The Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings (91 page)

Go green and save money. A dozen cut roses in season could cost you around $65; a flowering five-foot rosebush can be yours for half that. After the wedding, plant the rosebush in your yard or donate it to a local school or park.

Take a trip to the greenhouse and buy all sizes of perennials (flowering plants that will bloom again and again). Have your guests take them home, or keep them yourself and plant them after the wedding. (They'll become your Wedding Garden.)

Use fewer fresh flowers, and augment them with “bouquets” of brightly colored balloons.

Jane's Bridal Bouquets

I wanted to include flowers from my own garden in our bouquets, so I went down to my friendly florist and explained the situation. He gave me—gratis—two specially made bases that are used to construct wedding bouquets. I also purchased from him extra flowers that I wasn't able to grow—fragrant tuberoses and freesias, bright blue bachelor buttons, and of course the ubiquitous and very bridal baby's breath. I decided to make the bouquets and headpieces the day before the wedding, because the last thing I needed the morning of my wedding was to be nicking my fingers on floral wire. The florist recommended that, in order to keep them fresh until the next day, I put them in a plastic bag, exhale into it, and seal it up: the carbon dioxide from your breath is an excellent preservative.

Things you need:
flowers, the base (a plastic holder with special material to keep the flowers fresh), something to wrap around the holder (a hankie, a ribbon, antique lace, a cowboy scarf).

Suggested flowers:
most important is to honor the season, unless a flower has particular significance to you. You can use anything; these are my favorites:

For color:
baby roses, bachelor buttons, sweet Williams, coreopsis, iris, daisies, cosmos, yarrow, larkspur, baby's breath

For fragrance:
tuberoses, jasmine, lavender, freesias, sage, scented geraniums, rosemary, mint, roses, bay leaves, gardenias, narcissus

P.S. A dear friend of ours who had been looking for love for years caught my bouquet; six months later, he fell deeply in love. That was ten years ago, and they're still together.

—Jane

I told Brian, “You do this for love. I am not going through all this for a pickle dish.”

—D
AVID

W
E KNOW THAT
material gain is not the reason you're getting married, but one of the nice things that happens when you have a wedding ceremony is that people want to give you wonderful things and celebrate with you often. It's the kind of pick-me-up that you really need when you're in the dumps, but here it is, one of the happiest times of your life, and everyone keeps trying to make it even better. Go figure.

Anyway, that's what this chapter is about—the celebrations and the gifts. And what you might do for the givers in return.

Wedding-gift giving and receiving has caused more hurt feelings than anything else about a wedding (except maybe not being invited to the wedding itself). How many times have you heard a gift giver wail, “She returned my gravy boat!” or “I never got a thank-you from them, can you believe it?” Or, from the other end, “Oh, sure, they got me something
Robert
would like, but they know I
hate
Lucite! Obviously they like Robert more than me.” Or how about this one: “With all his money, he gets me a dumb cow milk pitcher! And he knows I'm lactose intolerant.”

Gifts are a great by-product of having a wedding. However, if you are getting married just to receive gifts, you shouldn't be getting married (and
we
certainly aren't going to be buying you a gift).

Gifts are intended to be bestowed and received with good intentions. “It's the
thought that counts” may be a cliché, but it also happens to be true. Keep this in mind at all times.

Gifts are not supposed to compensate for the price of the meal and champagne a guest consumes at the reception. This is not a fund-raiser.

If a chum hosts a shower or an engagement party, or lends his or her home for the wedding itself, don't hold your breath for another wedding gift. Your friend's generosity already reads loud and clear.