both use a strong bride/groom gender dichotomy. I will post a follow-up with reviews once I’ve finished reading!)

Unfortunately, that option didn’t last very long. It’s not that either one of us are particularly obsessed with the ceremony being ‘legal’ (in fact, our ceremony in Spain won’t be legal, since neither of us are residents), but our best excuse for having a wedding in Los Angeles disappeared right along with California’s marriage rights. If our wedding wasn’t even legal there, how could we justify choosing a place that was so far away and cost-prohibitive for all our friends? To compound the problem, Chris got a great job offer in Dallas, and we decided to move back to Texas. Now Los Angeles would be a destination wedding for us, too, and it would be a lot harder to organize even simple things, not to mention the added costs of a hotel and car rental. And despite how much I loved living in LA, it is definitely not my idea of a honeymoon. Which meant another flight and vacation expenses on top of the actual wedding. Costs were ratcheting up considerably.

After much discussion (and a few tears from me), we decided to push the wedding back a year and reevaluate. But as a consolation prize, Chris suggested we do engagement photos on my very favorite beach, El Matador. We’d ruled out having the wedding there, even before the legal drama, since there are no restrooms (take it from a girl who grew up on an island: excessive drinking + no restrooms = lots of peeing in the ocean. And who wants to do that in fancy wedding clothes?) One of the girls I worked with, Denisse Villalba, is a photographer, and graciously offered to do our shoot for super cheap (plus some free booze). Here are a few of my favorite shots:

She took over 200 photographs, and despite the wind and freezing water she easily got 20 great photos. (Beaches in January are COLD!!!! Even in Southern California, despite what they tell you about the weather.) We did a costume change mid-way through when my blue dress got soaked and kept falling off me from the weight of the water. About a hundred of her discard shots are of me holding my dress up, or my boobs flailing around when I forgot and let go. But the photos she did get are stunning! All of the shots were candid, and Chris and I got to laugh and dance and run up and down the beach, totally silly and wildly in love. It was a great preview of our wedding day, and I wouldn’t change any of it – not even the cold. We’re blowing up this last one poster-size and hanging it our bedroom. I think of all the photos, this captures our relationship the best. (Although if you look closely, we have a mutant Elvis hair-do that’s taking over our heads! Which just makes me love it more… )

About me:
I am a writer and wandering artist who grew up in and around New York City. I’ve spent the last five years bouncing around the world, living in Buffalo, London, Florence, Dallas, Los Angeles, and back to Dallas again. Living in the south has taught me two indispensable things: one, anyone born a yankee stays a yankee for life; and two, the proper southern pronunciation of ‘shut the hell up’ is ‘bless your heart’.

I met my beautiful wife-to-be, Chris, two years ago in Dallas (her hometown). I had just returned from a long trip abroad, and was exhausted and completely broke, but a mutual friend dragged me out to a bar anyway, insisting I would have fun. Chris had a pile of books at the end of the bar table, and I’ll be the first to admit that I noticed the books first, and the girl second. When I put the two together… it was love at first sight. We fell headfirst into a whirlwind romance. Two months later we flew to Jamaica for a vacation, and four months after that we packed up our lives and headed west for the sun and sparkle of Los Angeles. Our wedding ceremony will be on the three-year anniversary of the day we met.

When I’m not wedding planning, most of my energy is focused on job-hunting, expanding my cooking repertoire, planning a vegetable garden for the spring, and trying to remember to update my blog. It’s been rumored that I’m working on my first novel, but my imagination and discipline don’t always see eye to eye on that. Negotiations look hopeful.

You can find my (very sporadic) blog posts at Welcome to Jupiter.