14 Stories

Greg and Michael from Kelly Guenther Studio on Vimeo.

I love this wedding of Jess and Erika, a Brooklyn couple who married with us in Vermont last fall. Check out the beautiful photos by Carlos Castillo and the feature story in Vermont Vows magazine.

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

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

Not long ago, I blogged that gay weddings should never be boring.  Those grooms I was referring to in that post came back to me a few weeks later and announced that they had an idea for wedding entertainment.

Turns out that one of their guests was Yuri Lane, a world-renowned beat-box artist and husband of their friend, Rachel, the officiant.  Yuri provided about 5 minutes of entertainment in the form of a beat-box toast to the grooms referencing their jobs, their dogs, the wedding location (Provincetown) and all sorts of inspired elements.  

Yuri was incredible, deeply memorable, hilarious and brilliant.  I'm sure the wedding guests are still talking about this very unique form of entertainment. All it takes is 5 minutes to get everyone together, build a memory, then fill the dance floor back up for the rest of the night.  It's great advice for not just a gay wedding, but any wedding!

Here he is, doing his thing:

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!  

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.

Our clients Erica and Hayley got married on Memorial Day weekend and their engagement session and wedding photos were picked up by the Delightfully Engaged blog!  The photos were shot by one of my favorite photographers, Kat Hempel.

Check out the screen shot below and the full shoot over on the blog!

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?

Every year we work with about 40-50 couples who are looking to legally marry in Boston, for just a small ceremony.  Those who book the Destiny packages can expect photos like these beautiful ones of Bernadette and Lori.  These ladies traveled to Boston from Maryland for a wonderful wedding experience with some friends and family.  We arranged for their hotel, hair and makeup, limo and more.  

Here are some highlights from their ceremony in the Public Garden.  Aren't those outfits incredible?  I love Lori's custom suit (inspired by Ellen's own wedding suit).  Bernadette's dress is absolutely stunning!  They are such a beautiful couple!






Boston gay wedding photos by Cheryl Levine.