Blush and Bashful: How To Plan a Lesbian Wedding Ceremony
feature image photo by martinedoucet via Getty Images
Somewhere in between thrifting 50 floral print hankies and meeting with the queer chef who is catering my wedding, I realized that I had to actually… figure out what I wanted my wedding ceremony to look like. Sure, the event is essentially a backyard campout weekend with an incredibly specific aesthetic, but it’s also the time we’re setting aside to get married. So I guess we should… do that!
Whether you’re planning on legally involving the state in your union or not, the ceremonial part of the wedding is a major component (unless you choose not to include it, which we’ll touch on in this post, too). So it’s worth talking about a little bit or a lot a bit when planning a big gay wedding, and we’re here to talk about planning a big gay wedding! So let’s get into it!
What does a wedding ceremony entail?
Haha, okay, so the first thing I did when writing this post is google “what do you need to do to legally get married.” I’ve clearly spent more time thinking about the floral arrangements than the nitty gritty details of marriage so far! But the thing is, legally getting married and having a wedding ceremony are not really the same. To get legally married in the United States, you need to get a marriage license and then a marriage certificate. The laws are mostly the same across state lines, but a quick internet search will give you the details of your specific state.
A wedding ceremony is not something that can be dictated by a quick internet search, because it’s highly personal! You and the person or people you’re marrying will work together to create your ideal ceremony, and that can truly include… well, anything. A lot of big wedding websites will have “guides” for the general flow of a wedding, but having attended quite a few queer weddings at this point, I can say that our ceremonies do not always represent those ones at all. For example, my partner and I don’t have a wedding party, so no one is coming down the aisle before us in the “processional” — it’s literally just us walking down the aisle together. For another example, two of my best friends did a beautiful hand fasting ceremony together at their wedding, and there was no aisle at all — they were already standing together at the front of the space when the guest filtered in, and we all did a spiral dance together to close out the ceremony and then dispersed naturally, rather than having a formal exit or “recessional.”
So while I do think it can be useful to look up general templates of wedding ceremonies if you have no idea where to begin, I also think if you want to just throw the whole template out the window and do it however you want to, that’s cool as hell. The main point of a wedding ceremony is for you and your partner to declare your intentions in front of your community, and as long as you do that in a way that feels good to you, you’re killing it.
Who is going to officiate?
One thing that all wedding ceremonies I’ve ever attended have had is an officiant. That’s the person who leads the ceremony, and in movies says things like, “You may now kiss the bride!” (They say that in real life too, it just feels like such an epic movie moment to me every time, lol.) An officiant can be a religious leader (many Jewish people have a rabbi officiate, for example), a good friend, or anyone who is legally certified to officiate a wedding (my understanding is that you can become an officiant swiftly and easily on the internet, so it’s truly a “whoever you want” kind of moment).
Some things to think about when choosing an officiant: Is it important to you to have a religious leader officiate? Would you like a family member or friend to do it? If you’re choosing someone you don’t know, do they have the same values as you and do you think they will listen to your desires for the way your ceremony will go? Do they have experience officiating a wedding before? Do you think they can pull it off without crying? (One of my best friends was recently demoted from officiating another friend’s wedding because she sobbed so hard at the last wedding she attended no one believes she could make it through her little spiel, lol.)
My partner and I asked two of our best friends to officiate our wedding because we didn’t want any strangers at the wedding, we didn’t mind if the officiant wasn’t a rabbi even though we are Jewish, and because we want them to bring their personality and their energy to the ceremony. It’s just one more way we can make the event intimate and special for us.
Will your community participate?
Something that is quite common during wedding ceremonies is asking your community to participate in some way. This can mean assigning a few readings to people (it can be very meaningful to choose readings with the people you’d like to read them, so you know they believe in the words they’re sharing, or to give them some options to choose between), having your guests all pass around a special crystal or other magic object to imbue with love and community that you’ll then hold onto, or doing a “group vow” which is essentially when everyone at the wedding recites a promise to support the people getting married.
Some religions have community participation built into their rituals (to speak from my experience, in Judaism the Seven Blessings are usually read by seven different guests, and we’re having all our guests recite the final blessing together so every single person feels involved with the ceremony) but it’s easy to include this in your wedding even if you aren’t religious and won’t be doing any explicitly religious rituals; you just have to plan accordingly and decide what would feel good to you. I am always a fan of having guests read poetry at a wedding ceremony. Perhaps that’s a given as I’m a writer and a lesbian, but truly, what is better than a love poem read by a hot queer in celebration of a big gay wedding?!
How the fuck do you write your vows?
When I originally pitched this week’s column subject I said it would be “How to write your vows” but lol, it turns out I do not know how and the internet has been only mildly useful in educating me! So I pivoted to a subject I felt more knowledgable about, and now we’ll address the vows as one aspect of your ceremony. And the answer to how you write your vows is… if anyone knows please tell me?!
Seriously, I’ve polled lots of different friends about this and have not received much useful advice. One friend said, “I wrote them the night before the wedding in a panic and honestly blacked out while reading them so I don’t even know what I said,” and that does seem to be the vibe. Currently I know my partner feels pressure about writing her vows because I’m “the writer” of the family, and I feel pressure about writing my vows because I’m “a writer”… perhaps the only truth of wedding vows is you will feel some pressure around writing them?!?!
I will say that I have been getting aggressively targeted ads on Instagram for this app called Provenance that helps craft ceremony scripts and vows, but when I finally decided to try it out (for science!), it immediately asked me to pay cash money to access the vows portion of the website, so never mind on that.
