The Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings (49 page)

Each operation is run differently, but most places require a minimum number of guests, at least for their main ballroom. If your guest list isn't lengthy, ask to see other spaces in the hotel, such as breakfast rooms, meeting halls, and side lobbies.

Some hotels and halls can sell you a package that includes food, drink, decorations, flowers, a cake, and maybe even a house band—everything from soup to nuts. (And some will insist on it.) Some can furnish altars, aisles, tents, and canopies. Some hotels have gorgeous garden settings, maybe with a gazebo thrown in, where you can hold the ceremony; afterward, guests move to another part of the hotel for food and fun.

One big downside to these places is that they can be very busy, without a great deal of privacy. Catering halls often have several weddings on the same day, and stories run rampant about grandparents wandering into the wrong wedding, unruly children running from room to room, and guests being able to hear strains of “The Bunny Hop” from the party next door while their party is doing the hora. And if you add to this mix the fact that you are a wedding couple of two men or two women, the possibilities for confusion are endless. (On second thought, a schmaltzy gay wedding at a catering hall sounds like it might be a lot of fun!)

The decor in hotels can also be—dare we say it?—tacky. (There, we said it.) Make sure that when you take a look at the room you're considering, you do so at the same time of day that you'll be celebrating in it. One couple we know checked out their hall one weeknight after work and it seemed fine; they were somewhat dismayed when at their afternoon reception, the daylight revealed large water stains all over the wall-to-wall carpeting. On the other hand, some hotels have stunning decor—you'd move in in a second—but their food is less than inspired. If you end up booking a hotel for the big day, you'll have to do the ambience/food balancing act here, and try to come up with an acceptable level for both.

The most extravagant hotels seem to have the most extravagant websites. Here you will get a sampling of total wedding packages including suites for the couple and rooms on site for your wedding party to get all dolled up. Visiting one of these sites can be most amusing, and this is where you will totally lose focus and fall down the rabbit hole called the Internet. There are 360-degree tours of magnificent banquet rooms for the reception, and bridges
over a pond with live geese for your ceremony. As a rule there are no prices posted on these websites, but if you fall in love with a website, move out of Cyberland and take the next steps.

Also be sure to follow up your initial visits with one last scouting trip about a week before the event to make sure that the antique furniture you loved has not been replaced with chrome and high-tech.

A hotel lends itself to a formal or semiformal reception. It's also something to think about for receptions where guests may be traveling long distances, as the hotel may offer special room rates for group bookings. (They may even throw in a free honeymoon suite for good measure.)

Did you ever try to take your Aunt Bessie from out of town to your favorite French bistro, only to find a closed for private party sign on the front door? Just think, that could be you inside! Restaurants can be ideal for informal receptions. Larger restaurants often have a special room they will rent out for parties; others will make arrangements to let a private reception take over the entire place on an off night or during off hours. If there's a restaurant that you frequent and you sort of know the folks who run the place, see what they can do for you. Restaurant owners like loyal patrons, and in their eyes everyone who attends the party is a potential customer.

An Italian restaurant where we sometimes go for dinner closed down for our Thursday-night wedding reception. There was a funky juke box that entertained the crowd with hits from the ‘60s and ‘70s—perfect for our age group—and the owner gave us a deal on wine and beer, and only charged us for what we drank. He made mini pizzas for hors d'oeuvres, and for dinner he served his house antipasto and a couple of pasta dishes. We ended up singing “That's Amore” until the wee hours of the morning.

—Jonathan

Nightclubs and dance bars can work out nicely for a reception in the morning (brunch and break-dancing after the ceremony, anyone?) or early afternoon or on a weeknight. They may be located in uptown office buildings, or in downtown warehouses. Since clubs aren't always equipped with full kitchen facilities, you might have to (or be able to) bring in food or hire a caterer.

If you're a member of a country club or a private club (anyplace that has membership requirements or restrictions), you can consider having your wedding or reception there. Because we know that some clubs are quite conservative, you should consider the “public” aspect of holding your wedding there. We think it's great if you're comfortable dealing with the reactions you may get from the other members—another one of those golden opportunities to educate!

You might be eligible for club privileges without even knowing it. Check out alumni clubs, especially if you live in New York, where there's a Harvard Club, a Princeton Club, a Yale Club, and so on, each with its own uptown facility. And throughout the United States there's an organization called
the University Club, whose facilities are open to the graduate of any accredited college who is sponsored by a current member. Call the alumni office of your alma mater to see if you qualify for membership and if there is a club location near you.

Depending on where you live, there may be places having club affiliations with sororities, fraternities, professional guilds, unions, charity organizations, and so on. In many downtown offices there are business clubs with restaurants that serve lunch each day and are then used to host receptions and meetings. Ask around and see if anyone you know has access to these spots.

Some private clubs can be in choice locations and beautifully appointed; they're really exclusive restaurants in disguise. Others might simply be meeting halls, providing you with the basic space and few amenities. You'll have to ask yourself the same questions you would with any other location, and find out about the particulars of services offered.

