What to Call Your Wedding Party

Your best man. Your best woman. Your maid of honor. Your attendant. Your groomsman. Your bridesmaid. Your person of honor. Your best person. Your best people. Your man of honor. Your bestie. Your bridesmates. Your bestmates.

Who are these people? Take your pick of any or none at all. This is one of those areas where I’ll say “anything goes at a gay wedding.” You can mix it up and have opposite-gender individuals as your attendants. You can have no attendants at all. You can “share” attendants. Why not? This is a gay wedding and you can do whatever the heck you want. I’m not going to keep saying that, I promise. But you can. Over half of the weddings I’ve planned have had no wedding parties at all—and that’s perfectly wonderful because it keeps the emphasis on the couple.

What are you going to call your wedding party?

Engagement Rings and Wedding Bands for Gay Couples

I had a great question from a bride the other day I wanted to answer here: Do gay couples wear wedding bands along with the engagement ring? For example, When two men marry will one of them wear an additional band to compliment the engagement ring?

In my observation, many men will only wear one ring, not two. In this case, often the engagement ring will double as a wedding band.

Younger lesbian brides (those under 40) are likelier to wear two rings. For example, my wife Jen, like many lesbians, wears her engagement ring and wedding band next to each other on the same finger. This is very common, and of course, traditional. My engagement ring doesn't have a stone (my choice) so my engagement ring is now on the ring finger of my right hand, and my wedding band is on the ring finger of my left hand.

I've noticed that gay and lesbian couples who are older and/or who've been together for a long time, already wear rings and in this case, usually substitute those rings with new wedding bands, forgoing an engagement ring altogether. These couples are also less likely to have had a traditional "pop the question" proposal experience, hence the lack of engagement rings.

What did you decide to do?

photo by Gretje Ferguson

Welcome to Gay.Weddings.com!

Congratulations on your engagement! As a newlywed myself (I married my wife last year), I can tell you that you are going to love being married!

Now, I know that the wedding planning process is stressful, even more so for same-sex couples - you have to think about who to

invite, how much to spend, if you want to make it legal and much more. I'm here to help.

Six years ago (can hardly believe it's been that long), I started a company in Boston that was the first company in the U.S. specializing in planning same-sex weddings. Fortunately for us, gay marriage actually had just become fully legal in Massachusetts. It was the first state where gay marriage was legalized, six years ago. Now it's legal in a few other states including Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa and the District of Columbia.

I've personally worked with hundreds of LGBT couples on their marriage plans and this blog is here to be a resource for YOURS! I'll be sharing tips, helpful hints and etiquette advice and I'm also going to answer some reader questions.

If you have any questions on your gay wedding planning process, please send the question to ask@14stories.com and I will answer the question in an upcoming post.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your stories!

photo by Kristin Korpos