Roar Cat Reads

Category: Wedding

  • Rachel and Tricia’s Queer and Nerdy Wedding

    Rachel and Tricia’s Queer and Nerdy Wedding

    This is going to be a very long post describing all the details of my wedding to Rachel on June 10, 2023. It is primarily a time capsule for myself so that I can look back and remember all the queer and nerdy joy that I felt that day, but I also wanted to link to the vendors and music that we used, because literally everything was so perfect and I would be happy for anyone to copy our ideas!

    The Venue

    We got married at Minnekhada Lodge and stayed at PoCo Inn & Suites because the hotel offered shuttle service to the venue for us and our guests.

    The venue was absolutely gorgeous with dark wood and cozy lodge vibes. An added and extremely valued benefit was that the space was already beautiful, so we didn’t have to pay for or plan for any decorations. Literally the only decor we bought was a bundle of flowers from Safeway for $80 that we split into my wedding bouquet and two vases to mark gift and favor tables. As someone who has no natural talent for decorating, this was a massive relief.

    The Photographer

    Tristen from Wander West Photography did our pictures throughout the day. We had already worked with her for our engagement photos and knew she had the chill but detailed vibes that we wanted during our wedding. She was excellent at pointing out small changes to postures or poses and worked quickly to get great photos before we ran out of energy.

    The Ceremony

    We asked our friends John and Karen to be our officiants, and they did an AMAZING job of creating a ceremony that combined humor and sincerity. I felt like Rachel and I, and our relationship together, was fully represented. I got so many compliments on their behalf that this was the most authentic wedding ceremony they had ever attended, which is exactly the vibe I wanted to create.

    We also prioritized our nerdiness in our music choices that included Lord of the Rings, Spirited Away, and Star Wars. And Rachel had the idea to end the ceremony with the phrase “Roll initiative!” as we walked away as wives into the adventure of marriage, which I have to say is just *chef’s kiss*.

    Entrance Music

    Wedding Party Entrance:  Itsumo Nando Demo (From “Spirited Away”)

    Bridal Entrance:  LOTR Concerning Hobbits Shire Orchestral

    The Story

    We feel so honoured to be here ourselves. Rachel and Tricia have asked us to officiate today’s ceremony, during which they will transform before your very eyes … from girlfriends … into wives!

    We’ll start with The Story. Rachel and Tricia asked us to tell a tale of their meeting and their early relationship. 

    So let us part the veils of reality! … flashing back to 2018 when we met Tricia as Rachel’s eligible and beautiful friend with whom Rachel was … [check notes] … not romantically involved?

    Huh. Seemed odd to us, and it turns out there was some ambiguity behind the scenes as well … A meetup dot com get together at the Storm Crow Tavern, two nerdy women looking for friendship in the big city and Tricia was … TWENTY MINUTES LATE. 

    Record scratch!

    Their obvious compatibility quickly smoothed over this initial misstep, and opened the door to hours spent in intimate and nerdy conversation, with brunches sliding into excited afternoons brainstorming over laptops and then, well, we might as well get dinner. Sure, it was fun to find someone excited about the same hobbies. But more than that, it was the exhilaration of sharing their pleasure in the things that they love. Tricia began to giddily tell her friends that she had a “friendship crush.” Oh wait … this might be an actual crush. Rachel, we are told, was in “willful blindness” mode and thought, gee, how nice to have found such a funny, thoughtful, intelligent new friend.

    My favourite story from this part of the relationship is really delightful; something was missed at some point during one of these long, luxurious days spent together. Was it a… failed perception check…? A failed attempt to persuade…? We’ll never know for sure, but we do know that one happy day, Rachel invited Tricia for a walk in the moonlight, by the water.

    I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING RIGHT. Tricia was thinking that too. This Is IT! I can just see the gleam in Tricia’s eye yes I DO want to go for a walk, in the moonlight, by the water, on this beautiful evening, with you. Heart eyes.

    And of course Rachel thought, great! This is a normal thing to do with one’s entirely platonic friend. Water? I like it. Walking? It’s good exercise! Moonlight, well it happens to be evening.

    So yes there was a walk and a moon and there was water… and there was NO KISSING.

    Finally, Tricia decided to lay her cards on the table. She asked Rachel out on a date. And Rachel … [checks notes] … turned her down?? Boy, this romance really did succeed against all odds.

    The truly remarkable part is that somehow, this rejected overture didn’t make things awkward. They stayed close friends for the ensuing year, making it through a major fight over [checks notes??] … Stoicism. 

    [Stoicism? The ancient Greek school of thought emphasizing the practice of virtue and acceptance of hardship and mortality?] 

    Yes! This ancient philosophy caused a rift during which they did not speak for three weeks! … actually, that tracks.

    Of course, we know where this story leads us, through building community and sharing experience, an accumulation of quality time, that concrescence of moments in a trajectory that builds inevitably to I love you. Or, if the profession of love feels a bit too scary (as it initially did for Rachel and Tricia), announcing that one would like to make a “meaningful statement” … and leaving it at that.