So, okay, here’s my answer to this question as of now. When I have sat down to write the rough draft of my vows, I’ve tried to think of it as four parts: 1. Our love story, 2. What I love about my partner, 3. Why I appreciate our community and their support, 4. What I promise/vow to do for/with my partner in our married life together. And my goal is to keep it between 1-3 minutes because in reality, as much as our loved ones love us, no one is at our wedding to attend a long reading… they just wanna celebrate our love and get to the dance party! I realize this is a very tiny amount of practical advice and I apologize. I’m finding that it’s really hard to write wedding vows! If anyone has any better practical advice, I’d genuinely love to hear about it in the comments.
Will you include religious or cultural rituals?
There are so many religious and cultural rituals when it comes to wedding ceremonies, and what you include will be entirely up to you. My partner and I are Jewish witches (Jewitches, if you will) so we’re doing a few Jewish rituals plus a magic ritual. We’re also signing a ketubah (a Jewish marriage contract) as well as a state marriage license. The way we pick and chose what rituals we wanted to include was very intentional — we are lucky enough to not have any immediate family members telling us what to do for our wedding, so we just went through the options of what we could do and decided which ones mattered to us. We included some and set aside others.
It should go without saying but I’ll say it anyway: If you are choosing a religious or cultural ritual for your wedding, make sure it is from your collective religions or cultures, not an appropriative moment. I saw some white women selling “dream catcher bridal headdresses” at the bridal expo I went to and it was truly disgusting — do not be this person!
I would actually really love to include some guest posts to this column about specific wedding rituals for different religions and cultures, so if you’ve participated in one and would like to write about it from a first person perspective, please pitch me (vanessa [at] autostraddle [dot] com, but please don’t expect a reply until late June because, you know, my wedding is coming up, lol).
What if you want it all to be private?
That is totally okay! I have friends who hosted a wedding party but wanted the actual ceremony to be private so they did it on a separate day a few weeks before the event. I have friends who wanted their entire wedding to be very private so they only invited ten people. I have seen a lot of Instagram posts about couples saying “private vows” to each other that are more personal (or simply longer) and then saying shorter more public vows during their wedding ceremonies. If you want things to be extremely private you can always elope! And I’m sure there are a million other ways to create a more private wedding ceremony. While legally you do have to have a couple of witnesses to call it a marriage, your ceremony can look any way you want it to, and if that means you actually don’t want others looking at it, then they shan’t! Your wedding, your calls.
Blush and Bashful is a biweekly queer wedding planning column.
Blush and Bashful: How To Save Money on Your Lesbian Wedding
feature image photo by toncd32 via Getty Images
I have to be honest — when I started writing this article, I did some research online to see what major bridal publications are suggesting when it comes to saving money on a wedding, and I ended up feeling shocked about all the things people actually spend money on to begin with! Which reminded me, of course, how “wedding” is one of those words that seems to have just one definition, but actually has a million — a wedding is truly what you make it, and it can truly cost whatever you decide to spend on it!
That said, this list is quite specific to the wedding I’m planning, which is a budget affair. I was never going to pay someone to print our invitations on fancy cardstock or to address them with fancy calligraphy (thank you Zola print shop!), I was never going to serve sushi at our reception (we’re going buffet style, baybeeee), and I was never going to buy boutonnieres for our groomsmen because, to be blunt, we don’t have any! (To be fair, we don’t have a bridal party at all, so we won’t be spending money on florals for anyone besides the brides to hold or wear.)
I think the general vibe of this article can be used regardless of your actual budget for your wedding, but as always, I’d love to hear in the comments how you saved money or are planning to save money on your event. Here are some tips and tricks I’m using to save money on my lesbian wedding!
Buy your own alcohol
When I started planning my wedding, I was adamant that the main thing I cared about was the food and the beverages. Everything else I was comfortable being low key about, but I wanted an abundance of delicious food and drinks and I wanted everyone to feel very taken care of in that regard. The cool thing is, you do NOT need to hire a bartender or do a fancy bar scenario in order to provide a truly top notch drinks experience for your guests.
I am having a backyard-style wedding, so buying our own booze and non-alcoholic options is an obvious choice, but even if you’re working with a caterer, many of them will give you the option to purchase your own beverages. A friend of mine who works as a professional caterer even suggests this to her clients, because she knows how much money it will save them and is a good person, lol. You don’t have to do anything fancy — buying wine and kegs and sparkling water and juices is just fine — but if you want to do some batch mix cocktails, that’s doable on your own, too. My partner and I went out to a bar and tried a bunch of drinks to see what tastes and vibes we wanted to emulate at our wedding, purchased some gallon batch drink dispensers, and will be mixing up our own cocktails on-site.
Have a smaller wedding
Depending on who you are as a bride/groom/person getting married, this one is either a no brainer or incredibly challenging.
If you’ve always dreamt of a small intimate wedding, you’re nodding your head vigorously right now. But if you have a large community, are anticipating having to invite a lot of family, or simply love a giant party, this is a really hard suggestion to take on. The truth is though, literally everything will go down in cost if there are fewer people at your event. Think of everything you are going to provide: food, drinks, chairs, table spots, potentially transportation, rentals… even the amount of space you need (and thus, the cost of the venue you rent) is affected by how many guests you invite.
My partner and I wanted to invite all our friends, and to be honest the act of paring down the guest list was really challenging and in some cases emotionally painful. But our financial reality was such that we could only afford a very small wedding. If you can keep your guest list tight, you will save money across the board. It’s just math.
Spend less on your dress
Okay, I used the word “dress” because it rhymes with “less,” but obviously you can wear whatever the heck you want to your wedding! The sentiment still stands though: How cheap can you go while buying these garments?
