The Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings (10 page)

TWENTY-ONE: THE HONEYMOONERS

Why Bother?
Destinations
Honeymoon at Home
Travel Tips
Booking the Room

TWENTY-TWO: THE AFTERMATH

Newspaper Announcements
Changing Your Name
What Do You Call Him/Her?
Happily Ever After

RESOURCES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

I
N
2008,
ACTOR
George Takei, who played Sulu in the original
Star Trek
series and movies, legally married his partner of twenty-one years, Brad Altman, while “Scotty” and “Uhura” looked on.

If, when we wrote this book in 1994, you had told us that within fifteen years that scene would be taking place, we might have responded, “Talk about science fiction!” When we first started doing our research, the idea of a same-sex wedding planner was borderline nervy, maybe even radical. You were almost guaranteed a jaw-dropping reaction just by saying the words, “lesbian wedding,” for the simple reason that many people had never even heard of the concept, much less attended a same-sex union ceremony. And although the numbers of gay weddings were increasing, little hope was given to the idea of legalized gay marriage.

By the time the second edition was printed, only five years later, domestic partnership was proliferating, offered by corporations, cities, and universities; four European countries had provisions for legal partnerships for gays and lesbians; and the blessing of LGBT unions by many religious authorities was commonplace.

And now, in 2012, we find ourselves living in a country where same-sex marriage is legal in seven states plus Washington, D.C., is acknowledged by three more, and is advancing in court cases in a number of others. Five states have laws providing the equivalent of state-level spousal rights to same-sex couples. Worldwide, there are ten countries that extend marriage rights to same-sex couples (the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, and Argentina), with a number of others recognizing civil unions.

It seems as if the real world and the media have been one-upping each other as we have progressed through this.

The first gay wedding on a network TV series (
Roc
) aired in 1991; since then we've seen ceremonies on
Northern Exposure, Roseanne, Friends, Whoopi, The Simpsons, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Picket Fences,
and
Six Feet Under,
among others. Following their on-air wedding in May 2008, Kevin on
Brothers and Sisters
regularly refers to Scotty as “my husband.” Gay marriage is apparently so widely acceptable a concept that now straight same-sex characters are beginning to marry one another. In
The New Adventures of Old Christine,
Christine marries Barb to keep her from getting deported, and they spend the 2008–09 season in what Julia Louis Dreyfuss labels a “sexless same-sex marriage.” In the series finale of
Boston Legal,
best friends Denny Crane and Alan Shore say, “I do.”

And then there are the real-life gay celeb weddings. In 2004, after six years and four children together, Rosie O'Donnell and Kelli Carpenter tied the knot in San Francisco. On the first day that civil partnerships became legal in England, Sir Elton John wed his partner of twelve years, David Furnish, followed by a party where guests included Victoria Beckham, Mick Jagger, and Donatella Versace. And of course there was the Ellen DeGeneres-Portia di Rossi wedding, which Ellen shared and discussed with the audience of her hit daytime talk show.

MTV's
Engaged and Underage
featured a nineteen-year-old lesbian couple who met on MySpace and got engaged six weeks later. The Los Angeles
Times
called this “groundbreaking stuff, mostly because it proves that marriage-related stupidity isn't just for straight people anymore.”

Hallmark is selling same-sex wedding cards.
Hallmark!

True, there has also been a backlash, with a total of forty-one states that have laws restricting “marriage” to one man and one woman. But this is part of what comes with change—two steps forward, one step back. Yes, there are still some people who just don't get it, but three-quarters of U.S. adults favor either marriage or domestic partnerships/civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. Even better news is that they are now almost evenly divided on same-sex marriage, with those aged eighteen to thirty-four being even more supportive—which of course means that in the not-too-distant future we'll have the all of the numbers on our side.

Although we did originally approach this book as if same-sex marriage were suddenly legal, we're baby boomers, and, frankly, we doubted that we'd see it happen in our lifetimes. You who are Gen Xers or Millennials have grown up in a time when gay rights were somewhat taken for granted; you were stunned when Proposition 8 passed in California, removing your right to marry. But now we all share the same wonderful reality: same-sex marriage equality is no longer a matter of
if
; it's just a matter of
when.

The reason that this book came about in the first place was that it was difficult to maneuver through straight wedding planners to try and make them work for gay ceremonies. Some of the old wedding rules just didn't apply, and others seemed antiquated. So we set out to write a how-to book that not only would give information concerning same-sex weddings, but would also free you from the bounds of what you may think a traditional wedding is supposed to be. And we always approached these ceremonies as “real” weddings, even when they weren't legal anywhere.

Since that time, many people have bought this book or passed it on to younger-generation straight couples to help them plan their weddings, because, as usual, the LGBT community is cutting-edge, and by thinking outside the box, we're making things better. Gay and lesbian weddings are often much more creative than straight weddings, and so straight couples are beginning to rethink their own traditions and borrow from gay weddings. It's not too farfetched to imagine a reality show called
The Queer Eye for the Straight Wedding,
now is it?