
Maeve & Santiago’s Handfasting Elopement at Rattlesnake Lake
When I met Santiago and Maeve via Zoom, they were scrambling to get all their belongings packed and get on the road for their cross-country
When I met Santiago and Maeve via Zoom, they were scrambling to get all their belongings packed and get on the road for their cross-country
When Ty & Tere told me what they had planned for their Chicago wedding at The Lytle House, I knew it was going to be
Fun fact: Maddy & Kevin were the very first couple to hire me after I relocated to the Pacific Northwest! I’d run a special offer
Well, y’all, it really has been a year, hasn’t it? When I wrapped up last year (and my first decade of weddings), I was heading into 2020 with about a dozen weddings on the books and as many trips to go along with them. January was fabulous! I had consultations with amazing couples across the country and I headed to Boston for a few days to meet with prospective vendors and a catering tasting with Anne & Andrew.
Amanda and Christina were planning a fall wedding in the midwest. Then COVID hit and everything changed.
One of my favorite parts of this wedding was how colorful everything was. From the deeply saturated hues in their DIY flowers to their multicolor ribbon backdrop and bunting to the rainbow ribbon wands we set out for guests and the sprinkles on their cake, you couldn’t look in any direction without being smacked by colors!! The wedding party was decked out in shades of gray – the only muted color in sight – and their bold bouquets and boutonnieres really popped.
A number of years ago, I happened upon this TED Talk and I was absolutely struck by the line Kim Katrin Milan delivers after describing some of the unconventional choices they made for their city hall wedding:
“The gift of queerness is options.”
This line has been on repeat in my brain ever since. I’ve long thought that we LGBTQ+ folks are privileged in a way by not having wedding traditions and gender roles defined for us by generations past. And I’ve believed for just as long that straight folks are, unfortunately, deprived of this experience; but I’d never heard it summed up so succinctly or perfectly before.
One afternoon last summer, I was scrolling emails on my phone when a new inquiry popped up. “I think you might understand our unique situation,” it said, “Can you help us come up with a cool wedding that we will love to remember? And save my sanity???”
You see, after 17 years together, with marriage equality becoming law nationwide, Mary and Pam could finally be legally married. And like many LGBTQ+ couples, they’d believed they would never be able to get married, so they hadn’t spent any time dreaming up the perfect wedding in their heads.
Sick of spending all your free time scouring internet forums for the wedding planning advice you need?
Stressing about wedding day logistics and who will handle them when you can’t do it yourself?
Wish you could work with a professional wedding planner but it’s out of budget?
Then you need a Choose Your Own Wedding planning subscription.
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