Wedding dresses and formal suits and all sorts of fancy dress wear comes in a huge range of prices — you can literally drop $20,000 on a dress in a blink of an eye. Can you imagine?! But even more “reasonable” wedding clothes can be really expensive for the average consumer. That said, there are many ways to go with a cheaper plan. You can thrift, you can keep an eye out for trunk shows and sample sales, you can buy a lightly used dress either online or at specific stores that cater to this, you can buy a dress you like that isn’t “a wedding dress” and thus will be dramatically cheaper, you can rent an outfit… these are just a few options when thinking about how to get the cost down on your dress/wedding outfit.
Plan ahead as much as possible
Depending on the length of your engagement, you may have a lot of time or you may have very little time to plan your wedding. The further you can plan ahead, though, the better when it comes to saving money.
As is often the case in life, everything feels more relaxed when you have ample time, so you can shop sales, look for free stuff, and get multiple quotes for services to make sure you’re getting the best deals.
Some particular things to keep in mind here: rush shipping will always cost more, so if you’re able to order things (like invitations, party favors, any ceremonial ritual items you want, etc) far out, that’s ideal. Some days of the week are more expensive than others when it comes to weddings — a venue may charge less for a Sunday wedding, a photographer may charge less for a weekday night, etc. When you start prepping for a wedding, you will find yourself looking to buy the weirdest, most random things, and not all will scream “wedding,” so being able to shop sales at any time is useful (for example, those batch gallon drinks dispensers I referenced above just went on sale at my local grocery store because it’s finally grilling season in the PNW, and I took the opportunity to snatch up several of them… way cheaper than purchasing them full price).
I also really utilized OfferUp (a Facebook Marketplace adjacent app) for decorations, and being able to keep an eye out for the past year to see when folks are getting rid of like, three huge floor rugs or five giant rolls of pink tulle has been invaluable. I’ve spent almost zero dollars on decorations, simply from having the time to find deals and drive to the suburbs to pick them up.
Mix up fake and real floral
You may not be doing floral centerpieces or decorations at all, in which case disregard this tip, but I know a lot of people do drop a ton of money on fancy florals for a wedding and I’m here to say… you don’t have to! I was initially very skeptical of fake floral, but I have been so impressed with the quality of fake flowers these days (available at Goodwill or craft shops) and I find they look just as good (if not better!) than real flowers when mixed with greenery or other decorations. If you really don’t want to use any fake floral but still want to save money, you can go with only greenery, and it will be much cheaper. And if you’re looking for cheap real flowers and are okay doing a bit of work yourself, skip the florist and go directly to a supermarket like Trader Joe’s or Fred Meyer (or whichever store sells food and flowers near you) first thing in the morning the day before the wedding and go wild there.
Accept help
Something that has been really surprising to me over the course of this process is how much my friends and family want to help with the wedding. I initially felt like I was being annoying or asking too much when I requested assistance with wedding-related tasks, but the more I’ve leaned in to accepting help, the more it’s become apparent to me that people in my life are genuinely excited about this and genuinely want to pitch in.
Accepting help for your wedding looks different for different people. You may be hiring a wedding planner and day of coordinator and not really need (or want) your mother in law to weigh in on every detail. You may be throwing a backyard wedding and absolutely do want all hands on deck in prepping your garden for the ceremony and your house for the reception. You may fall somewhere in between those two points. But whatever kind of wedding you’re having, think about the ways in which receiving help would actually feel helpful, and practice asking for and then accepting that help.
I was planning to pay for bridal bouquets, but a close friend who grows a gorgeous garden asked if she could make them for us as a gift. I accepted. One of my best friends is a bedazzling queen, and she offered to bedazzle my Tevas and my partner’s Crocs (yes we’re wearing Tevas and Crocs), and I was thrilled. My mom wants to help me bake the cupcakes we need for dessert, and I’m delighted to let her. All of this help is being offered freely — it’s stuff these people genuinely want to contribute — and it’s both saving me money and creating a very special atmosphere around my wedding. If there are ways, big or small, that your community can show up for you — let them! You’d do the same for them.
Don’t include things you don’t care about
This step is arguably the most important one when it comes to wedding planning, period.
Weddings are steeped in cultural norms and expectations, and once you start planning it’s hard not to get swept up in that. But if you don’t care about something — don’t do it. And even more importantly: don’t spend money on doing it.
My partner and I didn’t send out save the dates because we didn’t want to; we just sent our invitations out super early instead. We initially weren’t going to print programs, which I actually still think is an excellent money saving tip, but then we realized we have a lot of Pagan and Jewish rituals happening at the ceremony and many of our guests will be unfamiliar with them, so we did print programs after all because we wanted to include explanations about the ceremony rituals so our guests could follow along. This is a key example of only including things you care about: it turns out it is important to me to have programs, so we’ll spend money on them. But if you truly don’t care about it, that’s a great way to save!
Here’s a short list of things you may not care to spend money on for your wedding: a fancy venue, an elaborate outfit, a huge guest list, party favors, floral arrangements, a guestbook, something blue… or maybe you do care about all those things! There is no right or wrong way to host a wedding — but when you’re thinking about how to save money at your gay wedding, it’s a good idea to get really clear on what is and isn’t important to you, so you can spend and save accordingly.
Blush and Bashful is a biweekly queer wedding planning column.
Blush and Bashful: Why Am I So Stressed About a Wedding Hashtag?
feature image photo by mtreasure via Getty Images
I guess every bride has that One Thing.
Or maybe every bride like me has That One Thing.
Or maybe some brides have Many Things.
I don’t know, maybe some brides are extremely chill and have Zero Things!
