So You're EnGAYged, a LGBT wedding blog

One of the things that is the most stressful and most rewarding part of planning a wedding is all of the details.  Someone once told me that you can design two types of weddings, the first wedding is designed to be photographed, the other is designed to celebrate two people and just happens to photographed.  We wanted a wedding that celebrated the two of us (I like to think most people would).  And so we put our hearts into the details, not to make the wedding perfect, but to make the wedding us.

Yay! flags.

When we found these on line Jen fell in love with them.  So instead of bubbles or sparklers, we gave our guests yay flags.

One of my fondest memories of that day is this one table that waved their yay flags at every opportunity.  Something would happen and the entire table would erupt with a “yay!” and I would turn around and they would all be waving their flags.

Cake Topper

The very first decision we made for our wedding was that we wanted peguins on top of our wedding cake.  We both loved the idea and we felt that it set the mood for our entire day.

The problem we ran into is that buying these kind of cake toppers is expensive.  So we took a leap, bought some sculpy, and made them ourselves.

We of course gave one of thema yay flag to make them really a part of the celebration.

Ribbon Pull

I know I’ve hinted at this a thousand times.  So now let me explain it to you.  In Victorian England, charms were placed into the wedding cake to be pulled out by the guests.  The charms were pulled from the cake by a ribbon and foretold the future.  So instead of a boquet or garter toss we did this.  We wanted to wish all of our guests (not just the single ones) great things in their lives (not just marriage).  And this was such a great way to do it.  Our guests loved it, particularly the kids, our flower girls run around to all of the tables trying to collect all six of the charms.

Table Decor

We made our own table decorations.  One thing I wanted to avoid were numbers, I don’t like the look of big numbers on the tables.  All of the other ideas that I found on the internet didn’t strike my fancy any better until I came across something on Martha Stewart.

For the escort cards we printed peoples names, punched a hole and then glued a piece of fabric on the back.  Every table had napkin rings made out of that fabric.  So they matched the fabric on their card to the fabric napkin rings of their table and viola! they had their table.  And this way the center peices didn’t have to incorporate any identifing markers

The other thing that was on the table were the guest books.  I think traditional guest books are boring.  So we bought dollar journals at Michael’s and pasted individual questions on each book.  This way people could answer the question and have a little fun.

The Favors

For favors we looked for something that wasn’t going to be just tossed after the wedding, so we found decks of cards that we could customize.  We had cards printed up with images on one side and the information for our picassa account on the other.  That way people would able to post their pictures from the wedding in the account.

And we got some really great answers from our guests, and they were all waiting for us when we got back from the honeymoon.

*Photos by Leah LaRiccia Photography

I want you to know that entering into this wedding I was bound and determined that I was going to eat dinner at my wedding.  Everyone told me that it couldn’t be done, everyone said that I would be far to busy to eat.  And you see it on TV all the time, the couple get married and spend the entire day chasing the food around to never get any of it.  Well let me tell you two things; the first is that I do not do well without food.  We call it being hangry in my family – hunger induced anger – so not eating was not going to make for a pretty bride.  The other things is that our recption was being catered by Red Bones, which is by far the best bbq place in the greater Boston area.  I absolutely love their food and was not about to pass by an oportunity to eat it.

So keeping all this in mind we schedule the reception like so:

At the end of the cocktail hour guests were invited to find their tables becuase we were going to be starting dinner.  After they were in Jen and I were announced into the room…

And then we started dinner.  It was buffet style so Jen and I went first through the line, and then we got to sit down and eat while everyone else was getting food. Please note that two minutes into the reception I was eating dinner.  What was also great about this set up was that as Jen and I finished our food other people had gotten their food and were seated, which meant that Jen and I could circulate and talk to people, so we didn’t need to do a recieving line because we made it around to see everybody.

Once people were done with dinner we cut the cake, this was the one thing that had fell through the cracks in planning.  I knew what was going to happend before the cake cutting (the ribbon pull) and what was going to happen after the cake cutting (the caterer would cut the rest of the cake and people would eat it), but we went to cut the cake and had realized that we had never talked about how we were going to do this.  So someone had to go get a knife and then someone had to go get a plate for us to put the cake on before we fed it to each other.  It was fairly commical and, all things consered, not a distasterous thing to do sort of on the fly.

So that being done we all sat and ate cake, and then there were toasts.  We kept it simple and did two, one from my college roommate Amanda, and one from Jen’s college roommate Cheryl.

