“Lesbian” As a Wedding Theme

Everyone has been super amazing about my partner and I getting married.  I’ve been thrilled at how even my more conservative or religious friends and family have taken it in stride (e.g. both my great aunt and Fiance’s grandma, awesome ladies in their 80s, said the exact same thing, “Well, if that’s what they want to do, that sounds nice”).  

But with the amazingness and the well-meaning support has come a realization that people think my wedding will be somehow totally different from a "regular" wedding because it’s “gay.” 

People have sent me links to how to plan the perfect lesbian wedding.  They have commented that they would love to help me plan, but that I would have to tell them what to do because I am the expert on gay marriage.  There are books in the bookstore for planning a gay marriage.  Separate websites for the gays.  A whole wedding industrial complex just for “us.”  I’ve also gotten links to “The Offbeat Bride” and other “different” wedding sites, partly because I am just a different kinda lady, but I think also because it is assumed my wedding will be innately different because of the whole two-girl thing.

If you have sent me these links and resources or offered to help me out: THANK YOU!  I have no idea what I’m doing, and every bit of assistance is beautiful and appreciated!  I love you and your good heart!

But all this has got me to thinking about a few things.

I'm Not Actually an Expert on Gay Marriage

I wanna be a family law attorney, so I know a little gay marriage law, which in Georgia currently consists of, “May I help you write a domestic partnership agreement until you can go somewhere else to get legalized?”  Other than that, I’ve never actually been to a wedding between two people of the same sex or gender.  I only know one or two couples who have been “gay married.”  Most importantly, I’ve never planned a wedding before, gay or otherwise.  Not an expert.

I'm Not Really a Lesbian*

While I have many of the stereotypical cultural indicators of being a lesbian (e.g. I like the Indigo Girls, am a feminist, drive a Subaru, and have a girlfriend), I have dated and lived with and loved far too many men to feel comfortable identifying as one myself.  So, I guess I’m not really having a lesbian wedding....

Family Dynamics are Important to Me

Like I said above, everyone has been super amazing about my partner and I getting married.  They are going to come to our wedding and be so happy for us because they love us.  But that doesn’t make the idea of two women getting married any less weird for people who grew up with a different conception of what marriage looks like.  I want my religious or conservative or just surprised family members and friends to have as good a time at my wedding as my atheist or liberal or gay guests.  For that reason, I probably wouldn’t have a burlesque-themed wedding with pole dancers in the corner.  They would still come because they love me, but they would be super-uncomfortable. 

In the same way, since I’m already asking some of my people to reset their brains and get on board with something new to them, I’m not going to purposely throw up other roadblocks.  Fiancé and I are going to do things that are really important to us (e.g. she wouldn't be caught dead in a dress, there will be two girls kissing at the end of the ceremony, and both sides of the aisle will be “the bride’s side”) that might freak some people out because they have never seen it before.  I know that, and they know that coming in, and we will all make it through together.  But I probably won’t have a rainbow theme or vagina-pops for favors (yum!!!) because why push the envelope on a day that, even in traditional, straight, church weddings, is already full of stressful family drama and politicking (WHAT?!?!  You didn’t wear the veil that every woman in your family has gotten married in in the last 200 years?!?!!  DRAMA!!!!)?

I'm Not Trying to Make a Political Statement With my Marriage
Weddings are too complicated and stressful without the added pressure of representing a political movement.  Gay marriage has become a political rallying point, but I don’t actually see my wedding as a political act. 

Or maybe I do, but differently.  I kind of like the idea of having a traditional, white-dress, wedding-cake, DJ-playing-YMCA, you-may-now-kiss-the-bride wedding, only the people getting married are both girls.  It doesn’t have to be a big deal because, well, it shouldn’t be.  And when it stops being “off-beat” or “a political act” or “different” and when “gay married” gets to just be “married” without the descriptor, then I guess we will have really won.

*I'm totally happy to have this discussion with anyone who has polite questions to ask about it.  Just might not do it online.

Two Girl Brides

For those of you who are not stalking me on Facebook, you may not have heard the news: I’m engaged.  For those of you who REALLY have been out of the loop on my life, I’m engaged to the woman I’ve been dating for a year, have graduated from my JD/MPH, decided to stay in Georgia, and am currently studying for the Georgia Bar Exam.  Now you are all caught up.

But I wanted to talk about the whole marriage to a woman in Georgia while studying for the Bar Exam thing.  I got engaged last Friday.  There was yarn involved in the proposal (more on that later).  Fiancé made me promise not to do any wedding planning until after the Bar Exam (February 24 and 25...if anyone else is counting, that is less than 5 weeks away).

So, of course, I immediately started googling wedding-related things.  What I noticed right off the bat is that there are a lot of guides for brides: traditional, practical, DIY, fancy, laid-back.  But no one has really put together a guide-book for “How to Hold a Wedding Where There are Two Brides, Three Sets of Parents, In a Conservative State That May Or May Not Be Forced By the Supreme Court to Recognize Your Marriage By the Time You Get Hitched.”  

“The Knot” is downright infuriating.  It allows me to choose “Bride Marrying a Bride” and "Same-Sex" as the theme (ha!) in the settings, and then proceeds to still call my Bride a “Groom” in the budget, schedule, registry, etc.  As far as I can tell, Ms. Manners has yet to answer the question of whether both brides attend the bridal shower (and do the senior ladies still explain to the blushing brides what happens on your wedding night?  Do they even know?).  And why do all the Bride-And-Bride cake toppers seem to have both brides wearing dresses?

There are some things out there.  TwoBrides.com and GayWeddings.com are the most comprehensive but they just aren’t calming/helpful/comprehensive in the way I would like.  And they are kind of old school.  And OMG weddings with two men have a lot of different issues than weddings with two women.

I haven’t been good at keeping up the blog in the last couple years.  And I can’t promise that I will now.  But I think I might start using this space to figure out how this whole two-bride thing works in the age of Supreme Court decisions, Pride, and the wedding industrial complex.

Also, there will be yarn.  I promise.  There will always be yarn.