How Does A Gay Wedding Work?
Posted in Personal Miscellany
on February 14th, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Gay Stuff
. The issue has to do with the logistics... what sort of attendants do you have, what do you wear, etc. The short answer is, it works however you want. The long answer is that it doesn't work much differently than any other wedding.One way to look at it is that all the roles performed at a wedding have a certain underlying function. Take the best man and the maid of honour, for example: their role is basically the same as served by a prison warden. Their job is to stiffen the bride or groom's backbone and make them go through with it 
. Similarly, the bridesmaids and groomsmen have the same underlying function: prison guards. In the event the bride or groom makes a break for it, the bridesmaid of groomsmen form a convenient, ready-made posse. In the meantime, they serve as backups and relief for the maid of honour and best man. From that perspective, it matters less the particular gender of the attendants, and more that they are chosen such that they have the stamina to give chase if necessary.
Not the least, the secondary function of the wedding party is the demonstrate that the bride and groom indeed have friends.
In a wedding with two grooms, whether you go with two sets of best men and groomsmen or you mix up your genders is beside the point... the point is that you have someone to dress up pretty and stand for you. A small amount of creativity is all that is needed to have the wedding party looking great in unison, and let's face it, the agonising over details is not likely to be much worse than what occurs at a straight wedding.
You have to have someone up front to officiate - it is a solemn civic or religious ceremony, however you look at it. The religious element hangs a lot of people up. They think you can't really be married if you can't be married in church. But who says you can't - if you want to have a religious wedding and you're flexible about the denomination, there are several good options to choose from which will perform gay marriages. Amazingly, these count as real religions, even though they don't preach hate. Otherwise, a justice of the peace is an option - legally they may have to marry you whether they like it or not in order to remain licensed, but if you don't want the hassle it is easy to find a friendly justice of the peace practically anywhere. Again, except for the difficulties inherent in obtaining a Catholic wedding without resorting to some impressive trickery, there is not too much different here.
I can't stress this enough - marriage is not about religion. Marriage is fundamentally a civil and legal arrangement. If it's also religious for you that's nice, but it's not necessary. Atheists get married all the time - it means every bit as much to them as it does to people who have religious ceremonies, and it counts every bit as much. There are no barriers to gay people getting married except the State, with or without God, and in Canada, not even the government stands in the way of love and binding legal contracts.
One place where the parallel becomes tricky, however, is in the role of the bride. In a straight wedding, the bride is the axis around which the wedding revolves, pretensions of equality notwithstanding. In a gay wedding, either the wedding is genuinely about the couple equally, which represents a departure from the traditional wedding, or else one partner is the de facto bride. This is a grey area.
How the brides or grooms dress is largely up to them. Flamboyant couples might like one or both to dress in drag, and I guess tuxedos of some form are popular among lesbians. I think most gay men prefer for both partners to get married in a tux, which is certainly what we're planning to do, unless Matt has some plans he's not telling me about! 
But no, really, it's not that much different than the variety you see in straight weddings, with most customs you're used to seeing having a direct analog in the world of gay weddings. There is nothing difficult to figure out, at least, no more difficult than any other wedding. There is certainly a burgeoning industry growing around making gay weddings as opulent and expensive as possible - it didn't take the wedding industry long to cash in! Check out where I found the photo I included with this article - that cake topper alone is eighty-five bucks!
Comments:
There are 5 comments on this item.
On March 2nd, 2010
Stephen DeGrace
wrote:
I gotta go on record as saying no Norwegian pants allowed... well, maybe for the wedding party. That'll sure take care of making sure that no one else looks better than the grooms!
On March 10th, 2010 Michelle Knott wrote:
Yes, those pants would pretty much guarantee that at least no one LOOKED like the grooms!
On July 11th, 2010 Joseph Deegan wrote:
Hey, im just wondering about the whole thing from an engagement? Do both the gay couple get rings? And would they then wear them on the same finger as a straight couple? I think it's really important that young gay people should be more educated in the same-sex relationships instead of other veiws being pushed on them and being gay myself it makes you feel as if you've been pushed into a grey area and not knowing what's the norm.
On July 11th, 2010
Stephen DeGrace
wrote:
I think the engagement probably depends on how much discussion went into it before hand. There isn't clearly one partner who "should" propose to the other, so I suspect that in most couples, the decision to marry is discussed extensively in advance (as it probably is in the majority of straight couples these days, actually), but there often might not be a formal proposal of one to the other and probably both or neither get rings.
In our case, though, Mathieu proposed to me (it was very sweet) and gave me a ring, and only I have the ring. So as with anything in this whole field, there's doubtless a lot of variety.
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On March 1st, 2010 Michelle Knott wrote:
This was great! I think you should do a Black & White wedding, one in a white tux & one of you in a black tux. But, then again, I like Norweigan pants!!