    What is so delightful and appealing about this couple is that Rachel and Tricia are conscious and deliberate in their ways of being partners to one another. They are so clear-eyed in asking each other: “What do you want?” and making it so. They are so agentic in their approach to marriage – we’re talking about marriage now, not just partnership! – in a way that we think is so terribly wise. This is something beautiful to behold that truthfully we didn’t fully realize until Rachel and Tricia approached us to officiate their wedding, sat us down, and shared with us their philosophy of marriage. As if such a thing were obvious, a philosophy of marriage, but when you think about and listen to this couple, of course! This is Rachel and Tricia, joyous, delightful, hilarious, awake.

    So, now we’re getting serious. We’re going to talk about love.

    Love is inseparable from creativity, and loving is an act of creation. When we allow love to spark, then coax and nourish and protect it to full, flourishing maturity, something new is created. So while we often hear that, in love, two become one, perhaps we can also say that two become three: you, me, and us.

    In other words, love does not diminish the universe, but expands it. Where once it had the pleasure of containing a Rachel and a Tricia, the universe now also contains something new. A Rachel, a Tricia, and a Trachea.

    The bringing forth of something new, something that wasn’t there before – I’m no fantasy expert, but does that not sound suspiciously like … magic? Love is magic. And Rachel and Tricia are magicians.

    bell hooks has written,

    When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.

    She goes on to say that to embrace love is to face our fears, to live courageously. And marriage vows do require courage. After all, humans are mercurial creatures – we are forever growing, changing, learning. When we vow to spend our lives loving each other, we are, as Judith Butler has observed, “committing ourselves in the face of the unknowable.” Butler continues: “If commitment is to be alive, that is, if it is to belong to the present, then the only commitment one can make is to commit oneself again and again. ‘I love you and I choose you again and again.’”

    A vow of marriage is not a commitment to the person standing in front of us, exactly as they are, forever and ever. It a commitment to witnessing and loving their changing self. It is a commitment to journeying together, whatever twists and turns the road may offer. It is a promise to stay curious, present, open-hearted, compassionate, and by our beloved’s side.

    The Vows

    Based upon the vows spoken by Paula and Blanca, the first legalized same-sex marriage in Canada in 2001.

    “I take you to be my wife from this moment on.  I promise to be there for you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.  I will love and honour you.  I vow to give and receive, to speak and to listen, to inspire and respond, to respect and to cherish, and to work with you to achieve the goals and dreams of our lives.

    For evsies and for realsies.“

    Exit Music

    “That’s it! You’re married. This is the beginning. Roll for initiative!”

    Bridal Exit:  Star Wars Main Title

    Afternoon Tea

    After the ceremony and photographs, we served an afternoon tea to our guests as the main food served at our wedding. Rachel and I love afternoon teas, and splurging on that experience is one of our favorite ways to take in a new city. At a wedding expo, we saw an advertisement for an afternoon tea delivery vendor, which led us to try a couple and land on Sattea Mobile Tea Boutique.

    Sattea was wonderful to work with, generous and accommodating. We had a few guests who were either vegetarian or gluten free, and the vendor served guest-specific meals as necessary with no trouble at all.

    Like the venue itself, our choice of serving afternoon tea also meant that we didn’t have to plan table decorations, as Sattea provided tablecloths, flowers and vases, and the requisite teacups and tiered trays filled the space nicely.

    The one thing we did add to the tables were board games that served to direct guests to their assigned table. For instance, we put Rails & Sails on our parents’ table, because both Rachel’s dad and my dad are train nerds. It was a simple choice that also boosted our nerdy vibes.

    Murder Mystery

    By far, the thing I heard most both before and after our wedding was excitement about our murder mystery reception. Quite right, too, since it was an absolute highlight. Rachel and I love to host murder mystery parties at our apartment, and we had already fallen in love with Foulplay Games when we met the two women who run the small business at Emerald City Comic Con. On a whim, I reached out to Maddy and Kristen and asked if they could create a game for 50 guests. They adapted one of their already existing games, adding characters and fleshing out plotlines, and the end result was awesome.

    I asked my brother to handle every aspect of the murder mystery, so Rachel and I got to fully participate without responsibility. The two of us had a full costume change, and the majority of our guests brought props or costumes to fit into the 1919 carnival-themed game. One guest was murdered by a lion, and there was a balloon lion with Sharpie-added aggression to mark the grisly event. We spent two hours chatting, bribing, and trying to solve the murder before voting on the most likely candidate. I won’t spoil anything about the story, but I will say that I won for Best Costume and Rachel won for Best Performance; I’m sure us being the brides didn’t tip the voting scales in our favour!

    If including a murder mystery in your wedding sounds fun to you at all, I highly recommend it. While our guests chatted with the tablemates during afternoon tea, this game got everyone up and talking to people they may never have met otherwise. It’s a helpful icebreaker for introverts, as your character sheet gives you individual goals and people to seek out, so you have a reason to strike up a conversation. And for the remaining three hours of our reception, people had something to talk about and share; the only “downside” was that a lot of people only remember guests by their characters’ names!

