This is the story of two little girls getting hitched ... and I mean, to each other. Lesbian and gay weddings are hardly news these days: though many Americans are conflicted on the idea of gay marriage, same-sex couples are flocking to the chapel (or synagogue, or non-denominational house of worship, or Vegas drive-thru, or handfasting ceremony, or ...) in record numbers. Legal or not, we're ready to proclaim our committment to one another.
Despite middle America's queasiness, Hollywood and wedding vendors are on board. There are literally hundreds of websites out there to assist us with this quest, and everybody wants our money. And why not? Our demographic is an attractive one: we're highly educated, dual-income households with few dependents and loads of disposable income. Vendors that have historically catered to straight couples have found that they can cash in on the gay dollar without much extra effort. In a bad economy, we're the wedding industry's white whale.
-- but more on that later --
As I start this blog I wanted to introduce us by saying that, after more than six years together, my partner and I have decided to board the wedding train. We currently live in Maryland (both transplants from colder states that usually vote Democratic), but we've selected a lovely little town in Virginia to host our wedding festivities. Culpeper is a beautiful, Civil War era town with a charming main street brimming with luscious shops and gourmet restaurants. It's also home to one of Jen's four sisters, with whose family we spend a lot of time. So it wasn't much of a leap to choose their beautiful home as our wedding location.
Although we embrace Northern Virigina as part of the DC metropolitan area, most of us liberals find the rest of Virginia ... well, sort of .... scary. It's kind of like the back of your coat closet: there are things in there you haven't worn in 10 years, and you keep thinking of throwing out. Having spent most of my adult life in urban areas, planning our wedding in the country has opened my eyes to bigotry and homophobia that I had forgotten existed. This blog is partly a reflection on that, and partly just a chronicle of the zaniness involved in planning any other American wedding.
Oh, and PS: In the spirit of full disclosure, I feel that I should mention that I am an event planner by trade. Yes, I spend my days babysitting egomaniacs and b-list celebrities, and I'm really pretty good at it. But planning AN event and planning YOUR event are two different things. So, let's see how this goes.
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On Memorial Day weekend, my partner and I will be married in a private ceremony in Culpeper, Virginia: a charming hamlet of 42,000, nestled in the heart of Virginia wine country. We wanted an intimate ceremony with family and close friends, so we chose the home of people who mean a lot to us. There's just one little problem with our wedding location: it's located smack in the geographic center of a decidedly red state. Read on for the true tale of planning a lesbian wedding in rural America.
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