All I know is that despite promising myself and my fiancée I wouldn’t get too stressed out about any aspect of the wedding, I somehow found myself fixating for hours over (and yes, definitely stressing)… our wedding hashtag. I want to roll my own eyes into the back of my head and then walk into the sea when I admit it, and yet! It is a truth! For some reason, deciding on the hashtag we would use at our wedding was the thing that kept me up at night for weeks. WHY?!?!
Well, for those who don’t know, wedding hashtags became popular more than a decade ago (I know, because I spent a lot of time in 2013 complaining about how stupid having a wedding hashtag was) as a way to organize the wedding photos people posted to social media. It was also a branding gimmick, a way to give your wedding a theme, so to speak. People tried to be punny; they rarely succeeded. (I’m sorry! It’s true!) I used to hate wedding hashtags. Then I accepted them as a necessity; it made sense to use a hashtag to keep all your photos under one general “link” on social media. Then I became fixated on creating the perfect one for my wedding. Except… I couldn’t.
Listen. When I say people rarely succeed at being punny (or creating a good hashtag at all), I am including myself in the offending parties! As a general rule, people getting married are people, not brands. Perhaps you work in copywriting or advertising and are a genius when it comes to creating snappy slogans and cute headlines, but most of us are mere mortals (yes I am the kind of writer who has a terrible time generating my own headlines and naming my own projects). So the hashtags inevitably end up being long, unwieldy, easy to misspell, and completely defeating their purpose, if we can argue they ever had a particularly useful one.
But instead of admitting defeat, I doubled down. I’m a writer! I’m a thinker! My partner is funny and creative! My friends all own small businesses and have learned to market themselves on the internet! I grew up on the computer! I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO THIS. That’s how I felt. Amid practical to-do list items such as “get wedding dress altered” and “meet with caterer to confirm menu,” I kept stubbornly writing: “CREATE WEDDING HASHTAG.” And then I would feel embarrassed about wanting to create a wedding hashtag, and embarrassed about not being able to, and so! stressed! out!
I learned some weird things about wedding hashtags while fixating on this. Did you know there’s such a thing as a random wedding hashtag generator? Or that you can pay someone to create a custom wedding hashtag for you? I did not know such things! I was not stressed enough to partake in these options, but to be totally honest I considered it, and that in itself was stressful to me! WHO HAD I BECOME?!?!?!
When my best friend finally suggested that maybe we actually didn’t need a wedding hashtag, I was so high strung about it I fought her for a while before realizing what a gift she was offering me. Oh yeah. It was like I snapped out of a haze, came back to myself. I’ve never wanted a wedding hashtag. I don’t want a neon sign with a punny phrase that isn’t actually punny combining our names together for a photobooth. I promised myself and my fiancée that if any aspect of planning the wedding became too stressful, I’d trash it. (For example I’d been really dead set on hole punching heart-shaped confetti out of dried leaves and thank goddess I swiftly talked myself out of that before ever taking a heart-shaped hole puncher to a single leaf, bless my heart, because the mere thought of it stressed me out.) But somehow, the wedding hashtag had snuck into my brain. I like to think of myself as a chill bride (lol, okay, no one is fooled, but I am fairly low maintenance compared to many!) but the truth is, Planning A Wedding is laden with preconceived notions and societal expectations, and it’s easy to fall into those holes even if you’re careful about keeping an eye out for them. For a reason I don’t fully understand, I chose to fixate on a tiny detail of our wedding that I truly don’t give a fuck about. I let it stress me out, I let it upset me, I let it consume a lot of my time.
And then, I let it go.
My fiancée and I always agreed not to do shit we don’t care about for our wedding — we aren’t having a bachelorette party because we don’t want one, we didn’t have a bridal shower for the same reason, we shan’t be wearing garters or anything borrowed or blue because we don’t find those traditions meaningful… this is our vibe. And so finally, after letting it become A Big Deal in my mind, working through it, and letting it go, I have accepted that a wedding hashtag is one more thing we won’t be doing for our wedding. Because I think they’re silly, sure, but mostly because I can’t think of a good one and I no longer care enough to try.
What was your One Thing that you inexplicably let ruin your life / stress you out beyond belief when planning a wedding? What do you imagine your One Thing might be? (Weirdly, it’s rarely what you think it will be, but fun to guess regardless!) Did you have an amazing wedding hashtag and want to yell at me because yours was punny and it’s rude to imply all aren’t? SEE YA IN THE COMMENTS XOXO.
Blush and Bashful is a biweekly queer wedding planning column.
You Need Help: Can I Open My Relationship and Have Casual Sex Without Relying On The Apps?
Q:
I recently asked my partner if they would be okay with opening up our relationship. I’m entering my mid-twenties and have a newfound sense of incredible horniness and my partner has zero interest in sex right now. They were so understanding and supportive and that’s why I love them! But now that we’ve set the ground rules, I don’t know how to make it happen. My partner and I haven’t been having sex for about the last two years, and so on the one hand I am itching for a taste but I am also feeling really inexperienced. I’m worried this hypothetical lover won’t be interested in hooking up with me because I’m in an open relationship or that I’ll inadvertently hurt someone due to my inexperience. Any general advise on crushing this self-doubt (and maybe also some good research materials?) would be so loved and appreciated.
Now, the part that is the most tricky seeming (to me) is that my partner and I both agreed that using dating apps was not something we’re comfortable with. I’m hoping for something to happen more organically, and I also don’t feel like I can be safe AND direct (Can I?? is it okay that my bio would probably read: please just fuck me. also you have to be cool with the fact that I have a long-term boo). Meanwhile, my partner has high anxiety over any social tension that could arise in our friend group. A lot of them call me and my partner wives (we’re not married), are on The Apps and idk… are judgmental?
