The Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings (46 page)

Ms. Roz Wolpert
Mr. Jay Wolpert

Jane and I heard that if you send a wedding invitation to “The President of the United States, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20500,” you receive a beautiful response blessing your marriage and signed by the President and First Lady. So we sent one to George and Barbara Bush, and—big surprise—got no answer whatsoever. Then we decided to see if we'd have better luck with the Clintons and sent another invitation off to them, with a note explaining why it was four months late. Several months later, we received this in the mail:

—Tess, 1994

Every couple wants their wedding in a mansion with a view.

—H
ANNELORE
H
AHN
, editor of
Places

I
N THE WORLD
of real estate, the answer to the question “What are the three most important things to consider when buying a house?” is “Location, location, location.” The same thing can be said for a wedding. Here the practical greets the razzle-dazzle. The ideal location must be all things to many different people. It must convey the ambience you've always dreamed of. It must be accessible to your guests. It must have outlets for the hot plates.

You are now ready to embark on the execution phase of the wedding adventure, during which you may well schlep from houses of worship to the House of Fabrics. Figuring out where to hold the whole shebang will affect everything about your wedding day. But once you've got a handle on this one facet, other things will begin to fall into place. At this point, it will help if you think of your wedding as two separate events—the ceremony and the reception—that meet in the middle. Some quick examples follow.

Joshua and Ryan had a religious ceremony in their synagogue followed by a party in the temple's reception room.

Sarah and Amy opted for a full-package deal at a small hotel in Kansas City, where they had a short ceremony in the hotel's garden followed by a champagne brunch.

Marianne and Keesha booked the Unitarian Chapel they wanted and rented the rec room of a nearby school for a country square dance reception.

Raúl and Mark had a private exchange of rings atop the Eiffel Tower, then went home to Boise and, a month later, had a huge party to celebrate.

Ultimately, you'll need to answer the question “One site or two?” But first, take a minute to look at some of the broad questions you'll need to ponder as you pursue your final destination(s).

There is no single “correct” place to hold your wedding. Some people feel that the ceremony itself is the paramount moment of the day and that partying, if any, should be low-key and sedate. Others want to go all out and think of their union ceremony as a bang-up, blowout, once-in-a-lifetime, pull-out-all-the-stops kind of a party. Your choice of emphasis will be key in determining where the wedding is to take place.

At some point, even non-gay brides and grooms grapple with the issue of private ceremonies in public places. There are people who love being the center of attention and having the rest of the world press its nose to the window to see what they're doing. Then there are people who are innately more shy and private, who really don't want any strangers to intrude on their space. A wedding almost by definition will make you the center of attention—in your own circle, anyway. Before you decide to hold it in a public arena, better make sure you know how you'll feel about total strangers becoming a part of the event, and decide if it matters to you whether that public arena is specifically gay. Brian and Timothy had their ceremony on the grounds of city-owned Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, and they told us that afterward “people kept walking by, looking in on a wedding and then trying to figure out where the bride was. We thought it was great!”

Now think about geography. Which city will you have your wedding in? (Or even which part of the world, if you have a bad case of wanderlust.) Traditional straight couples often end up getting married in the bride's hometown because her family is footing the bill. This never really seemed entirely fair to us, and many families would no doubt agree. So this is one of those areas where we can work toward making a positive change. We've found that most same-sex couples opt to have their wedding in the town or city where they currently live, rather than in either of their hometowns. After all, aren't most of your friends in the city where you live now? And if either or both sets of parents are into it, they can always honor you with a postnuptial party back in the town where they live.

Still, you may be thinking about gathering up the gang and going to another city—say, the one where you vacation. We know of two women who took over Provincetown off-season and had their ceremony on the lawn of an inn that was the scene of their previous summer's escapades. After the vows were said they had a procession right through the middle of town, culminating with festivities at their favorite restaurant. The votes were unanimous that it was a once-in-a-lifetime gathering. A destination wedding can be a real adventure and an unsurpassed memory.

Yes, for the well heeled, destination weddings are magic. But before you commit to one, think it through. How will your guests get there? Is the city within driving distance of where most of them live? If not, can they afford the plane fare? Will you put them up for the weekend? And if you want your grandma to be there, will she have trouble boarding the plane with her walker?

Now, what about that couple who has always dreamed of an idyllic wedding in the hills of Tuscany? Unless you're very wealthy (and extremely generous) and charter a jet to take all your loved ones along, it will probably be just the two of you exchanging vows in that olive tree orchard, and you'll be sacrificing the people for the place. You could always follow up with a reception back home, but why not reverse the order? Have the ceremony and reception at home and then go to Italy for your honeymoon. (If you want the romance of Tuscany to be a part of the occasion, you can create an Italian Renaissance-themed wedding anywhere.)

The amount of built-in help available to you in coordinating and planning your event will greatly depend on where you finally decide to have it. If you go to a hotel, you may in essence be hiring a wedding planner in the guise of the hotel's director of catering. If you go to a restaurant, you might have a wonderful chef who knows everything about food but nothing about pacing a reception. If you have your wedding in a public park, you may have to talk your best friend into being in charge of crowd control. There's also the possibility of first hiring a caterer who will know the great party sites in your area and lead you to them. So before you book the hall, think about how much of this you want to do yourself.

There are both practical and romantic sides to finding the
where
or the
wheres.
Before you start your research, you need to get clear in your own mind the following items: number of people you want to invite, how much you can spend, first and second choice of dates, and how you envision the event in general (formal, informal).

Now you're ready to do some window shopping to see what's out there.

We don't care who you are or what your sexual orientation is; when you get right down to it, there are basically only two choices of ceremony: civil and religious.