Weddings Redefined

Most people who find this website are engaged and planning a gay wedding in New York, Boston or somewhere else – and most people really don’t know how to begin! Here’s the cheat sheet for you, a quick list of what to do, and in what order. 

If you really want to keep things easy, download our free app,Gay Wedding Confidential or buy our book of the same name! Both have all these tools in more detail.

1. Make your guest list and stick to it. Create guest list policies. Figure out if you are having attendants. 

Massachusetts was the first state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage so it’s only natural that Boston remains a top gay wedding tourist destination. And for good reason…it’s a small but cosmopolitan city with great dining and shopping and some beautiful venues (including some on the ocean or harbor) for your gay wedding.  Our business was founded in Boston, we still work there regularly and it has a very special place in our heart.

Where to Stay:  Our favorite hotels are Kimpton properties and the one in Boston with the best location, right on Boston Common, is Nine Zero.  We also love XV Beacon on Beacon Hill and the Seaport Hotel down on the waterfront.

What to Do:  Leave your car behind in Boston and don't rent one either.  It's a great city for walking with beautiful brownstones like the ones above.  Walk through the oldest public botanical garden in the country, the beautiful Boston Public Garden, en route to shopping on Newbury Street.   If you want to avoid the tourists, walk down Tremont Street in the South End and take your pick of great restaurants and shops frequented by locals (and lots of gays!)  Also, enjoy the waterfront!  Take a tour of the Boston Harbor Islands, or spend a few hours out there on Spectacle or Georges Island.  

How to Get Married:  It’s tricky in Massachusetts since there is a three day waiting period.  For example, if you apply for a marriage license at City Hall on a Tuesday, you can’t pick it up and get married until Friday.  You can get a waiver of the three day wait by going to court.  Marriage license fees vary by city or town.  There are no blood tests or witnesses required.  The marriage license is valid for 60 days.  14 Stories provides  a service to get this waiting period waived quickly and easily.

Our Picks for LGBT Photographers:  Kelly from Closed Circle Photo and Kristin Korpos are great, fun to work with and do a beautiful job.  Kelly took the photo above.

Our Picks for an LGBT Florist:  Daniel and Jeb from New Leaf Flores in Jamaica Plain are awesome!

Our Picks for an LGBT Officiant:  Denise Simmons is an openly gay Justice of the Peace who also was the first out African-American lesbian Mayor of a U.S. city.  She sits on the City Council of Cambridge, MA.

With some major exceptions, Boston wedding vendors are very welcoming of same-sex couples so you should have a great experience no matter who you choose. Don't forget about us at 14 Stories if you get stuck and need us to take great care of you!

This week in the gay wedding travel guide, it's Provincetown, Massachusetts (aka P-town), the tiny town on the tip of Cape Cod and a hugely popular LGBT tourist destination in the U.S.  

For a tiny town, P-town offers world class dining, great shops and beautiful beaches.  It’s a great place to plan your gay wedding but has very few wedding venues and is most suitable for smaller weddings.  Also, July and August are tough times for weddings in P-town because it's high tourist season and many inns require 5 night stays.

Where to Stay:  Gabriel’s is our pick for women with a great location near the center of town.  The rooms are beautiful with great amenities, including an outdoor hot tub!  For guys and mixed groups, we also love the Carriage House (also with an outdoor hot tub!) and the White Porch Inn.  There are many, many inns in Ptown so you'll easily find a great spot.

What to Do:  Stroll the many boutiques and galleries of Commercial Street.  Check out the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in the East End.  Explore the Pilgrim Monument museum to see what P-town was like when the Pilgrims landed (it’s where the Mayflower Compact was signed).  Hit the beaches by bike, car, cab or bus.  Herring Cove is a more accessible and family-friendly bay beach.  Race Point is a more adult beach on the ocean side.  You can rent bikes and ride the paved trails through the dunes.  Enjoy cabaret and drag shows at night or hit one of the town’s nightclubs.

How to Get Married:  You can apply for your marriage license at Provincetown City Hall for $35 but keep in mind that, in Massachusetts, there’s a 3 day waiting period.  If you are in a rush, you can have that waived by a court order if you drive to Orleans, Massachusetts.  We suggest, however, applying for and picking up your license in Boston instead since the courthouse and City Hall are near each other.  We can help with this process through our Vows package.

Our Picks for LGBT Photographers: John Caplice and Doreen Birsell are fantastic and the photo above was shot by Doreen. 

Our Picks for LGBT-owned Florists: Wildflower of Provincetown is our pick especially for more contemporary designs! 