Home weddings have always been popular with the general population, and in our travels we've found that they're often the first choice of gays and lesbians. (See chapter eight, “Try This at Home, Kids.”)

Having the wedding at home happens to be the easiest situation in terms of not having to deal with hassles from the outside world, because you're bringing everyone into
your
world.

A home wedding ceremony and/or reception has other advantages: you know the location well, it's always available, there's no charge for the facilities, it allows for flexibility, you don't have to worry about going overtime, and it's the most personal of all places. If you have a beautiful yard or garden, it can be the ideal place for the vows. (And gardens help keep the cost of flowers down.) You can have the food catered, or you can make it a covered-dish affair.

Did ya hear the one about Ginger and Patty?

Ginger O'Connor and Patty Johnson wanted to have the most unusual wedding ever and agonized over the location for months. Finally they agreed that they would exchange vows in the remote jungles of Africa. They chartered a plane for the wedding party and arranged to have a herd of elephants carry them to the ceremony site, a recently discovered altar dating back to the second century
B.C
. As they neared the destination, Ginger and Patty turned to each other with congratulating smiles at having pulled off the unique wedding of the decade. At that moment there was the roar of a trumpet, the elephants stopped, and the guide announced to the crowd, “All make way for the Marenthal/Smith wedding!”

This story is of course apocryphal, but it illustrates the futility of trying to create your entire wedding celebration around being the first at something or using your celebration as a platform for being entirely different. Let's face it: you're two women, you're two men, you're getting married—that's still pretty adventurous. By all means, if you're dying to exchange vows on a carousel at the amusement park because that's where you met, go for it. But don't do it simply because you think it's unique; we're here to tell you that almost everything has been done before. We've
all read the wacky wedding letters sent to “Dear Abby”; we know that people have been married during the Rose Parade, in hot-air balloons, surfing, bungee-jumping off a bridge, scuba diving, during a marathon, and two hundred feet underground in a cave. Question why you might need to make an outrageous statement, and ask yourself if you want your wedding to be truly memorable to you or if you want it to be the answer to a future Trivial Pursuit question.

But these are the extreme cases of stunt weddings. We're not saying that if you don't have your ceremony in a church and your reception in a hotel, you're bizarre beyond belief. There are a number of fascinating and unusual places for you to have your ceremony, your reception, or both.

As you go through your average day, look at every place you see as a potential wedding site. We've heard of some spectacular weddings taking place in office buildings. Yes, you heard correctly—office buildings. Take a good look at your lobby and try to picture it without the delivery men and security guards. Commercial building lobbies have been called the cathedrals of the twentieth century, designed by the finest architects and built using the best and most unusual materials. Throw out your preconceptions and look at every space you enter with a new eye.

Consider civic sites, which include parks, gardens, amphitheaters, recreation centers, civic centers, town halls, schools, and conference centers. They can be quite reasonably priced. (Sometimes they're free, and you can't get much more reasonable than that.) In some cities, you can even use the steps leading to public buildings. Yeah, even though the county courthouse might not let you come inside for a legal ceremony, they can't prevent you from using the steps outside. (Make sure that you check out any local ordinances that may get you into trouble.)

The disadvantages to civic sites are that they may be booked up months, even years, in advance; they can be real hellholes; and your locality may or may not have a liberal attitude when it comes to renting to you. You'll also have to check into the catering rules governing the particular places you're considering—can you bring in anyone you choose, or do you have to go with someone from a pre-approved list? If the site is outdoors, make sure to have a plan B in case of inclement weather.

To find out what is available, contact your local parks and recreation department, visitors/tourism bureau, or chamber of commerce.

An excellent source is your nearest historical society; contact them to see if they rent out sites for private functions. Historical societies will have a roster of designated buildings ranging from deco mansions to vintage diners. In addition, think about not-for-profit institutions such as aquariums, museums, theaters, botanical gardens, and colleges. Renting party spaces is a source of revenue for many of these organizations, and they'll have at their fingertips all the pertinent information on costs and availability of some fabulous spaces.

Another great source to aid you in your search is a book called
Places: A Directory of Public Places for Private Events and Private Places for Public Functions.
In addition to a listing of some of the country's prime civic sites, the book also includes privately owned buildings that rent out to the general public.
Places
focuses on major cities, listing sites by their maximum capacity. (If you're in New York and planning on having a large reception, it's
good to know that the Roseland Ballroom holds 3,450.) Typical listings include galleries, piers, raceways, rinks, aquariums, museums, and schools. It lists pages and pages of amazing suburban and rural sites such as former estates, villas that are now community centers, opera houses, manor houses, fairgrounds, rustic mills, dairy farms, and wineries. If you're baseball fans, go to Maryland and get married at Babe Ruth's birthplace. If you've never been one for the kindness of strangers but adore the drama of Tennessee Williams, you can be married in the New Orleans house where he lived in the forties and got the inspiration for his Garden District plays. In Boston, rent Faneuil Hall Marketplace for the day.