So You're EnGAYged, A Gay Wedding Blog

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In the UK, civil partnerships are a legal ceremony on par with civil marriages (as opposed to Church of England marriages, as I understand it). Once you’ve given notice (and attained the correct immigration papers, if you’re like me), you receive a pretty folder in mail with the all the choices for your ceremony script, including the option for 1-3 readings for your ceremony.

Alex and I love reading, especially reading to each other. I also write poetry and insist on carting my poetry collection with me wherever I’m living. So when it came time to pick what readings we wanted for our UK civil partnership ceremony, we had more than a few to choose from.

I can tell you this now: what we were drawn to first was not what we ended up choosing. In the first months of our relationship, Alex and I read Cecile by Ruthann Robson (short stories) and What is the this called love by Kim Addonizio (poetry) to each other, curled up in the nooks of each others bodies in total bliss. But, neither an excerpt from ‘Theories of Men’ by Robson (really good, btw) nor ‘Fuck ‘ or ‘Kisses’ by Addonizio was really going to work. (‘Fuck’ is my favorite poem–go read it!) Then I thought, Why not Ivan E. Coyote’s short story ‘How I Knew’ from The Slow Fix? Sigh. While Coyote’s sentiments equal our feelings, we just don’t love fishing or Air Supply as much as they do. Even the newly discovered chapter ‘Lovers’ from Susan Trott’s The Holy Man didn’t fit because I’d read it at my friend’s wedding.

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Hi, remember me?  My name is Raven and my partner Liz and I are getting married in less than 200 days.  We’ve got the caterer,  the venue, the officiant and one of us has nailed down what to wear.  We’re in the thick of it and now we get to do some of the creative and fun stuff like Save the Dates, picking out our ceremonial music, and registering.  But somehow these things have remained in place on our to-do lists for weeks on end.

There have been some elements of our mundane lives that have been capturing our attention both for good and bad.  We went on a week’s vacation to Hawaii with Liz’s family which was glorious.  But Liz is at the end of yet another semester of grad school, applying for her second practicum, TAing a first year class and writing a term paper.  And my workplace has turned into a tense environment — many of us may soon be let go.  Sometimes it’s hard to set aside these day to day circumstances and gaze into the hazy, romantic future that is our wedding day.

Therefore we are setting aside (most of) next weekend and making it a Wedding Weekend in our house.  We are nailing down our guest list, picking out our invitations and Save the Dates, traveling to San Jose so I can try on ivory tails at the fabulous Tuxedo Fashions, picking out songs and registering.  I’m a little bit giddy at the thought and also relieved that we will have all of these milestones behind us in just one week.

I did find one detail of our wedding while window shopping downtown with a friend.  We aren’t sure yet whether they will be our cake toppers, something we have on our couple’s table or something that we place near the guest book.  But Liz calls me Birdie and I call her Bunny, so I couldn’t resist these cuties.  They were cheap too!  Just $2.50 each at Therapy (a store I adore, but never think of as bargain shopping).

Photo via Creative Commons

Lately, I’ve been thinking about our wedding flowers and hiring a florist. Our venue already has a ton of character. I mean it has a huge whirly gig sculpture right outside, and quirky neon signs (my favorite say’s “LOVE”). It really doesn’t need much in the way of decoration. The barn, where we are holding the reception, has art hanging from the ceiling, exposed brick, and a black and white checkerboard “dance” floor.  Basically, I want to play up what’s already there. We chose a simple, black and white color pallet (with maybe a bit of bright green thrown in). I want the look to be cohesive without being really matchy-matchy. For centerpieces, I’m planning to have white, single flower arrangements in square vases. There will be different flowers at each table, like roses, carnations, hydrangeas and tulips. Above the checkerboard “dance” floor, we are going to hang five or six white paper flower pomanders (my mom has already started crafting these for me, and is SO excited about it). Black tablecloths and white china will finish off the reception space.

Photo via Creative Commons

The ceremony area, which is a wildflower garden, doesn’t need much decoration either. The ceremony will be under the chuppah at sundown. The only thing I want to add is some lighting around the wooden sculpture we are getting married in front of. I really love the look of simple chuppahs, so I think we will make our own with birch tree poles like Roxy’s beautiful chuppah. We are each going to carry a bouquet. Ginger’s will be dark purple, almost black, calla lilies. For mine, I want a combination of white peonies and/or garden roses, and anemones (with the black centers). We aren’t going to have a traditional bridal party, but maybe we will give our parents white calla lily bouquets and boutonnieres. What ideas are you dreaming up for your wedding flowers and decor?

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We are going totally non-floral for the wedding.  All things typically floral will be feathers instead.  So Bek and all suit-wearing attendants and parents will have feather boutonnieres, all dress-wearing attendants and parents will have feather corsages or fascinators, I’ll have some sort of feather business hapenning on my head, and all centre-pieces and table decorations will be feather arrangements.  I’m glad we went with this idea because we are planning an out-of-town wedding, which means that a) we don’t have to coordinate with a florist from a distance, and b) I get to have everything put together well in advance and just throw it in the car when we leave!

So the first feather project was the boutonnieres.  I picked out all the feathers a while ago, and had yet to hit on exactly the perfect way to put them together.  I was initially trying to construct them as much like floral boutonnieres as possible, so I was playing around with trying to place them together at exactly the perfect angles and proportions and hold them together with floral tape.  But several failed attempts made it pretty obvious that feathers just aren’t as flexible with flowers, and it was going to require more drastic measures.  So I resorted to *gasp* the GLUE GUN.  Not as classy, perhaps, but it worked like a charm.

In fact, this project turned out to be so freakin’ easy that I almost feel silly even putting this online.  But here goes…

Stuff You Need:

• Feathers                              
• Floral Tape
• Ribbon
• Glue Gun

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As someone who’s always had a closet full of craft supplies, I love well-done DIY wedding decor, favors and accessories.  I’m not talking about draping tulle and fake flowers over doorways and tables, but the kind of things that Ms. Sparrow and Derek produce… something unique and sweet that expresses your personality and skill.   Over the last year or so, I’ve literally spent hours thinking of  little DIY touches that we could surprise and delight our guests with.

Now, this becomes a problem for several reasons:

1. I have an allergy to amateur-looking DIY.  I have extremely high standards for what I produce, especially if other people are likely, much less intended, to see it.  This means that I won’t even attempt half of the projects I’ve come up with because I hate not doing something well.

2. I’ve cut out a lot of fussy things that sometimes go along with weddings.  For instance, we’re not having assigned seating, so there’s no need for escort cards or table numbers.   There won’t be any ring pillows or unity candles or aisle decorations (aside from some pots of rust-orange mums on the pathway around the pond). Our table decorations will be minimal as well– the bridesmaids’  bouquets, the same pots of mums from the pathway, and some candles.   Although I like the idea of a ceremony and reception that are free of fussiness, less decoration means less opportunity for DIY.

3.  Both for financial and environmental reasons (which I’ll cover more in another post), I really want to avoid making or giving out things that will only be used once.  If I could, I’d have all the decorations and favors be things that would last the rest of our lives, but instead I’m okay with cutting down on decorations and giving out things that are intended to be reused.

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