I have planned several lesbian weddings, but all of them were rather intimate groups, and in each case, only one of the brides was actually decked out in a whole wedding gown and veil ensemble. The other bride wore a more masculine outfit – pants in every case. What I didn’t realize was how telling this was about the personalities of my clients, and their feelings about their wedding day. Simply put – when a girl puts on a wedding gown, lesbian or straight, she wants to be THE princess of the day. So in the previous lesbian weddings I’ve planned, one bride was THE BRIDE and the other stood a bit in her shadow. It’s the same with gay weddings for the most part. In many cases I know which groom is the “bride” months before I meet the in person just based on the requests they make during planning. But we’re talking about lesbians today…
Okay, seems simple, right? Regardless of sexual preference, most wedding couples take on the “traditional” bride and groom roles a little bit. And it usually works out well, except when it didn’t. I recently planned my first large lesbian wedding and both of the brides wore wedding gowns, and both brides had full bridal parties, and I even had to send in two separate beauty teams to two separate villas while they dressed and got beautiful. From a wedding planning perspective, it was like doing two weddings at one time.
Both girls wanted pictures taken while they were dressing and both wanted the photographer around while they were being silly with their girlfriends and as a result, the photographer was hopping between villas and feeling like she wasn’t getting all that she wanted of anything. I felt terrible for her! I realized my error right then and there – if you have two brides who don’t want to see each other on the wedding day, you NEED TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS to cover the wedding. Plain and simple.
And it didn’t end with the ceremony – oh no, that was the beginning. Usually, gay or straight, the guys want to get the pictures over with and get to the bar with their friends as quickly as possible. But not brides. If it’s your day to be a princess, you want to feel like one – and have it documented properly. Meaning, again, you really need two photographers to get complete sets of formal bridal portraits, extensive shots with the separate wedding parties, and lots of special mix and match shots with your families.
Beautiful wedding ceremony for Amy Kjeldahl and Jillian Garcia in August 2013.
The brides were gorgeous and they totally deserved to have all the bells and whistles for their special day – and I believe they got them. I just wish I’d foreseen the potential conflict of interest using one photographer with two brides. It wasn’t like the brides had seen it coming either – we never even discussed double photogs. But I’m the professional wedding planner and I take responsibility – I should have known better.
I don’t think the photographer shortage destroyed the wedding weekend by any stretch – they had a fabulous time, dancing to tunes rocked by their imported DJ Shawna, and thoroughly enjoying the food and beverages they’d so carefully planned. I haven’t seen the professional shots, but the ones we took were fantastic. Ironically, although the brides hadn’t seen each other’s dresses before they met at the end of the aisle, they complimented one another beautifully. But I certainly learned a lesson and next time I’ve got two wedding gowns at one wedding, I’m going to make sure I have two photographers waiting.
Two happy brides with beautiful dresses, hair and flowers!
Until next time, happy wedding planning from Weddings in Vieques and Weddings in Culebra!
Sandy
Sandy Malone is the owner of Weddings in Vieques, a full-service destination wedding planning company based on Vieques Island, seven miles off the coast of Puerto Rico. She is also the star of TLC’s new reality wedding show “Wedding Island,” premiering July 17, 2013 at 10 pm ET/PT. Sandy and her team (including her husband Bill, a retired SWAT team commander) have planned and executed almost 400 weddings in the Spanish Virgin Islands. Sandy is a veteran event planner from Washington, DC, with years of experience planning large and small weddings, press conference, and corporate and political events. She has planned countless events on Vieques Island, beginning with her own wedding back in 2004. Since that time, her professional staff has executed large and small weddings of all styles, including elopements, vow renewals and fabulously posh events at multi-million dollar waterfront villas. She has also planned family reunions, destination baby showers, corporate retreats and a variety of other events for clients from all over the United States and Canada. Sandy is also the owner of Weddings in Culebra (wedding planning on Vieques’ little sister island), Flowers in Vieques (a full service floral and décor firm), and Boutique in Vieques (a clothing and home décor shop). Sandy has a regular column on the Huffington Post and has been rated “Five Rainbows” by her happy gay clients!
The post The BIG Mistake I Made at the First Big Lesbian Wedding I Planned on Vieques appeared first on Marriage Equality Watch.