At first I thought it would be fine not using dating apps. I travel a lot for work, go out to bars, etc. But I wasn’t expecting that it would be so hard to just meet someone? unplanned? Is this not something people do anymore? I feel like I’m making it obvious I Want To Be Approached. But so far, I haven’t had success and everyone is in groups! I am freaking out that dating apps are the only way I’m going to have the sexy one night stand of my dreams (or develop a friends with benefits type situation?? *heart eyes*). How can I start having casual sex with people if I don’t want to use dating apps and kinda don’t know where to start, in general?
A:
Hello, friend! I’m going to answer your question in parts, because I feel you are asking two separate questions.
Opening a Relationship 101
So in the beginning of your question, you express excitement that your partner is open to opening up, and also concern that you may cause harm by being new to non-monogamy. I think both of those feelings are fair. And the truth is, you may inadvertently hurt someone in your new escapades — but we are always at risk of hurting people we are in relationship with, whether those relationships are serious, casual, or somewhere in between. And yet we still continue to connect, because humans crave connection and because it can be fun, satisfying, emotional, all the good stuff! It’s sometimes helpful for me to remember that everyone entering into a relationship is a consenting adult who knows about this possible risk of hurt, yet still chooses to dive in. Be kind and communicative, but know that you are not responsible for making sure no one ever experiences hurt.
I think wanting to explore resources and really delve into understanding non-monogamy is an excellent instinct, and I’m happy to provide you with some texts, podcasts, and other suggested reading. I also think the truth is that every single person I know who has ever practiced non-monogamy (myself included) has told me that the learning happens as you go, and no matter how much you try to prepare yourself (or your partners), real life moments pop up and surprise you. But that’s okay. Going into this new chapter of your life will have a learning curve. That’s true of almost all new chapters in our lives. That’s called growth.
You also expressed concern that people won’t want to hookup with you because you’re in a relationship. As long as you’re upfront about your relationship status, I wouldn’t worry about this. Some people won’t want to hookup with you because of it — and that’s a good thing! Finding the right match for a sexual encounter is just as much about saying no to the people who don’t make sense as it is about saying fuck yes to the people who do make sense. This is doubly true for engaging in non-monogamy. You want to be sure you and your casual sex partners are on the same page and looking for the same things (in this case, casual sex) and so if someone is looking for a deeper connection, uninterested in non-monogamy, or simply unnerved about sleeping with someone without a lot of experience in this realm (non-monogamy) yet, it’s a gift to have them say no! The people who want to say yes are the people you should be putting energy into.
(I know you’re kind of kidding in your question, but to be honest, yes, being direct in a profile on the apps is ideal. I would probably not word it exactly as you have — again, I know you’re kidding, but I also feel it’s a good time to mention my favorite writer on the subject of polyamory, DaemonumX, and her incredible motto: TOPS ARE NOT VENDING MACHINES! — but stating what you’re looking for is a good way to find people who would vibe with exactly that. I think it’s sketchy to say “Looking for casual fun” on a dating profile and not mention you have a serious longterm partner if that’s the case. When I was on the apps, lots of people flagged if they were non-monogamous and partnered, and saying exactly what you mean is hot, sexy, and honest, which is of course the hottest and sexiest thing of all!)
For me, actively practicing my self-confidence (may I recommend this piece I wrote in 2019 which, if I may say so myself, is still a Total Banger) and also arming myself with research is a way to crush self-doubt. So I recommend you spend some time looking in the mirror reminding yourself how hot and great you are, and also dive into the Autostraddle archives. I’ve collected a brief sampling of our work on non-monogamy, but there’s much more on the site if you dig around!
Resources for Exploring Non-Monogamy
https://develop.autostraddle.com/8-podcasts-to-get-started-with-polyamory-and-non-monogamy/
The Polyamory Workbook Offers Practical Tips for Navigating Any Relationship
https://develop.autostraddle.com/11-books-for-polyamorous-practice-and-non-monogamy-newbies/
Can I Find Casual Sex Partners Without Using The Apps?
In short, yes. But let’s discuss in long.
Obviously before dating apps existed, people cruised and hooked up! It’s true that the apps are a resource that make this very very very easy, but it’s also true that you don’t need to use them. I was going to suggest going out to bars and events without your partner, but your question indicates that you already do this. I do want to zoom in on one specific detail you mentioned though: “I feel like I’m making it obvious I Want To Be Approached.” I have to respond: Have you considered that in this situation you may need to Do The Approaching?
I know it can be intimidating to approach new people in public, but that is literally what you have to do if you want to meet new people. Sure, maybe some nights you’ll encounter a confident queer who makes a beeline for you and starts chatting, but you know how you can guarantee a confident queer is in the room chatting to new people? Be The Confident Queer You Want To See At The Bar!
I might sound cheeky, and I’m being a bit cheeky, but honestly, one cannot wait around forever hoping people approach us when we want to be approached. Sometimes one must screw up one’s courage, approach someone new, and make the first move. Some people will respond “but I’m a bottom!” and to that I say, bottoms can totally approach hot babes at the bar and make it obvious, through flirtation, innuendo, vibes, and clear communication, that while you are confident and brave and good at asking for what you want, you are Not A Top. As a bottom who loves doing this, I offer you solidarity and I am here to say I believe in you!
A Note on Judgmental Friends
You say in your letter that you and your partner have decided neither of you feel comfortable using the apps, and if that’s what you’ve agreed upon, that’s just fine. As I outlined above, I do strongly believe you can have casual sex even while not using the apps. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t focus for just a moment on one last aspect of your letter. You write: “Meanwhile, my partner has high anxiety over any social tension that could arise in our friend group. A lot of them call me and my partner wives (we’re not married), are on The Apps and idk… are judgmental?”