    Cake and Prophesied Doom

    By now, you can probably tell that we chose some fairly untraditional routes for our wedding, and we continued this theme when it came to cakes. Because we served a variety of sweets with afternoon tea, it seemed excessive to spend $500 (minimum!!) on a traditional wedding cake. Instead, we bought our favorite cakes from True Confections: mine was their chocolate Birthday Cake (listen, I don’t care about mixing celebrations, I die for this cake), and Rachel’s was their Dark Belgian Chocolate Mousse (which was conveniently gluten free).

    Before I share our cake photo, a little background story: The Tuesday before our wedding we were playing D&D with our regular group, and I asked the oracle character to foretell our wedding using the dice-rolling mechanics she had made up. In addition to some good news, she warned us that there would be “technical failures” and that kids would not enjoy the day. This turned into the greatest gift, because whenever something went slightly wrong, we would loudly complain about the “The prophesied doom is upon us!” This had a lovely way of bringing laughter into stressful situations.

    Okay, so the cake. Our Master of Ceremonies, our dear friend Tabitha, forewarned me that the cake had fallen just before it was brought out for our whiskey toast. Rachel and I were delighted! We set the D&D figurines that we’d brought as cake toppers (Irina and Szoldar, the Curse of Strahd characters that we played and through whom Rachel proposed to me) on the fallen cake layers as though they were climbing a mountain and told the audience about the prophesied doom. Everyone laughed, the cake was still delicious, and the night went on.

    All the Rest

    Some other things that I loved about our wedding in no particular order:

    • We set out a Polaroid camera for people to take photos, and some of the ones I grabbed are amongst my favorite mementos of the day.
    • I ordered my dress from JessaKae and felt like an actual princess. It was a little long and I probably should have gotten it altered, but it twirled SO GOOD and that was what was important for me.
    • Rachel looked really good in her suit, but she hated the fitting experience, so I will not link to the company that made it. If you want to chat wedding suits for female bodies, send me an email and we’ll talk!
    • We had planned for the last few hours of our wedding to be a board game reception, and there were a couple games that happened, but happily by then, our guests were mingling and chatting and uninterested in thinking strategy.
    • Our favours were an stolen from my friend Mallory’s wedding. We picked a diverse bunch of our favorite books and let guests choose one to take home with them. We also had rainbow-coloured notebooks and stickers that used the artwork our friend Milo created that show Rachel and me as D&D characters.
    • We had an abundance of wine and beer at our wedding, and we wound up needing only half of it. A lot was sent home with guests as additional favours, and we still have enough to host a Pride party in August.
    • Speaking of Pride, I did the math, and our guest list was fully two-thirds queer. One of my friends who has only recently come out told me how safe and sweet it was to be in a majority-queer space, and I am not trying to convince her to move to Vancouver!

    I could not have asked for a more perfect wedding day. I’m currently riding that post-wedding high where all of the preparatory stress feels distant and unimportant, and I figure I should throw 10-hour parties for 50 people on a regular basis! I probably won’t, but I’m really proud of the wedding Rachel and I put together. It represented who we are as individuals and as a team, and I came away from the day with a lot of lovely memories AND A WIFE.

  • Queerly Beloved: Wedding Values

    Queerly Beloved: Wedding Values

    Welcome to Queerly Beloved, a series of personal essays about my journey as an LGBTQ+ person planning for my wedding in June 2023. Through this series, I’ll be sharing my thoughts, experiences, and advice as I navigate the joys and challenges of planning a wedding. I hope that by sharing my story, I can help make weddings for queer couples a little bit easier and a lot more fun. So whether you’re getting ready to tie the knot, have already taken the plunge, or just want to join me on my journey for a bit, I invite you to come along for the ride!

    When Rachel and I created Roar Cat Reads, we identified six core values that we wanted to inform the experience. Those values have proved to be very useful in keeping ourselves focused on what truly matters, and we put them to use in planning our wedding.

    This felt especially important as a way to resist the siren call of the wedding industrial complex. Because I am the event planner and dreamer of our partnership, I was the one with wedding Pinterest boards and a slew of wedding podcasts queued up. This was very useful in many ways, but it was also easy for me to start thinking, “We have to do this, because everyone talks about it like a done deal.” Luckily, Rachel has mostly stayed out of these spaces, so when I start to spiral, she will suggest a walk through Stanley Park where we talk and re-center ourselves in our values. The four values we keep coming back to are Integrity, Simplicity, Equality, and Community.

