The Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings (105 page)

If you're wearing a long dress with a train that someone will carry, pin a large piece of fabric to the back of your jeans so you can practice walking and they can practice holding.

Practice all entrances and exits.

Check out the space and see where you will be making your entrance. If you're not walking down a central aisle, but are instead entering from either side of the ceremony site, make sure that the doors are unlocked. We hear it's an awful feeling to be locked out of your own wedding. (Imagine your embarrassment.)

If you're using a carpet runner for the aisle, figure out when and how the carpet gets rolled out. And who does it.

If you're entering while someone is singing, you should wait for one verse or part of the first verse, to let the song establish the mood, before making your entrance.

As you rehearse, pay attention to your pacing. There's no need to rush as you walk down the aisle. Take your time and enjoy it… let's see those pearly whites!

At the end of the ceremony, there is usually a recessional or a march off of the “stage” and out. This too should be rehearsed with exit music, if any, so the end of the ceremony doesn't look sloppy. (“Quick! Let's blow this burg!”)

So you'll walk me down the aisle?

—Ellen DeGeneres, discussing same-sex marriage with presidential candidate John McCain on her daytime talk show

At the Indy 500, they say, “Gentlemen, start your engines.” Who's going to make that call at your wedding?

Decide exactly how the actual ceremony will begin. Will it begin at a predetermined time, or will you wait until certain people are there? Remember to take into consideration weather and the late arrival of out-of-towners.

Put your helper bee in charge of keeping you informed. He or she should check with the
officiant and other star players to see that everything is ready for blast-off and that your key guests are present and accounted for. Then they should check with you, say, five minutes before the processional is to begin. (Just like in
Funny Girl,
they'll knock on your dressing room door: “Five minutes, Miss Brice.”) This gives you a few minutes to put the final touches on your makeup, bite a fingernail, pace—whatever it is you want to do before your single life is over forever.

After five minutes, the helper bee could check with you one more time before telling the attendants to move into their places; then he or she gives the cue to begin. From here on, the ceremony takes on a life of its own and keeps rolling along. (Just try and stop it!)

If you're not beginning the ceremony with music, dimming the lights is an excellent way to change the atmosphere in the room and give those assembled notice to quiet down. If lights are to be dimmed, practice this also so you don't trip and humiliate yourself.

The wedding rehearsal often segues into the rehearsal dinner. Financing this event has traditionally fallen on the shoulders of the parents of the groom because by this point the bride's parents have taken a second mortgage on their home. Whoever foots the bill, this is a wonderful way to share your final meal on the final day before the wedding with family and friends close at hand. Held at someone's home or in a restaurant, the rehearsal meal is a means of gathering all the families together (hers and hers, his and his, biological, chosen, and so on), the out-of-towners with the in-towners, and is a gracious way of saying thanks to the people in your wedding party.

At the rehearsal dinner, those special gifts to honor attendants can be distributed (remember the beer steins?), and any last-minute dealings can be ironed out. If your rehearsal dinner is held the night before the wedding, try to keep it short and simple. Don't stay up late or eat or drink too much and get sick… and spoil your wedding day. You'll never forgive yourself.

Seeing your spouse before the wedding ceremony is supposed to be bad luck for superstitious and embarrassing reasons that hold little meaning for any modern couple. But we do know some couples who, though they had been living together for years, abstained from seeing one another the night before the wedding as well as the morning of, “because it's just romantic as hell to wait until the last possible moment when you see each other walking down that aisle.” Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that.

One big disadvantage of total premarriage seclusion is that these days, photographers often take wedding photos before the ceremony begins.

But if your heart is set on isolation from your intended on the wedding day, for whatever reason, you have to have your act together so that everything is taken care of well ahead of time. If you go to stay with your best friend for the night, you want to make sure you didn't leave your cummerbund and bow tie back at the house where your lover (and soon-to-be spouse) is.