Your partner not wanting you to use the apps is reason enough not to use them, but I have to say, anyone who is judgmental about folks who choose to open their relationship are kind of jerks who have work to do on themselves! It’s not your job to get your friend group comfortable with the intricacies of your intimate relationship, and it also may lead to tension in the future if you and your partner feel you have something to hide from your friends. I don’t think everyone who practices non-monogamy has to like, shout it from the rooftops, but I am lightly concerned that the people you’re surrounding yourself with would be judgmental about something that you and your partner are both consenting to in the context of your relationship and something that is very normal and will likely bring you joy. I’m not saying you Must Use The Apps or that you should Ditch Your Friends… I’m just suggesting that prioritizing what you and your partner need to feel good and happy in your partnership is more important than your friends’ judgments. And hey, maybe they wouldn’t be judgmental at all. Just some things to think about.
So Can You Open Your Relationship and Have Casual Sex Without Relying On The Apps?
You sure can. I hope you find the above helpful, and I hope our commenters who have experience with this will chime in, too. I wish you the best on this fun journey, and I hope you have all the casual sex a queer could ever desire!
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
Thank You, Ex: For Teaching Me To Save for Retirement
Thank You, Ex is a series of essays about the good things we were gifted by exes and kept.
I don’t think I’ve ever written something so practical and unsexy about a relationship, but I’m here to say that I am forever grateful to my ex who taught me what a Roth IRA is, convinced me to open one, and encouraged me to start putting away money toward my retirement fund ASAP. We did not last as a romantic connection, but her straightforward life advice helped me in both a materially beneficial way and also in a “okay I can pinpoint this moment as one where I’m growing up and learning a thing” kind of way.
When I was 25, I started dating a babe who was about eight years older than me. She had her shit together in a lot of ways that I did not. When we met, I was living on a lesbian commune in a tent (lol) and she was the tech director at a big company based out of California. I was going through a romantic breakup, multiple friend breakups, and a general crisis of confidence in queer community, and she had grown up in Portland, lived her entire life there, had strong ties to community and an equally strong acceptance of the conflict that can arise amongst people who love each other. I was questioning if polyamory was right for me and she’d been wrestling with that question for more than a decade. And, most relevantly for this particular essay, I was very into spending money I had in the moment and not worrying about the future whereas she had been saving for retirement for years.
Or I should say, I was not thinking about my finances for the future until one specific conversation I had with my ex and her best friend. They were both the same age, and they both had impressive full-time jobs. Meanwhile, I was nannying part time and trying to figure out how to freelance successfully. My dad had always encouraged me to open a retirement savings account, but I’d rolled my eyes. Getting older felt far away. I was literally paid in cash every week by my nanny families. My rent was cheap, and I felt like I had More Than Enough.
The three of us, my ex, her best friend, and me, decided to take a road trip in late August, and found ourselves next to a fucking gorgeous lake in Glacier National Park one afternoon when the two of them started comparing their contributions to their Roth IRAs. I had nothing to contribute to the conversation; I was clueless.
A Roth IRA is an Individual Retirement Account to which you contribute after-tax dollars. While there are no current-year tax benefits, your contributions and earnings can grow tax-free, and you can withdraw them tax-free and penalty free after age 59½ and once the account has been open for five years. (Yes I did take that directly from the Charles Schwab website.) I feel embarrassed to share this now, but I was genuinely so shocked to learn they each had accounts like this. I remember thinking — I thought we didn’t believe in big banking! I thought we wanted to say fuck you to The Man! I always thought of my ex as more radical than I was — why was she investing her money in a Roth IRA?
Bless my ex, and her bestie, because they both patiently explained why actually, there’s nothing punk rock about not taking care of your future self if you have the means to. They’d both grown up with significantly less financial privilege than I had, and I think they were both a little unimpressed with my ignorance. And that’s fair. When you’ve never worried about having enough money growing up, it might not occur to you to save for the future, and it’s a huge privilege to have that mindset. They helped me realize that and unpack it, and they also helped me with the practical next step: I opened up my own Roth IRA and started making tiny contributions.
You can contribute $6000 total to a Roth IRA over the course of a tax year, which breaks down to $500/month if you want to max it out. I couldn’t imagine ever having that much extra income to invest when they taught me about this specific retirement savings account, and frankly, almost ten years later, I still can’t. I just don’t make enough money for that to be realistic. But they encouraged me to put away whatever I could, and I started out with $50/month and a few years later bumped it up to $100/month. That’s where I’m still at, though I do try to put extra money in at the end of every tax year. Every little bit counts, and like my ex taught me, saving to take care of my future self is both an act of self love and community care. The more okay I am in the future, the more I’ll be able to use my resources to help others. I do feel dumb that it took me 25 years on this planet to learn that, but we don’t know what we don’t know. Thanks to my ex, I learned.
Blush and Bashful: Let’s Talk About Wedding Registries
Feature image photo by Tash Jones – Love Luella Photography via Getty Images
I’m gonna be honest — a very fun part of getting married and hosting a wedding party is receiving presents! When I was younger, I used to think wedding registries were kind of cringey but, as we’re learning together as I write this queer wedding planning column, many of my attitudes about wedding protocol has changed as I’ve gotten older.
I think in my early twenties, I thought of registries as prescriptive and unexciting. I rarely had the kind of money to spend on a registry-suggested gift, and I also just found it bizarre to essentially make a wishlist…in my mind, surprising friends with a DIY present was the ultimate loving gesture, and taking away the surprise element and the DIY element seemed so… capitalist (don’t worry, I’m rolling my eyes at my baby dyke self so you don’t have to, even though obviously a part of me still lightly agrees with her — love to be queer and contain multitudes!).
