So You're EnGAYged

We put our ceremony together ourselves and it was probably the biggest challenge of the planning.  My dad is a minister, and we wanted him to do the ceremony, so the decision about an officiant was easy. Our challenge was figuring out what our ceremony was supposed to be about – we were already married, and we didn’t want to do a ceremony that pretended as if this was the moment of us getting married. We wanted instead to create a ceremony that celebrated our existing marriage, created a new community by bringing together our two families, and asked for the blessings, respect, and support of our marriage by our family and friends. We wanted those intentions to be really clear, and my dad made it so easy to work with him to put together something that was right for the occasion.

The forecast all day called for thunderstorms, but there was not a drop of rain and the weather was perfect. Couldn’t have asked for a more perfect sunset for our ceremony!

We didn't walk down any aisle, we just walked out together.

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So, this the totally self-indulgent part where I’m going to put up pictures of the two of us just because I think they’re awesome. I am SO freaking happy with how our portraits turned out! The “street+rooftop thing” made for some awesome backgrounds.

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We weren’t really into staying out of each others’ business in planning what to wear for the wedding. I helped Bek pick out what to wear, and Bek had seen a picture of my dress online and a snapshot of me trying it on, but had never seen me in it. But we wanted to save a little something for an element of surprise on the wedding day, so I couldn’t wait to see my baby all spiffed up! We were going to take couple and family pictures before the ceremony, so we planned to see each other first outside the hotel so that we could walk over to the venue together.

I just couldn’t stop laughing as soon as I saw Bek.  My heart just got so full of joy!

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It finally happened!!! The wedding day finally came! We woke up SO excited but wanted to start the day without too much frenzy, because we knew there would be plenty of that throughout the rest of the day. So we’d planned to start the day by going for breakfast, just the two of us. We wanted to start this really important day by focusing on what it was really supposed to be about. So before we split off to worry about table settings, centerpieces, hair, and makeup, we took some time to be alone and calm, just the two of us.

Anyway, on to actually getting ready!  Bek was my total hero that day.  She made me completely stay out of the setting up process on the day-of.  She and our awesome friends and family took care of setting up the ceremony and reception venue, while I got to get ready with my mom, my grandmother, and my dear friend Steph. I did my own hair and makeup, which was nice because I had complete control over my own schedule for the day. Despite a few moments when it looked like the hair was going to be a total disaster, it worked out in the end and I’m glad I did it myself.

The ever lovely and talented Kelly Prizel of Kelly Prizel Photography was there to catch some getting ready shots…

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I already wrote a post about our wedding cupcakes, and I wrote a little something too about our experience trying to get a same-sex cake topper; so I thought for our 5 Takes Cake Week I would write a little something about Groom’s Cakes!

And here he is again, my Big Gay Armadillo Groom's Cake... Photo courtesy of S. Pyle

I think the idea of the groom’s cake is… weird. The generally believed idea these days about the reason and history of the groom’s cake is this – the wedding cake (like everything else about the wedding) is pretty, frilly, and the choice of the bride; so the groom get’s a manly cake to shore up his masculinity. Doesn’t sound much like something that fits neatly into the world of LGBT wedding planning, right? The actual history of the groom’s cake is a little more complex and fairly vague, best I can tell.

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The most exciting part of getting to New York a few days before the wedding day was that other people were starting to trickle in to the city too! We got a chance to meet up with friends and various family members here and there in the first couple of days, and this culminated in our “rehearsal dinner” on the night before the wedding.

We didn’t actually have a rehearsal, but we thought it would be a good idea to round up the immediate family and wedding party before the big day. Bek and I were running a little late, so we were the last ones to arrive - it was SO amazing to walk into a room full of everybody you love (and it obviously got us excited for the super-sized version of that experience that was going to happen the very next day).

A gift from a close friend of Bek's - Custom Cake Topper! (picture by A. Bracken)

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This is a post written before Mandy’s wedding last weekend! She’s now a married lady!!

While the wedding is only a few days away, I’ve been a wife for 17 months already.  The question I have spent a lot of time answering lately, posed by myself and others, has been ”Why have a wedding if you’re already married?” -  so the question of “Why marriage?” hasn’t been knocking around my brain for a while.  But the question of “Why marriage?” was one that I spent a lot of time pondering, even before I was set to be married.

Back before I was a part of a marriage, I devoted my academic studies to marriage and the queer identity.  I wrote my graduate thesis on the topic of how queer identity is influenced by the “performance” of contemporary interpretations of wedding traditions and the legal, social, and economic factors of marriage and the wedding industry.  *Insert snyde academic remark about the social construction of “love” and the perils of heteronormative sterilization of queer identity here.* (For the record, I was very much in favour of marriage and saw it as having a great deal of positive potential for shaping the future of queer community-building… but anyway…)

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