If you’re recently engaged or thinking of getting hitched, check out these lesbian-friendly websites.
So you’re engaged! Once the excitement wears off, you find yourself in a position that many modern brides find themselves in—the planning, the details, the stress. So many opinions. So many factors. Even if you have a vision in mind, making it a reality can be challenging—for heterosexual couples, let alone lesbian couples. However, heterosexuals have the benefit of a long line of tradition, books and history behind them to help guide them through what is often an unromantic, taxing process. Want something more traditional? Not sure what would make the perfect lesbian wedding? Want to see how other lesbians have done it? There is a treasure trove of resources for “brides to be” online.
The following is a list of sites to help you get through the planning process and on the way to the wedding of your dreams.
Wedding Club (www.weddingclub.com.au)
Wedding Club, formerly The Knot, is the mega-site of all wedding sites and probably the most well-known. Anything you could possibly need to know about wedding planning is on this site—from getting engaged, to budget calculators, to post-wedding thank you notes, and planning a fabulous honeymoon. Photo galleries, do it yourself ideas and advice abound. Best of all, a portion of the site is devoted to gay weddings. Located under the Real Weddings directory, you will find The Ultimate Gay Wedding Planner (gay.weddings.com), photo galleries with tons of gorgeous and inspirational photos, Same-Sex Wedding Etiquette Q&A and a Gay Wedding board to ask all your questions and get advice. An invaluable resource, The Knot is a great place to start. It’s a little more on the traditional and mainstream side, well as much as gay weddings can be, meaning that it tends to follow the script of the way weddings have occurred historically.
Off Beat Bride (offbeatbride.com)
The Off Beat Bride is an amazing resource for brides looking to plan something a little different or very different for that matter. This site has weddings of all kinds! Tattoos, red wedding dresses, ska bands, hula hooping, ring bearing dogs, you name it. There are so many original ideas and loads of “wedding porn”—what Ariel, founder of the website and author of “Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides”, affectionately calls the endless slide presentations of photos from the weddings that are featured. Lesbian, Gay and Heterosexual weddings are all mixed together and posted blog style. Wedding porn is no joke. It is easy to be on this site for hours and say to yourself “wow—how did they think of that” or “man—wasn’t I supposed to be at a meeting 15 minutes ago”.
It’s addictive, sort of like those first couple pieces of chocolate—you’ve gotta have more. In addition to the blog posts, you can find advice, a vendor directory and a link to the Off Beat Tribe, which defines itself as “a private experimental social network for kick-ass, independently-minded couples planning their weddings”. At the tribe site, groups and boards address individual needs and interests. For those mamas out there, after becoming a mother herself, Ariel recently launched The Off Beat Mama (Offbeatmama.com)—another cool site worthy of attention. Are you wondering how to have an interfaith Pagan/Jewish wedding, one black wedding dress, one blue wedding dress, outdoors, and a heavy metal-themed reception for under $2,000? This is definitely the site for you. Posts are tagged so you can search by keyword if you want a more targeted search.
Brides Who Like Brides at The Off Beat Tribe
Brides Who Like Brides is a group on The Off Beat Tribe site. It includes many posts from brides who discuss topics such as the semantics of a lesbian wedding pronouncement (I now pronounce you wife and wife perhaps?), lesbian wedding cake toppers, the wording for your invitations, family issues and transgendered couples tying the knot. (A transgendered group was recently formed for transgendered individuals and their allies, but only has a few members at present—so go join and help the group get going!). Another forum to check out on The Off Beat Tribe is Bi Brides, which has some valuable and interesting information.
The Wedding Bee (weddingbee.com)
Started by Bee Kim when she created the site to chronicle her journey through her own wedding planning process, the Wedding Bee is now a wedding blog featuring real bride bloggers or “bees” from across the US and Canada. There is a board for LGBTQ brides (boards.weddingbee.com/board/lgbtq), but it is still gaining momentum. At present, it is free for all for any LGBTQ related topic or question. It takes a little time to navigate the threads, but there are lots of great posts once you dig inside.
Ms Awesome (msawesome.com)
A regular poster on the Wedding Bee LGBTQ board (that’s how I found her), Tabitha aka Ms Awesome has created a fabulous blog named Ms Awesome Weds—2 Brides, 1 Wedding. Living in Downtown, Los Angeles, Ms Awesome documents her relationship with her partner Cynthia along with her adventures in, “planning an awesome wedding to another girl.” You can also follow her on the Wedding Bee where her username is Ms Stripes.