Anyway, the point is, wedding registries are definitely a thing to consider when planning a wedding, whether you’re into them or not. So let’s get into it!
What is a wedding registry?
A wedding registry is basically a list of presents you and your future spouse would like to receive. It’s like a Christmas list you can share with your entire wedding guest list. If you’re like me (a Jewish person who is not used to creating Christmas lists and is sometimes shy about asking for what she wants) the concept can be… horrifying. But I must admit, it’s also quite practical.
You can make a wedding registry at one specific store, or you can make a universal registry online. If you pick a specific store, you will be including items only they sell (some stores have the same owner and thus do a sort of umbrella option for wedding registries), and if you pick a universal registry you’ll be able to pick items from literally anywhere and add them to your list. My extremely anecdotal experience is that folks who are a little bit older are used to registries at specific stores and might miss the chance to waltz into West Elm and ask a sales assistant for The Friedman Registry, and folks who are a little bit younger are surprised that was ever a thing and are used to registries that solely live online, usually at wedding websites like Zola and The Knot or at big box stores like Target or (sigh) Amazon.
Why you should make one
As far as I can tell, there’s really no Right or Wrong move when making a wedding registry. Like most things when it comes to wedding planning, you need to decide what feels right for you.
Like I said, I do find registries practical. You and your partner(s) can think about what you need and can guide guests to give you gifts you’ll actually use. This can include traditional things (like kitchen items), adventure accessories (like snow shoes), or money funds (honeymoon funds are very popular). One of my close friends admitted that she initially thought wedding registries were awkward, but the older she’s gotten, the more she loves them. She told me she wants to get her friends what they actually want and likes to be told what to do so she can make it happen. Another friend told me she and her wife like to find the weirdest or funniest item on the registry and purchase that. Don’t be afraid to be weird and specific — your loved ones want to get you the things you want, and they can only do that if you tell them what that is!
In terms of deciding on exactly which registry host you’ll use, that’s also up to you, though it felt a bit stressful for me because of all the options out there. A pro for choosing a specific store is that someone who wants to get you a gift could go into that physical store, ask for your registry, and do some window shopping in person if they prefer. A pro for a universal registry is that you don’t have to juggle multiple lists — it’s all in the same spot. Also check out bonus offers that come with different registries. Many stores will offer a discount on items you add to your registry but aren’t gifted once the wedding is over, so you can “complete your list” (lol), and the Zola host (which, full disclosure, I am using) allows you to exchange gifts seamlessly and will hold off on sending you your gifts until you pull the trigger (rather than when the person actually purchases it) which is really handy if you’re moving or if you simply don’t want to manage keeping track of gifts and thank you notes until after the wedding.
A wedding registry is also cool because it helps loved ones avoid purchasing a gift someone else has already given you. The store or the online host will update your registry as soon as an item is purchased, so you won’t have to deal with returns when two people want to buy you the Yeti cooler. In general, this is a real “tell people how to take care of you” kind of moment.
Why you might decide to skip it
Okay, that said, I have quite a few queer friends who decided to skip registries. The main reasons were either (1) the people getting married didn’t want to receive gifts and either requested no presents or a donation to a mutual aid fund or charity instead and (2) the process was too overwhelming so they just didn’t do it and accepted whatever gifts people chose to give them.
Both of these reasons make sense to me, and if you truly don’t want a registry, skipping it is just fine (and I’ll share some other options in just a moment). But if you are considering skipping it because it feels overwhelming and would like to be convinced otherwise, read on!
How to make a registry
Creating a registry, once I got started, was actually intuitive (thank you to Zola’s easy to use website) and fun, as well as a cute exercise for me and my fiancée to create our ultimate wishlist together (guess which one of us chose multiple heart-shaped Le Crueset dutch ovens and which one of us chose a shop-vac and some fancy gardening tools!), but before I dived in I was really intimidated by the process.
My hot tip is to make a universal registry, ideally with the wedding site you’re using, and then just do it. Thinking about balancing multiple registries (something that was much more common before online shopping was so ubiquitous and before universal registries were so accessible) was way too stressful. The universal registry solved my personal problems around this task.
Once you get going, just treat it like a wishlist. We’ve intentionally included a lot of different price points for gifts and selected the option for “make this a group gift” for all our big ticket items so friends can go in on things easily together. I’ve also had a really nice time chatting with close friends about what they included on their registries, or what they wish they had. One of my dear friends told me she didn’t create a registry and really regrets it, because she wishes she could’ve gotten a lot of very specific cookbooks. I then asked her to share her list of must have cookbooks with me and added all of them to the list. If anyone chooses to gift us one of those, I will always think of both the gift-giver and my friend who suggested the book when I cook from it, which already makes me feel sentimental.
Here are some alternatives to wedding registries
Receiving gifts is not something everyone wants, and if you opt out of making a wedding registry, I totally get it! Here are some other options of things you can request if you really don’t want wedding gifts.
First, it’s always an option to just say “no gifts, please.” Friends who really want to gift you something honestly still will do so, but it takes a lot of pressure out of the expectation.
Next, I’ve had a lot of friends request donations to specific mutual aid funds or charities, often with a little bit of explanation about why that particular fund matters to them. This is a great option, especially if you feel all your material needs are met and you’d rather have money to share with others in your extended communities.
Finally, I recently saw a very cute alternative to traditional registry websites: SoKind Registry bills itself as The Alternative Gift Registry and allows people to dream up any kind of “gift,” without a focus on the material. So for example the friend who created the SoKind registry I saw asked for things like “the gift of your time sharing a new skill with us,” “homemade art,” and “your favorite recipes.” The tagline for SoKind is “more fun, less stuff,” and if that resonates with you and you want a formal way to ask your friends to gift you less physical things and more creative ideas, this might be a good option for you.