    Integrity

    In the wedding context, integrity meant staying true to ourselves. There are a lot of assumptions about what is required for a party to be a wedding, and I found it difficult sometimes to find that balance between something that is meaningful for our relationship while still feeling recognizably like a wedding (which was important to me). Here are some examples of things we changed to fit our preferences and relationships:

    • No dancing! Neither Rachel nor I like to dance beyond a chaotic de-stressing living room flail. Ironically, this was one of the easiest things we decided to throw out, but one of the most entrenched assumptions we’ve run into when talking to people about our wedding.
    • Board game reception! In place of dancing, we’re gaming. One of Rachel’s bridesmaids told us to “plan a party you would want to go to,” and from there it was obvious that we needed to include board games in our reception.
    • No giving away! I’ve never been a fan of fathers giving away daughters during the ceremony, but I do think it’s nice when families walk their kid down the aisle. However, that felt weirdly performative for us, since both of our parents live in separate countries and anyway, we’ve lived together for nearly three years. We’re going to walk down the aisle together, instead, to symbolize that getting married is just one step along a path we’re already on.
    • Afternoon tea! Rachel and I love an afternoon tea. It’s one of our favorite things to do while traveling, and we’ve been slowly but surely building up the accoutremonts to host afternoon teas at home. So when we found out we could hire an afternoon tea caterer, we knew that reflected who we are and what we love.

    Simplicity

    I love planning, but that love does not extend to decorating. Thinking about how to decorate the space was literally the thing that caused me the most stress. Wedding colors? Flowers? Bunting? No thank you! Instead of decorations, it was important for us to find a venue that had enough character that we could get away with minimal decor.

    I think simplicity also meant having a “good enough” mentality throughout the planning process. This was especially relevant in choosing our wedding outfits. We were both ambivalent about what we wanted, which is SO not allowed in the wedding world. There is so much pressure to have a magical moment with your clothing. Neither of us had that, but we did have a “that’s good enough” moment, which truly was good enough!

    What simplicity did NOT mean for us was saving money to the point of not enjoying the party. We splurged when we wanted to, like when we decided to go with an afternoon tea meal. It also applied to hair and makeup; I figured I could just handle that with a good enough mentality, but my bridespeople said, “Would it feel fun to take advantage of the opportunity to be made up by someone else?” And you know what, I think it would!

    Equality

    We have some friends who are vegetarians and/or gluten free, and it was important to us to find food that would be appealing to everyone. More importantly, we didn’t want gf or veggie options to feel othering. Afternoon tea for the win! Because it’s served on tiered platters, special menus can be assigned without looking any different from other people’s food.

    This is maybe a stretch to include, but I’ve always known I didn’t want to do a bouquet toss. I hated this tradition when I was single, as it made being single seem like a problem to be solved. We weren’t going to do anything in its place, but then I saw a stuffed cat toss that I really want to do instead! While I do not want to shame someone for being single, I DO want to shame someone for being catless, and whoever catches the stuffed cat will be the next person to adopt a feline friend.

    Community

    This was, by far, the most important value that we kept returning to over and over again. The whole point of hosting a wedding (for me) is to gather the people I love in one place. Whenever I got lost in details or started worrying that something wouldn’t be perfect, this value reminded me that it doesn’t matter if something goes wrong. What matters are the family and friends who I get to celebrate with.

    What values help keep you sane while planning a stressful event? What do you center your decisions on?

  • Queerly Beloved: Wedding Party

    Queerly Beloved: Wedding Party

    Welcome to Queerly Beloved, a series of personal essays about my journey as an LGBTQ+ person planning for my wedding in June 2023. Through this series, I’ll be sharing my thoughts, experiences, and advice as I navigate the joys and challenges of planning a wedding. I hope that by sharing my story, I can help make weddings for queer couples a little bit easier and a lot more fun. So whether you’re getting ready to tie the knot, have already taken the plunge, or just want to join me on my journey for a bit, I invite you to come along for the ride!

    Rachel and I knew from the beginning that we were going to have a small wedding, and for us, that also meant having a small wedding party. When it came to choosing the people who I wanted to stand beside me as I marry Rachel, I took the following questions into consideration:

    • Have I known them for a decently long time?
    • Did I know them before I met Rachel?
    • Were they supportive when I first came out and started dating Rachel?
    • Are they “good vibes” people who I know will make me feel better when stressed?
    • Are they planners who I know I can count on take care of themselves as well as projects along the way?

    Please notice that one (often implied) qualification that was not on my list: they do not have to be a woman! One of the best things about being in a queer relationship is that the norm is already disrupted. There’s a lot more mental freedom to shake things up, and I didn’t want to limit my wedding party by gender any more than I’m limiting my dating options.

    Roy, the Best Maid

    I’ve known Roy for nearly 35 years…because he’s my older brother! In addition to being siblings, I’m grateful that we’ve become friends. We share a lot in common, from nerdy interests to a love of travel. After years of living all over the world, we’ve both wound up in the Pacific Northwest, and it is such a joy to get to hang out on a regular basis.

    When I came out, Roy was the first person I told. Actually, he was asking whether I was into girls before I even knew that I was!

    Michal Ann, the Bridesmaid

    Michal Ann and I have been friends since we first sat beside each other at seminary ten years ago. We immediately bonded over feeling too progressive for the space, and she has been a confidant, friend, and inspiration ever since.