Our Picks for LGBT Officiants: Rev. James Mack can officiate your religious or non-religious ceremony.

P-town’s wedding vendors are very welcoming of same-sex couples so you should have a great experience no matter who you choose.  Don't forget about us if you get stuck and are looking for a hand with all of your gay wedding plans in Provincetown.

I have new clients for whom I'm planning a 200+ guest gay wedding on Fire Island in the Pines.  Gay wedding planning on Fire Island requires a mastery of logistics - there are very few resources on the island itself - and most cars (except for the essentials and year-round residents) are not allowed.  We'll have to charter a boat and ship in every table, every chair, light and sound equipment, caterer's equipment, furniture, etc. - but fortunately I have experience with such challenges.

Another consideration for Fire Island is that there are about 700 houses but no real working hotel (yet...there's a small one that is being renovated and promises to be beautifully done and open for 2012).  So, we'll have to reserve a bunch of these houses (many of which are vacation rentals) for wedding guests.  And the only wedding-appropriate structure for a large wedding upwards of 200 guests is Whyte Hall, some photos of which I took below.  Fortunately, Whyte Hall is a fantastic space.

I'm really excited about my new clients and planning a gay wedding in the Fire Island Pines.  Check out the photos below for some inspiration:

the path from the beach to Whyte Hall from the ocean side

Whyte Hall, interior (stage)

Whyte Hall interior

Whyte Hall exterior

Whyte Hall exterior

the ceremony location on the beach

These photos come from one of our mini weddings, in which Mark and Jonathan traveled from Denver with about a dozen friends and family to legally marry in Boston.  It was a small wedding and not full of the typical details you see on many wedding blogs.  But here, beautifully captured by Kristin Korpos, are two guys in love on their wedding day.

If you're in New York City on October 20, please join me at the Learning Annex for my Weddings Redefined workshop on gay wedding planning!

In this class, I'll discuss the nuts and bolts of wedding planning, reinforcing the concept that your wedding is uniquely yours, with your vision, your personality and your own traditions. 

You’ll learn: 

• Money saving tips 
• Timeline for top priorities – venue, officiant, save the dates & money saving tips 
• Budget 
• How to personalize your wedding 
• Gay Wedding Traditions 
• And more! 

This highly interactive workshop and Q&A with the experts will leave you with the confidence and tools to plan your own same-sex wedding.

You can sign up for the workshop right here!

Three days of parties.  That's my term for what most people call "the wedding weekend."  You know, where you have a bunch of out of town guests and plan something like a rehearsal dinner on Friday night, the wedding on Saturday and brunch on Sunday.

I think we can do better than that...that's very typical.  Let's have three days of parties.  Our clients do it all the time.

Think about it.  Your wedding is probably the only time in your life all of your loved ones are in one place - and they are there to celebrate YOU.  Might as well enjoy it all.  Here's what three days of parties looks like for many of our clients:

Day 1 - Guest arrival

• Receive fun, whimsical and creative welcome basket upon hotel check in
• If you're in a city, evening cocktail party with heavy passed hors d'oeuvres and a very fun, casual vibe
• If you're somewhere more remote, a casual cookout style event with a bonfire on the beach, s'mores, etc

Day 2 - Tourist stuff and wedding

• If you're in a big city, arrange tickets to a game, tickets to a museum, tickets on some fun and cheesy tour with lunch
• If you're somewhere more remote, coordinated group activities (kayaking, games, hikes)
• If you're somewhere like Provincetown, group shopping and dining excursion, possibly a whale watch or Dune Tour
• Everyone freshens up and the couple gets ready for the wedding
• The wedding!
• After party!

Day 3 - Brunch and departures

• Most of your guests will head out on Sunday but send them off with a really sweet brunch with bloody marys and mimosas to aid in recovery - and be sure to be present at the brunch yourself to say goodbye to your guests!

How are you planning to show your guests a good time?

(Photo by Jag Studios, of a bonfire and s'mores at a private vacation rental on Cape Cod)

Most of us have been to a bunch of straight weddings and now that you're planning your own gay wedding, it seems obvious to look to those straight weddings for inspiration. After all, it's what we grew up knowing.  I've been talking to a bunch of couples lately who are struggling with what traditions to keep and what to ditch when planning their own wedding.  I'm personally in favor of reinvention...this blog is called, after all, "Weddings Redefined"!

