Weddingbee boards

@justelope:I don't even want to get married because I just don't believe in holding certain people above others and giving additional rights/bonuses to people based on something as irrelevant as a relationship, let alone a certain kind of relationship (and a whole bunch of other reasons that will turn this into a huge tangent). That's why I sort of support same sex marriage - I think they should obv be entitled to the same privileges as everyone else, but it's the marriage that I have a problem with. That being said, marriage is important to FI, which is *why* he's FI -- I'm willing to be a huge hypocrite and compromise my beliefs. :)

His family is very conservative and Baptist which is the total opposite of mine, so it's going to be hard to do anything really overt. But we are having a friend perform our ceremony and are writing it ourselves. In the introduction, I'm using a statement regarding marriage equality and trying to also do justice to my own values system. The *very* rough draft is: "Finally, some people believe that without the commitment of marriage, a relationship is somehow inferior. Yet many of us have witnessed and experienced healthy and strong relationships that are not defined by the institution of marriage. Today, Brittany and Lamont choose to celebrate their love for each other through marriage. However, they wish to acknowledge that there are many other kinds of relationships, all equally valid in their ability to provide love, support, and compassion to everyone they touch."

I'm also going to give a major (for us) contribution to the Alternatives to Marriage Project sometime within the first year of our marriage, and probably on every anniversary after.

So, not *quite* the same thing as LGBT solidarity, but in the same vein. :)

I narrowed down my wedding planner choices by looking at Wedding Wire and seeing who listed "LGBT weddings" as something they did (and then I let the planner we hired know that was how I found her, to reinforce the reality that being LGBTQ-friendly helps attract hetero clients as well). 

I also wrote our ceremony, and stayed away from any gender essentialism (men are like *this*, women are like *this*) in the wordings and quotes or (hopefully) any implication that love requires different genders to work.  I also focused heavily on the idea of "partnership," which I think is both gender-neutral and anti-patriarchal.

And I ended up with all my gay friends at one table, partly because we had a super-small wedding and partly because all my closest friends are gay and so it made sense to seat them together, but in large part because I wanted to make sure they had a space where they felt comfortable being themselves.  I certainly like to think that because they're close to me they'd feel comfortable regardless, but I know that situations that seem neutral or positive to me can seem negative to minority group members and that there's some degree of "safety in numbers," I guess.

My aunt and her female partner were very much honored guests, and that aunt walked me down the aisle with my father (my mother is dead) because it was important to me not to reinforce the "woman handed off from one man to another" tradition.  My brother was my "man of honor" and I had no bridesmaids.  Unplanned, but my (straight) brother ended up swing-dancing at least a song or two with my closest gay male friend, which was super-awesome.  All those things are more anti-gender-stereotyping than specifically pro-LGBTQ, but I do think it's a spectrum and the less gender stereotyping there is, the more LGBTQ-friendly the atmosphere becomes.

Obviously, that's not all vendor-related, but I think it's important to think about how you're setting up the reception and wording the ceremony as well.  (And thanks for starting this thread -- it's such a fraught and interesting topic, especially in states where same-sex marriage isn't legal yet.)