    Although we were far from our seminary-selves when I came out to her, I was still anxious about telling people from the more conservative spaces of my life. She reacted with complete joy, sent me encouraging memes, and never lets a moment pass to tell me how happy she is that I’ve found Rachel.

    Giving Gifts

    Both people in my wedding party live outside of Vancouver and will have to travel to my wedding. That’s already a big ask, so I have tried to be generous in other ways to acknowledge their generosity. I also love gifts and taking opportunities to elevate something into a celebration. For me, that has meant:

    • Inviting them into my wedding party by ordering gift baskets delivered to their house asking them to be my bridesmaid. Fun!
    • Buying cheesy t-shirts with “I Do Crew” on them for our bachelorette weekend.
    • Not mandating a certain outfit to be worn. I truly don’t care about decorations or The Look, and I do care about my favorite people being comfortable and feeling good.

    Setting Expectations

    If you clocked the last item on my “how to choose a wedding party member” list at the top of the page, I am a checklist person, and I value other checklist people! I knew I had chosen the right people for me when both of them, during our first “You’re in my wedding party!” conversations, asked, “What do you need me to do?”

    I was clear from the beginning that I mostly want them to be hype people. I want them to take it on as a job that when I post pictures in our group chat, that they will respond with exclamation points and heart emojis. They have done that amazingly well.

    Equally important, I want them to help me when I’m stuck or when something goes wrong. Our first venue bailed on us under very shady circumstances ten months after we had booked it, and my wedding party were the first people I went to (other than Rachel, obviously). They did everything I needed, from empathizing and raging to giving me concrete and practical advice about how to handle the situation.

    As we near the wedding date, I may need them for more specific projects, but time will tell and I know they’ll be fully capable of anything I ask of them.

    How would you choose who to include in your wedding party? I’m so curious what people prioritize and value! Leave a comment and let me know.

  • Queerly Beloved: Engagement Photos

    Queerly Beloved: Engagement Photos

    Welcome to Queerly Beloved, a series of personal essays about my journey as an LGBTQ+ person planning for my wedding in June 2023. Through this series, I’ll be sharing my thoughts, experiences, and advice as I navigate the joys and challenges of planning a wedding. I hope that by sharing my story, I can help make weddings for queer couples a little bit easier and a lot more fun. So whether you’re getting ready to tie the knot, have already taken the plunge, or just want to join me on my journey for a bit, I invite you to come along for the ride!

    Early in the wedding planning process, I was super excited to get engagement photos taken; I think the idea of having a concrete representation of our decision really appealed to me. After some stressful online searching, I found Tristan of Wander West Photography. I loved her bright, clean photos (I’m not a fan of artsy wedding photographers – I want to see people’s happy faces!) and the fact that she had photos of same-sex couples in her portfolio.

    I am so grateful to have chosen Tristan, because she has made the whole experience comfortable and fun. Some of the things I most appreciated about her are:

    • She is part of the rainbow mafia, and she expressed excitement about having the opportunity to shoot a queer couple.
    • She asked how comfortable we were with PDA, especially in the context of being queer women showing affection in public spaces. She made it clear that we could nix any photo ideas that made us feel uncomfortable or unsafe.
    • We made it clear from the beginning that neither of us are naturally good at modeling or posing, and she offered simple instructions throughout the shoot on where to stand, how to hold each other, and where to put our hands or faces.
    • She took a broad range of shots and tried different things, but she moved quickly so that I never felt stuck in one position or like I wasn’t get a particular idea correct.

    I cannot stress how much I went into the engagement photo shoot feeling overwhelmed and unsure, but she turned the experience into something really fun and comfortable.

    Consider These Practicalities

    • As with all things wedding related, do not Google “wedding photographer” or “engagement photographer.” Instead, search for photographers and check their website to see if they shoot weddings. This will open up your search to cheaper options!
    • Use your wedding photographer to take your engagement photos. This gives you a chance to see their work (and choose someone else for the wedding, in a worst case scenario) and to see what it’s like to work with them.
    • Look for evidence that they work with same-sex and/or gender diverse clients. Additionally, ask them how their experience working with queer clients; their answer will be illuminating!
    • Choose a photographer that you will feel comfortable around. Are you able to state your opinions, desires, and wishes? Do you feel listened to? Do they make you feel comfortable?
    • Choose outfits that complement each other, either in style, colour, or both.
    • This is definitely just my opinion, but we wore outfits that are pretty much just us on a regular (though slightly elevated) day. I wanted to be able to look at these pictures and see the everyday aspects of our relationships, as the fancy versions of ourselves would be documented at the wedding.
    • Use your engagement photos in Save the Dates, invitations, your wedding website, and Christmas cards.

    Taking Photos in Stanley Park

    Our engagement photo session lasted just one hour, and because we chose a location in Stanley Park with diverse backdrops, we came away with a lot of really cool photos in a short amount of time!