Let's start by examining some of the traditions we've seen over the years:

...couple doesn't see each other before the ceremony, an often religious ceremony, photos during cocktail hour, a long break between the ceremony and reception, the wedding party introduction, the first dance, father-daughter dance, mother-son dance, dinner, toasts, dancing, line dances, garter toss, bouquet toss, cake cutting, yadda yadda yadda...maybe a Horah for good measure...

I've planned hundreds of gay weddings and I can tell you that we skip a bunch of these things!! SOMETIMES my couples will do a first dance and cake cutting, but that's about it! If parent dances happen, they typically happen spontaneously, rather than to a specific song. Formal photos typically happen before the ceremony.

As far as I'm concerned (and most of my clients agree), when it comes to these elements, turn them on their head! Why introduce the wedding party? It's your day and you may not even have a wedding party. Why do photos during cocktail hour when you can enjoy a cocktail with your closest friends and family?

And if you really want to be traditional, consider some Gay Wedding Traditions - yes, there are some!

What traditions are you keeping and what are you ditching?

(photo by Kat Hempel)

Gay weddings are a destination business.  Many couples plan their wedding in a place where it's legal from clear across the country.  We've had clients from about 30 U.S. states.  It's definitely a challenge finding the right team of people to work with when you live somewhere else, especially if you are concerned about minimizing the number of planning trips you have to take to your wedding destination.  

So, whether you are planning a New York gay wedding, a Boston or Provincetown gay wedding, or going to Vermont or somewhere else, there are a few tips that are notable:

1.  Make those trips count.  You should be exhausted by the end!  You should book yourselves solid during those few days you are planning.  Maybe you've scheduled 10 venue site visits.  If you haven't, then you should on your first trip.  And don't stop there.  Meet as many photographers, bakers, etc during each visit as you can.  You should return home with a bunch of things crossed off your list of things to do.

2.  Prioritize.  What types of vendors are you most comfortable hiring over the phone or by email?  Some of my clients are cool dealing with floral and music by phone and email.  Some need to meet every single person they hire.  For example, tasting cake and have a catering tasting during your visits are important.  Make your appointments wisely.  

3.  Skype!  Skype is your friend.  Most of us in the wedding industry are used to Skyping with our clients, so if you can't meet personally with every vendor, then Skype is the next best thing so you can get some face time.

4. Hire a wedding planner (preferably one experienced with gay weddings)!  Of course, this makes everything easier so that your trips are well organized and your time is well spent.

5. Consolidate your appointments.  During your last trip before the wedding, get everybody in the same room at the same time so that you can all be on the same page and talk through the wedding schedule, flow and design together.  Some vendors (like the photographer and baker) don't need to be there, but if you can get the caterer, florist, wedding planner and venue manager there, that's an excellent use of your time.

Are you planing a long distance destination wedding?

(photo of one of our weddings planned long distance, by Kat Hempel)

So, you're getting married.  But maybe you've already been together for 20 years and have a kitchen full of Crate and Barrel stuff.  Or maybe you think asking for wedding gifts is gauche.  Or maybe you don't want to fill out (yet, another) form that says "Bride" and "Groom".  I heard from a groom recently who complained that when they registered for gifts at a major retailer, one of them had to be the "bride" on the form, and he's since been bombarded with promotions for brides-only!

Here are the 14 Stories picks for best places to register for your wedding, if you want to do the non-traditional route:

1.  Newlywish.  Ok, so you want gifts.  But you prefer more unique items and prefer to support local businesses - or at least don't want to worry about a form that says Bride and Groom.  Check out Newlywish, where you can register across many awesome retailers, and where your guests can have an easy, seamless shopping experience for you.  You can even register for experiences like museum memberships and sporting events.  You can't buy that at Macy's.

2.  Honeyfund.  You have the kitchen-full of copper cookware already but know your guests will insist on buying you something.  How about contributing towards your honeymoon?  Our clients set up honeymoon registries all the time and Honeyfund is my favorite site for it.  They don't make you book your honeymoon travel plans through the site but your guests contribute towards experiences you expect you'll have on your honeymoon - like a romantic dinner for two or a couples massage.  Customize your Honeyfund page any way you wish.  Your guests buy you honeymoon experiences and you get a check from Honeyfund.  Can't beat that.

3.  HRC. Whether it's the HRC or  Freedom to Marry or MENY or another charity, many couples choose to set up a charitable wedding registry instead of a gift registry.  HRC and MENY make it easy with their own registry page that your guests can visit to see your profile and make a donation.  Help other same-sex couples get equal marriage rights by supporting the work of these fabulous nonprofits!

Did you choose to register for gifts?  If so, where?