Dancing with Her is Australia’s only wedding resource dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ+ women in love.

It was started by couple Tara and Arlia who, when they got engaged, found themselves thrust into a world not made for them.

“We came across vendor after vendor that stated that they were supportive of marriage equality – yet their language and media wasn’t diverse,” said Tara. “Our sexualities were assumed as heterosexual and we were asked time and time again for our groom’s name.”

Undeterred by the current status of marriage in Australia, Tara and Arlie wanted a wedding to celebrate their love.

“We went searching for wedding inspiration and came across an industry that was incredibly hetero-normative, it lacked diversity and representation,” said Tara.

And so DWH was born. It began with an Instagram account, which grew to a website, and now the girls are celebrating the launch of a glossy new magazine.

[Our magazine is] something that can sit proudly on the stands at the newsagent next to all the other wedding magazines,” said Tara. “A magazine that a young person will walk past and see and know that for them to have a choice to marry any person they loved is something that drives us every day.”

The choice to marry is a right that the girls strongly believe in. Their legal status as a ‘de facto’ couple caused Tara to face serious discrimination when Arlia suffered life-threatening, coma-inducing trauma.  “I wasn’t considered family,” said Tara. “I wasn’t allowed any say in medical decisions nor the right to information during a 5-hour emergency, life-saving, brain surgery.”

DWH will also be available in a small selection of specialty bookstores in Australian capital cities from mid-October, with volume two due in February next year.