    The Bridge

    The Foliage

    The Beach

    The Outtakes

    No photoshoot is complete without the pictures that didn’t QUITE achieve the desired outcome. I loved that Tristan included these in the finished photos she sent us; they make me crack up every time I see them!

  • Queerly Beloved: Choosing Your Guest List for a Gay Wedding

    Queerly Beloved: Choosing Your Guest List for a Gay Wedding

    Welcome to Queerly Beloved, a series of personal essays about my journey as an LGBTQ+ person planning for my wedding in June 2023. Through this series, I’ll be sharing my thoughts, experiences, and advice as I navigate the joys and challenges of planning a wedding. I hope that by sharing my story, I can help make weddings for queer couples a little bit easier and a lot more fun. So whether you’re getting ready to tie the knot, have already taken the plunge, or just want to join me on my journey for a bit, I invite you to come along for the ride!

    I grew up in a social system where church was center of everything. I attended innumerable wedding showers, ceremonies, and receptions for people at our Baptist church, and I always assumed I would get married by my pastor with hundreds of people in attendance.

    Then I fell in love with a woman and agreed to marry her.

    The mental image I had of my wedding had to shift dramatically. In the years that we were dating, I had thought about this in the abstract and assumed I was prepared. But when the engagement was official and wedding planning began, I was hit by a wave of grief that surprised me in its intensity. I couldn’t assume universal goodwill toward my marriage. I no longer trusted that the people who raised me and supported me for 30 years would want to celebrate one of the most significant moments of my life.

    For me, one of the most stressful parts of this was that so much hinged on assumptions. I was lucky enough, I suppose, not to experience anyone explicitly cutting off our relationship when I came out. What I experienced instead was radio silence. People who used to be intimately involved in my life and relationships suddenly had nothing to say. In many cases, I had no idea how they would respond if I invited them to my wedding.

    And that was the thing my anxious brain hated the most. There were a couple people who I knew would say no, and they did. That didn’t really bother me, because it was clearcut and I could prepare my heart for the disappointment. But the people whose decisions I wasn’t sure about? I imagined them having heartfelt conversations around the dinner table about whether attending my wedding would be a sin or not. About whether showing up at my wedding would be giving tacit approval of the “homosexual lifestyle” and how that would be perceived by others. It made me feel sick.

    In the end, it was my bridesmaid Michal Ann who made everything very clear. “You’re an amazing person,” she said over the phone. “Anyone who doesn’t appreciate you for exactly who you are doesn’t deserve to come to your wedding. And it’s their loss.”

    In addition to showing off exactly why I chose her to stand beside me on my wedding day, she helped me to reframe this decision. I’m the same person I’ve always been – silly and passionate and kind. If people no longer want to be close to me because I’m going to marry a woman, that is their loss! I don’t need to waste my emotions on wondering whether someone will want to be there on one of the biggest days of my life. I want to prioritize people who I know want to be there on one of the biggest days of my life.

    We’ve chosen a venue with a max capacity of 50 guests. That necessity helps to justify why there will be fewer people at my wedding than I imagined when growing up. But I’ve come to appreciate how lucky I am that I know each of those 50 people loves me deeply and completely, just as I am. Those are the people I want to celebrate with.

  • Queerly Beloved: Why Get Married?

    Queerly Beloved: Why Get Married?

    Welcome to Queerly Beloved, a series of personal essays about my journey as an LGBTQ+ person planning for my wedding in June 2023. Through this series, I’ll be sharing my thoughts, experiences, and advice as I navigate the joys and challenges of planning a wedding. I hope that by sharing my story, I can help make weddings for queer couples a little bit easier and a lot more fun. So whether you’re getting ready to tie the knot, have already taken the plunge, or just want to join me on my journey for a bit, I invite you to come along for the ride!

    Why Get Married?

    I’ve always been a romantic. One of my Halloween costumes when I was a kid was a bride. Not Frankenstein’s bride or something seasonally appropriate; just a bride with a white dress and a veil. I wore that costume as a nightgown until I finally outgrew it, physically if not emotionally.

    I know marriage isn’t for everyone, but I grew up with couples whose marriages inspired me to look for something similar. My maternal grandparents in particular have the sort of love, loyalty, and care that I’ve always hoped to find for myself. So when I met Rachel, it was obvious that we would get married!

    Just kidding.

    When I met Rachel, she was a year out from separating from her first wife. Although they remained amicable (and this was a huge green flag to me), she was understandably Done with romance. One of my first memories with her is watching season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her jeering at Spike for being so needy. “Oh no,” I thought. “I think he’s romantic!”

    During our year as friends, Rachel began to date again and I came to terms with being queer. We individually flirted with the idea of polyamory, to the point that I took my shot by asking her out while she was actively dating someone else. She turned me down, which was an indication that she didn’t actually want an open relationship. Deep down, we are U-Haul lesbians who just want to hide in the safe harbour of our love!! What? I did start this essay by admitting I’m romantic.