After the toasts we danced.  Jen and I danced together to “The Power of Two” by the Indigo Girls – I know very lesbian of us, but it is a song that means a lot to us, so it seemed like the very natural choice.  But then of course we realized just a few moments into the dance the problem with it, it’s 5:23 long, which when it’s just the two of you in the living room dancing doesn’t feel that long.  Let me tell you, when your suddenly dancing, just the two of you, in front of 70 odd people…you feel every second of it.  That’s not to say that I wish we had chosen a different song, it was just awkward to realize in the middle of your dance that everyone is looking at you and you’re only halfway through.

After that we did a combined father daught dance, and then danced as three couples, Jen and myself, my parents, and Jen’s parents.  I think the last one might have been my favorite dance.  There was something about dancing as a married couple with our parents that made it feel real and like the start of our family.

After this the reception had no planned structure.  We danced the rest of the night of away, full of love in the company of our family and friends.  It was a perfect night, more perfect than I ever could have hoped for.  I find it difficult to put into words the simple euphora of that night.

Next I will go through some of the details we slaved so hard over.

*All Photos by Leah LaRiccia Photography

After the ceremony and before dinner our guest were encouraged to view the museum and/or enjoy the cocktail hour.

Jen and I posed for a whole slew of family photos and then wandered the museum, both inside and out, to take more pictures of just the two of us.

Aside from the one moment where I tripped on my dress going up a flight of stairs, this part was really fun.  And yes you read that correctly; on my wedding day, followed by my new wife, three photographers and in plain view of half a dozen friends I tripped on my wedding dress and fell up a couple of stairs.  Don’t worry, nothing was damaged and we all got a good laugh out of it.  So go ahead, you can laugh a little too.

This next picture is one of my favorites.  These two pieces of art went in two weeks before our wedding and they were fabulous.  Really fun, and they matched our dresses!  I realize that they are made out of newspaper and  are shorter then our dresses.  but they have pink accents and are hand made!  See, they’re just like ours.

Here I am going to give you a piece of scheduling advice.  Plan on starting your ceremony late.  The invitation said that the wedding would start at 5:00 PM.  We started 5:15 PM.  All of my theater experience completely prepared me for the fact that people would not show up on time and that you needed to plan on starting the show late. I planned for a 5:20 start, so we technically started 5 minutes early, but this “late start” allowed our fashionably late guests a chance to arrive before we started and meant that the rest of our day wasn’t running behind as a result.  We had the full hour to take care of all the photos we needed and wanted to get done.

Let’s pick up where we left off in my last post. After our vows we had a second reading.

Reading 2: Excerpt From 100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda

My favorite line from this reading would most likely be:

Where “I” does not exist, nor “You”, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Exchange of Rings:

Hunter: The wedding ring is a famous and instantly recognizable symbol of the joining of two people in marriage. The tradition has a long, wide spread and mysterious history. Sedges, rushers, and reeds from the banks of the Nile were twisted and braided into rings.

The circle is the symbol of eternity. It has no beginning and no end, like time. And it returns to itself like life. The hole in the center of the ring is not just space, it is a symbol of a gateway, or a door; leading to things and events both known and unknown.

It is not difficult therefore, to see how the gift of the ring began to be associated with love. A hope that this most worth of emotions could take on the characteristics of the circle and capture eternity. In the past and today, the wedding ring is worn on the third finger of the left hand, because of a belief that the vein of that finger directly traveled from the heart.

And so Diane please take Jen’s ring, the symbol of love, life and eternity and repeat after me.

I make you holy to me with thing ring. May it be a sign of my love for the world to behold. I enter with you, my beloved, into this.

And Jen, take Diane’s ring and repeat after me.

I make you holy to me with thing ring. May it be a sign of my love for the world to behold. I enter with you, my beloved, into this.

Breaking of the Glass:

I don’t know if I told you this, but Jen is Jewish. While we were not going to have a strictly religious ceremony we did want to include aspects of both our religious backgrounds.

Hunter: The Jewish tradition of the breaking of th glass has a number of different interpretations and explanations. But the one that has the most meaning for Jen and Diane is the idea that with this act the glass is forever changed. And likewise, from this moment on, you are forever changed. May the marriage last as long as the glass remains in pieces.

And now, by the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts I now pronounce you joined in holy matrimony. Please seal this moment with a kiss.

I love this next picture, but I want to put a disclaimer: we are not running down the isle.

What happened was that we turned around to recess and everyone waved their yay flags.  It looked so amazing! It was just this sea of yay flags. Jen stopped, for just a second, to look. That’s why so looks like she’s fallen behind. The skirt blowing effect came from the wind.

Next we go through the reception time line and all the fun that ensued.