14 Stories

Michael and Erik came to us from Michigan with a small group of friends and family.  The booked the Destiny Mini package and we set a NYC elopement date for late February.  Given the unpredictable weather this time of year, we upgraded the package to include a small indoor ceremony at a boutique hotel (with gorgeous rooftop terrace).   When Michael and Erik arrived in NYC, Rhen met them and helped them pick up their marriage license (and gave them an impromptu tour!)

On the wedding day, we greeted the guests with an open bar, then rounded everyone up for a custom written, very memorable ceremony with a handfasting ritual.  Afterwards, the bar remained open and we served some round of passed hors d'oeuvres before everyone headed to our private club for dinner!

It was a great day for two very special men.  Check out a couple of photos from Levi Stolove.

Like many LGBT folks, I've been following the two marriage equality-related court cases which have made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court and which will be heard this spring.  

One case will determine the Constitutionality of Proposition 8 in California and the other, DOMA and both have massive consequences for us LGBT Americans.

I'm Vice-Chair of the Family Equality Council event, Night at the Pier, and we recently voted to honor Roberta Kaplan at this fantastic event.  Roberta Kaplan is the attorney arguing the Windsor vs. the United States case being heard by the Supreme Court in a few months.

And last night, I finally watched the documentary about the amazing lesbian couple behind this case...I highly recommend Edie & Thea:  A Very Long Engagement.  It's on Netflix.  It's a beautiful love story of two women, together 42 years before legally marrying in Canada.  It's only a hour long - you should definitely check it out!

Scott and Todd are always in motion.  With one house in New York but living between Atlanta and Chicago, our time together was limited so we packed their trips to New York City full of meetings to plan their big NYC gay wedding.  They chose to get married at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park because years ago when they first started dating, they had a memorable date at its former Rise bar.  The Ritz is a beautiful property with stunning views of the Statue of Liberty.  The ballroom is versatile and fun but we sought to transform it from a hotel ballroom into something truly special.

We started with a theme (New York City) and colors (yellow and purple, each of their moms favorite colors).  We brought in a lighting designer/AV company who projected images during dinner which made guests feel like they were staring out at city lights.  The designer also lit the dinner tables and added beautiful projections and purple uplights.  The beautiful flowers totally popped on the tables!

This New York City same-sex wedding was very special and a first for us because they had a Video Jockey!  Our AV company set up giant screens and speakers while the VJ mixed music videos live for the guests.  Throughout the night, photos of earlier in the wedding rotated in.  

Enjoy the beautiful photos by Katje Hempel.  Floral by Fleurs.  Lighting by Kayne LIVE.  Entertainment by Wendy Kidd Entertainment. Stationery by Bella Figura.  Photobooth by Fifth Avenue Digital.  Cake by Cake Alchemy.

Tim and Ben hired us to plan a preppy, slightly nautical wedding for them.  We settled on the Exchange Conference Center right on Boston Harbor for the location and a blue and white, wave theme.  Check out the gorgeous end result!

Special thanks to the team:

• Photos by Josh Andrus
• Floral and design by 14 Stories
• Catering by East Meets West
• Lighting by Boston Uplights

Our Destiny New York elopement package is very popular - check out some scenes from our elopements this year...

Angela and Valerie

Mark and Richard 

James and David

Ashley and Marisol

(all photos by Kat Hempel)

Three years ago today, I married beautiful and sweet Jen, the love of my life!  It's a lot of pressure, a wedding planner planning her own wedding, but it was an amazing day, and SUCH a fun wedding.  Our wedding really was "us" - and yours should be very much "you"!  

Our life is always an adventure and it just keeps getting better...thanks Jen!

photo by Closed Circle Photography

I was so excited to get the beautiful photos of Fred and Dean's wedding at Boston's ICA, taken by Avenna Studios.   I put them in our portfolio but wanted to share a few on the blog as well!  

This was a fantastic and successful year for 14 Stories and for marriage equality – thank you for all of your support and belief in what we do!  We absolutely adore our clients and believe more than ever in the power of their stories to change the world.  So without further ado, here are 14 highlights from 2011, in no particular order:

1.  We worked with 34 couples from 21 different states, producing beautiful weddings as small as zero guests to as many as 250.  Congratulations to you all!  We are grateful for your business and thrilled to have you as part of our 14 Stories family.

2.  I traveled around the world to train wedding professionals all about gay weddings.  I spoke to enthusiastic groups in Baltimore, Cancun, Phoenix, Vermont and Chicago!   This is part of our mission to promote marriage equality and reduce homophobia in the wedding industry.

3.  Along with that, this spring we launched the world’s first Gay Wedding Institute certificate course for those in the wedding industry looking to be more inclusive of same-sex couples and sensitive to their wedding planning needs.  This intensive course (with homework!) was launched as a webinar and held 3 times in 2011 with great feedback and participants from the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

4.  We launched the country's first app for gay wedding planning.  Our Gay Wedding Confidential app is available for a free download from iTunes and Android (but works better on iTunes!)

5.  Marriage equality came to my home state of New York on June 24 and we were there, on Pride, that weekend to celebrate!  Being a part of Pride the weekend of marriage equality was pretty incredible. 

6.  Civil unions became legal in Illinois, Rhode Island and as of next week, in Delaware and Hawaii.  Same-sex couples in those states can now have statewide protections for their families.

7.  The press we received in 2011 was pretty amazing!  We were featured on the Today show, on BBC, on NY1, NPR (twice) and in countless print publications including this amazing article on the front page of the L.A. Times.

8.  We signed a contract with a prolific and prestigious production company to develop and produce a gay wedding planning reality TV show….let us know if you want to be on TV!

9.  We hired another wedding planner!  Andrew is the first person on our team to plan weddings (besides me) and is fabulous, charming and talented.  You can read more about Andrew on our About Us page.

10.  I was invited to be a blogger for the prestigious Huffington Post and the feedback on my articles has been great.  If you’ve missed them, check them out here!

11.  I went to the Engage! wedding industry summit twice (once in San Diego and the other in the Cayman Islands) and connected with my peers from the wedding industry from around the world. 

12.  We opened our New York office in July and moved our family to New York in September.  New Yorkers have welcomed us with open arms and things are going very well here!

13.  One of our weddings appeared in the nationally distributed Destination Weddings magazine.  Check out Deb and Michelle's story here!

14.  Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed.  How amazing to see this discriminatory law go away and have our LGBT brothers and sisters be able to serve openly (and get married in uniform)!  What a huge moment in our civil rights history.

I hope that the new year brings you and your family great happiness and success - and cheers to the hope of more marriage equality!  

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.