    A few months after we started dating, we had an open conversation about what we wanted long term. As a counsellor and as an anxious person, I’m a big believer in talking honestly about your relationship expectations sooner rather than later. “Getting married isn’t a deal breaker for me, but it is something I am interested in,” I said. Rachel thought for a minute, then said, “Getting married isn’t something I’m interested in, but it’s not a deal breaker.”

    That’s where we were for over a year, though we also moved in together and opened a shared bank account. I felt more settled with the idea that commitment doesn’t require legalizing the relationship with an expensive party. Rachel healed from her previous relationship and admitted that she is just as much a romantic as I am, if not more. I learned of this change when one day she turned to me and said, out of the blue, “I’m going to marry you someday.” I’m not sure exactly what my response was, but it probably entailed me physically leaping on her and demanding, “Are you serious!?”

    Okay, so I still really wanted to get married.

    Over time, it became accepted that we were on the Marriage Path, but it wasn’t until we were engaged that we attended couple’s counselling and identified why we wanted to get married. For both of us, the legal and formal aspects weren’t important. Our relationship was just as valid whether we were partners or wives. It’s the symbolism of marriage that made a wedding desirable.

    I won’t speak for Rachel, but for me, there is something uniquely special about gathering friends and family together at a wedding to say, “This relationship is special. This person is special, and what we’re building together deserves celebration. It’s also going to require flexibility and hard work, so we’re asking you to be our community of support, both individually and as a couple.”

    Putting on fancy outfits and hiring a caterer doesn’t fundamentally change our relationship. But it does change the feel of it. Ritual adds weight to a thing, and the ritual of a wedding gives our relationship solidity. It’s not necessary, but it’s beautiful.

    As of this posting, we are five months away from our wedding. I would love Rachel the same even if we never got married, but I’m excited to layer our relationship with the symbols of marriage and the label of wife.

  • Take Two: A D&D Proposal

    Take Two: A D&D Proposal

    After Rachel proposed on Christmas Eve, she told me that one of her plans had been to pop the question during D&D, but she chose not to when I said I preferred a private proposal.  Three weeks later, she casually asked if she could run a one-shot for our Curse of Strahd campaign, and I said yes, not thinking anything of it.  Turns out, D&D Proposal was a go!

    Things you need to know for this to make sense:

    • I have been DMing a Curse of Strahd campaign for Rachel and our friends for 15 months.
    • Rachel plays a character named Ireena, who has been doggedly pursued by the evil vampire bad guy (Strahd).
    • While evading Strahd, Ireena fell in love with Szoldar, a beefy sweetheart NPC that I thought would be a throwaway character and instead became integral to the party.
    • Ireena and Szoldar’s romance has grown over the past year.  At one point Ireena tried to break up with him in order to protect him from Strahd’s jealous rage, but Szoldar insisted that she wasn’t allowed to make that decision for him.
    • As played by Rachel and myself, they have a very cute bickering, goofy dynamic that may or may not be very similar to our relationship dynamic *cough*.

    Rachel asked if she could run a session as Ireena, and recommended that I play as Szoldar.  She said her character wanted to pull a gigantic prank, as Ireena is a trickster cleric who earns favors from her deity by being tricksy.  “Sure, just don’t do anything that will upset the overarching plot!” I said, and settled in for a night of chaotic fun.

    Ireena, Szoldar, Beldhur, and Seraphina enter Blinsky’s toy shop.  Magic!  Handwave!  That’s not Blinsky, it’s Strahd!  And he’s kidnapped Ireena and shrunk the rest of us to the size of toys!  Overcome with emotion, Szoldar tears across the now-huge room, heedless of the mutant toys wreaking havoc around him.  It is chaos, with toy dragons attacking each other midair while miniatures hurl weapons from one table to another.  The other party members are left to pick up the pieces (sometimes literally) as six-inch-tall Szoldar hurls himself at the door and screams, “Ireena!!”  I pause from my roleplaying to point at Rachel’s DM glee and tell Frank and Nick, “This is exactly why I fell in love with her.”

    Once everyone gathers together and uses their combined tiny strength, they push open the toy shop door into…a stone corridor?  Ominous music plays from our television and Nick incorrectly says it is an organ remix of Eminem.  Our characters creep forward and realize they are full size again just in time to open the door to a wedding chapel!

    This is not the moment you think it is, based on the blog’s title.  Strahd stands at the front, holding puppet Ireena in his hand and beginning to say the vows that will wed him to her for eternity.  Not on Szoldar’s watch!  My beefy NPC cut his way through the baddies, heedless of all the damage he was taking.  Seraphina drew the majority of the ghosties and ghoulies her way, so Szoldar drew the sunsword and hacked off Strahd’s hand…only to send Puppet Ireena flying through the air!  Beldhur the Druid Dragon batted her back to the ground, inches from Szoldar’s hand.

    Cradling his puppet girlfriend in his hands, Szoldar et al wer surprised when the world faded around them.  Ireena’s illusion was dispelled!  All this time, the group had been at their home.  She explained that she had pulled the biggest prank she could think of in exchange for a gift from her deity.  She asked for ten minutes of privacy away from Strahd’s scrying eyes.  With this completed, she turned and asked Szoldar to marry her.

