Getting Married - the Plan and Resources

I never really thought about my wedding. For a long time, I didn't even think about getting married. I wanted to be in a long-term partnership but I wasn't sure when that would happen and I could never picture what it would be like. So, when Emet and I decided to get married, I had no idea about what I wanted for a wedding. Yes, I wanted my family there and my friends. I wanted a celebration, but not something over-the-top ridiculous. Emet and I came up with what was important to us - friends and family present, a traditional Jewish wedding as much as possible, and not to break the bank.

We are lucky that we come from supportive families who embrace our queerness. I am the first in my family to get married (of three daughters) and Emet is the second. We are also lucky that there are a lot of resources out there for us to utilize in planning our wedding. At the same time, once you start looking on the typical wedding planning websites, you quickly recognize that the wedding industry is completely absurd. For a long time now, queer people haven't had the typical weddings as heterosexual couples planned. So it only makes sense that there isn't a lot of information on the typical wedding websites and that they are very heteronormative.

Credit: Room with a View

The whole wedding industry is very absurd to me. We are two people who want to commit to each other and want to celebrate it with our friends and family. Neither of us has been planning our wedding since the age of 2. I don't want a $3000 dress, a $7000 venue, a $1000 cake, and be the complete center of attention for approximately 14 hours. Hence, it was very difficult at the beginning of our planning process to wade through all the information for exactly what I want.

Now, as opposed to 10 years ago, there are many websites, venues, photographers, DJs, etc. that are queer-welcoming these days, and many resources are out there for the non-traditional wedding. My favorites are:
OffBeatBride.com
A Bicycle Built for Two, which profile queer/lesbian couples
While I also love the website Intimate Weddings, we are not having an intimate wedding.
I became a Pinterest user, too.
For the more traditional questions, The Knot forums and Wedding Wire are okay.

Like our relationship, Emet and I want to be very intentional about our wedding. Our ceremony is going to be very intentional, using the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony with a few of our own special additions. We have specific ideas about our reception, too. Essentially, we want to make it a good time for everyone involved and include bits of us and our story and our personalities in the reception. With that as our goal and our priorities set, it was easier to sort through all the websites to find inspiration.