14 Stories

I recently shared my Top 10 Tips for a Great Gay Wedding with Urbanette magazine.  Check it out - though I'm pretty sure I never said "As anyone whose been to one can attest to, gay weddings are simply more fun."  I may have thought that, but I definitely didn't say it!

The week of Hurricane Sandy was one of my most professionally challenging weeks.  We had worked very hard for six months on an extraordinary New York City gay wedding for two amazing men, Jason and Dimitri.  We were in the home stretch, the last week of the wedding, when we all heard that Hurricane Sandy was going to be serious business.

I'm generally a pretty optimistic person so I was confident that the hurricane wouldn't impact our wedding, set to be on the 14th and 21st floor of the Chelsea Arts Tower, in a beautiful space called Glass Houses.  But like many people, I was surprised by the magnitude of Sandy's impact.  Glass Houses was fine, except for some flooding in the basement, but what we learned on Tuesday was that the power was out.  With a wedding on Saturday we didn't know when the power was going to return.  

Jason and Dimitri had many guests from out of town and also plans for a two week honeymoon in Brazil two days after the wedding.  Rescheduling the wedding would have been very difficult so we agreed to explore some alternate venues.  I presented some office space and a few cool raw spaces as backup options.  Unfortunately one of the raw spaces was over the bridge in Long Island City and the other was cost-prohibitive.  The bridge was daunting given the traffic that week and with subways in rough shape, we were looking at one option:  a pretty ugly office space.  

The cost of that was also quite high (about $20,000) so Jason decided to ask whether his law firm's conference floor was available...it was and I orchestrated the move from Glass Houses to a Midtown Manhattan office building.

We were very fortunate that all of the fabulous wedding vendors we'd hire were still available and committed to Jason and Dimitri.  The photographer's parents lost their house and were out of town, so she was personally dealing with that, but still made it to the wedding.  The DJ had no power and no gas in his car but he made it.  The bartenders' bar was literally under water but they made it.  The floral designer's warehouse was without power and inaccessible.  And on and on...I was so impressed by the efforts of this amazing team.

And the wedding itself?  It was great!  We beautified an office space with tons of uplights and pipe and drape.  We added a beautiful white dance floor, great lounge furniture - and you'd never know we were in an office building. 

I was so impressed not only by the vendors but that most of the guests were also able to make it.  We had a few drop-outs because of travel issues or hurricane damage but overall, most guests came.

The Huffington Post also tells this story with an interview with the grooms.

What do you think?

Special thanks to the amazing team:

• Shawn Rabideau Floral
• Lisa Ross Photography
• Sonnier & Castle Catering
• Cake Alchemy
• Cocktails in Motion
• Wendy Kidd Entertainment
• PBG Event Rentals

We (and two of our clients/former clients) are in the New York Times about the wardrobe options for lesbian brides.

It's a great piece which offers insight into the unique challenges that our clients face.  Check it out!

Wedding Pride magazine is a new print magazine that just launched in New York City and I believe it will also be a resource for Fire Island gay wedding planning.   I was honored to have a piece of my book on the same-sex wedding registry excerpted in the magazine, as well as be interviewed for a few other articles.  Check out a couple of the articles here (though I didn't upload the one about bachelor and bachelorette parties) or read the whole issue here.  It's a great resource for gay wedding planning in New York!

GO Magazine, the nation's most widely distributed lesbian magazine just named me one of the top 18 Red Hot Entrepreneurs in the U.S. in their special Workin' It issue (and the only wedding planner featured).

If you can't read the text, there's a quote from me which says, "I have this weird balance of being Super Type A-wedding planner/fierce client advocate and also really laid back.  My clients like that because I'm always chill and calm around them, but they have the confidence that I'm kicking ass and have it all under control."

Apparently I said that!  (It's true, though...)

Last week I did an interview with Tony Cox of National Public Radio's Tell Me More program.  During the interview, I spoke about some of my observations over 7+ years of planning gay weddings!  This was my third NPR interview this year - it's fun!

You can listen to the piece right here!

We are honored to be included among such talented peers as Bryan Rafanelli and Marcy Blum on The Daily Meal's List of 50 People You Should Know When Throwing a Party!  This list represents talented event planners, caterers and designers from all across the U.S.  It's a great honor to be known as one of the top talents in wedding planning in Boston and New York - and we are the only business that specializes in gay weddings to make the list!

The past few weeks were exciting for us - the press stemming from our New York office has been phenomenal.  Check out some of the following articles, especially the L.A. Times piece.  

We were even on the Today Show talking about the economic benefit of gay weddings:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

and also NY1 and the BBC!

Jen and I were in New York last weekend looking at neighborhoods and trying to figure out the best place to raise Patrick (and possibly another kid!).  It's an exciting time for us and we appreciate your support of our journey!  

Lots of love-
Bernadette, Jen and Patrick

I'm so excited to finally share this beautiful real wedding with you.  I had to hold off because it was published in this issue of Destination Weddings and Honeymoons magazine and magazines require that real weddings not be published anywhere else until the issue comes out.  We are proud that this wedding was that mainstream wedding magazine's first same-sex wedding.  

So, the story...this is the story of Deb and Michelle.  They met online and promptly fell in love, and literally within months were engaged and calling 14 stories, from Columbus, Ohio, to plan their wedding.  Their vision was an intimate and relaxed wedding weekend experience on Cape Cod, with only about a dozen guests, all of whom were traveling in to share the joy.

We promptly suggested one of Cape Cod's most spectacular vacation rentals, a stunning 7 bedroom property, and they booked it immediately.  We orchestrated airport shuttles down to the Cape.  14 stories did all of the floral design.  Each guest room had a small floral arrangement, a welcome bag and the guests' name on a calligraphed door sign.  We arranged beautifully catered dinners on Friday and Saturday evenings, including a fun Friday night on the deck with s'mores and snuggies.  The entire experience was relaxed, elegant, intimate and fun for all and captured perfectly by the incredible photography of JAG Studios.

When I was a freshman in college at Boston University, I got an internship at WBUR, our local, Boston-area National Public Radio station.  It was so exciting being there, in the world of media and news and I loved every second behind the scenes.

The internship lasted a semester and I moved on and that was the end of that.

And then a few years post college, before this whole gay wedding planning business came about, I was really struggling with what to do with my life, just like many mid-twenty-somethings.  I was an avid listener of Car Talk and was once on the show with my own car-related question, "I'm good with my hands.  Should I be a mechanic when I grow up?"  I think we all know the answer to that one, but it was fun to be on the radio nonetheless.

Fast forward eight or nine years and here I am, a gay wedding planner, loving every minute of it, and NPR calls me to do an interview on music at gay weddings.  Of course!!  If there's anything I know something about, it's gay weddings and music is one of my favorite subjects.  And I love that so much of the music I hear at my clients' gay weddings is the same music that I was personally dancing to at clubs when I was newly out.  

So, without further ado, here's the interview for your listening - my thoughts on gay wedding music!

What kind of music is being played at your wedding?  Are you sticking with traditional wedding songs or going a more contemporary, pop route?