    Guys, I KNOW that Ireena and Szoldar are fictional characters.  But I teared up!  It was for Ireena and Szoldar, but also it was for us.  Then Rachel said, “May I roll for Proposal?” and ROLLED A NAT 20!!

    Of course, Ireena is a trickster cleric, and after we exploded into shocked delight, Rachel admitted that she had specially bought a rigged dice that was all 20s!  “I wasn’t leaving that to chance,” she said, which is just the sort of intentionality and planning that I look for in a fiancée.  

    We popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate our fictional characters’ engagement.  It was fun, silly, and nerdily romantic. Rachel is the sweetest, most thoughtful and creative person I know.  I’m so glad I get to marry her!

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  • We’re Getting Married: The Proposal Story!

    We’re Getting Married: The Proposal Story!

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    On Christmas Eve, Rachel and I were settling in for a long weekend of food and relaxation.  We had just finished watching The Happiest Season and were cuddling and reveling in all the feels.  As the little spoon, Rachel craned her neck to look over her shoulder at me.  “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

    “Sure.”

    “Would you marry me?”

    What came next was not glamorous.  I burst into tears and said, I kid you not, “For realsies?”

    Rachel turned around to face me on the couch.  “Yes, for realsies.”

    “YES.”

    We hugged, we kissed.  Rachel said, “Stay there, I’ll be right back.”  She hurried into another room and came back with a small box in her pocket.  At my confused expression, she assured me, “It’s not a ring.”  Instead, when I opened it, I saw a delicate silver necklace with an evergreen branch pendant.  

    “It symbolizes all the hikes we’ve gone on, and this place where we met,” she said.

    “And it symbolizes our love, which will never die,” I said, still crying.  Like, really uncomfortably now, because my eye makeup was getting into my eyes and it was starting to sting.  I started to move toward the bathroom where I could address the issue, but I couldn’t stand the idea of being even one room away from Rachel, so I grabbed her hand and made her stand at the sink beside me while I wiped at my eyes.

    It was all so domestic, so ridiculous, and absolutely perfect to me.  

    Rachel had arranged with some friends to meet up at a bar afterwards to celebrate, but a recent COVID scare meant several were in isolation.  When we had discussed Dream Proposal Scenarios, I thought that was something I would want, but I found it really lovely to just have the evening to the two of us.  We put on our winter clothes and took a walk through the falling snow down to English Bay, where we took pictures by the lights, by the rings, and by the barge (“As a time stamp”).  

    We reminisced about everything that led up to this moment.  How we had been friends for a year when we first met.  How I asked her out while she was dating someone else because she said she wanted to try polyamory, but she turned me down.  How I laid on the floor and sang sad songs to myself, then picked myself up and went back to being friends.  How she broke up with the other woman and we spent day after day together before finally cuddling, holding hands, kissing, making it official.

    From the beginning of our relationship in June 2019, I was an over-communicator and over-planner.  I knew I liked her so much, so after dating for only a couple months, I said, “I’m not saying I’m anywhere near wanting this now, but I do know that marriage is a thing I’ve always wanted.  If we stay together, I need to know if that is on the table for you.”  She said it was.

    During Pride 2020, Rachel and I tried to make it special, which for us meant creating a five-year plan.  After discussing driving licenses and country living, I pointed out one glaring omission.  We came away from Pride with a monthly budget allotted to a future “Fancy Party.”

    By the summer of 2021, I knew I wanted to marry her.  But I didn’t know how this worked for queer women, so I asked Rachel in the round about way we talked about these things.  “If I, hypothetically, was thinking about how our Fancy Party got kicked off, like you know, someone asked a question of someone else…who would do the asking?”  Rachel laughed, and said, “Me, if that’s okay.”  “Yes!” I said.  “I want to be asked.”

    In October 2021, Rachel and I went on a vacation around Britsh Columbia, and during one amazingly lazy day, we drank wine in a hot tub and planned our wedding.  I’m sorry, Fancy Party.  We had similar desires and goals, and the mood was great, so I kept making intense eye contact at Rachel.  She said, “I could ask you right now, but I want to be sober when it happens.”  Which, okay, FAIR.

    As the end of the year approached, several of our friends either got engaged or started talking about ring shopping and proposal planning.  First of all, I have to say that I was so happy for them!  But second of all, it felt like it was Everyone Gets An Engagement time, and a part of me wanted our moment to be special. It was impacting Rachel, too.  In mid-December, she said she was feeling a lot of pressure to propose, to live up to other peoples’ stories, to do things based on other people rather than on us.  I assured her that I didn’t want or need a big proposal, and that we could wait as long as we needed.

    So IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when just a couple weeks later, she popped the question!  

    And that brings us right back to the start of this story, when on Christmas Eve I agreed to marry the most thoughtful, wonderful woman in the world.

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