What did you do?
As someone who once rolled her eyes at wedding registries and is now joyfully using a traditional one, I’m so curious what everyone else has chosen to do when it comes to wedding registries! Did you use one? Do you wish you had? Do you have any regrets or Hot Tips? Let us know in the comments!
Blush and Bashful is a biweekly queer wedding planning column.
Blush and Bashful: What It’s Like To Be Queer and Engaged
You know how when something happens to you, suddenly you start to notice it happening all over your little personal universe? Like when you learn a new word and all of a sudden it’s everywhere, or when you discover a new plant you love and immediately start to recognize it in places you’ve always frequented but never really noticed?
That’s kind of how I feel about being a lesbian who is engaged!
For so long, I felt like none of my friends or community members were engaged or married, and suddenly when I became engaged it felt like everyone was getting engaged and/or married! I’m sure this was already happening in the background of my life and I just didn’t notice, but it’s been really fun to connect with other queers who are engaged because everyone does things so differently and it’s helpful and interesting to learn other people’s reasoning and thought processes around things that the mainstream (heteronormative, patriarchal) culture assumes are just set in stone. Nothing is set in stone! You can do whatever you want!
So if you’re wondering what some queer people who aren’t me are thinking about when it comes to getting engaged and wedding planning (or not wedding planning), this installment of Blush and Bashful is for you.
Adrienne & Jenny
Do what YOU want to do! Have a long engagement if you want! Elope if you want! Have a chihuahua walk you down the aisle!
Did you expect to get married in your life?
I never expected to get married! I’ve never been very conventional and never had dreams or fantasies of marriage when I was younger, a wedding, having kids, the whole thing. I am still very happily childless (other than my two chihuahua sons) and rather indifferent about marriage. Additionally, I have been out since I was 15, and while I have had some queer friends get married, I have also escaped being inundated with the Marriage Industrial Complex. I’ve been in exactly one wedding, which was a queer wedding and involved me as a member of the wedding party walking down the aisle in a dress that I selected with a chihuahua in a tuxedo as my companion. I am a university professor, and one of my graduate students was telling me she had three weddings to travel to and spend money on just in Winter Term alone! I find the whole normative pressure of needing to have weddings be a certain way to be incredibly stressful!
Tell me about the proposal.
The proposal was very special and meaningful. I have been fortunate and privileged enough to have access to potentially the most beautiful place on earth — a slice of farmland on the Umpqua River in Roseburg, Oregon. I spent my childhood summers there with my grandparents and have been traveling there annually every year to camp out for my birthday. 2020 was the last summer I had access to the ranch before it was sold, which is a huge loss I am still processing today. My partner Jenny and I traveled there for our birthdays (Leo Femme 4 Leo Femme) in 2020 and she planned a huge surprise and had me spend time down at the river while she decorated the popup tent trailer. When I came back up, she proposed to me. It was the sweetest and most heartfelt thing ever. It was so deeply meaningful to have the proposal take place somewhere that is the most important place in the world to me.
What’s the most surprising thing so far about being engaged?
Other people’s expectations! We have had a long engagement, which I feel great about, and do not want to have a wedding. People have been really perplexed about us not wanting to have a wedding.
Are you planning a wedding?
No, we are going to elope and take a trip to Mexico in June. We have many reasons for not wanting a wedding, but I would say the most prescient are finances and both of us being introverted. We will be self-funding anything we do, without family support, so it just made the most sense for us to spend money traveling instead of on a big party for other people. I have had so much fun at other people’s weddings, it makes sense when people have them! It just isn’t for us. In my former life, I was a social butterfly party girl and may have really liked having a wedding. A combination of the lasting effects of chronic illness, sobriety from alcohol, and pandemic stunting socialization have made me introverted!
What would you say is your “reasoning” for getting engaged?
Wanting the legal protections of a marriage and wanting to say “my wife” in an aggressively homosexual way!
If you could give One Hot Tip to other queers before they got engaged, what would it be?
Do what YOU want to do! If wearing a fluffy white dress and having a more traditional wedding is what you want, then do it! But do not feel pressured to have the queer version of Say Yes To The Dress if that does not resonate. Have a long engagement if you want! Elope if you want! Have a chihuahua walk you down the aisle!
Kayla & Kristen
My very wise friend Christina keeps saying during the wedding planning process: “You are never gonna make everyone happy, so why not make yourselves happy?”
Did you expect to get married in your life?
I rather actively insisted I would never get married during the period of my life when I was closeted. I even wrote about it in an op-ed for my college’s newspaper. It’s funny, because the surface level interpretation there is that sure, I didn’t want to get married to a man. But when I look back on that piece, I see a more nuanced thing happening where the subtext was that I was uncomfortable with the heteronormative institution of marriage. I couldn’t imagine other possibilities yet, because I hadn’t come out as queer. Once I came out, I was like oh yeah, I want this. And I won’t pretend like I’m embarking on some radical alt wedding path, but I am doing things in a way that feel specific to me and my partner, our relationship, and the queer communities we belong to. I never could have imagined that for myself before. Coming out unlocked my queer imagination.
Tell me about the proposal.
I had no idea it was happening, even for the first two seconds of it happening. We had talked about getting engaged, as all couples should. And we both knew Kristen would be the one to propose. But we didn’t have any kind of established timeline or expectations outside of that. Just like… a proposal is coming… one day… who knows when or where or how! So yeah, I was surprised! She debated between doing it at Christmas or at our fourth anniversary trip a couple months later. She texted my sister to ask what she thought about a Christmas proposal, because she knew my scary Scorpio sister would be honest with her, and she knows I care about my sister’s thoughts a lot. In scary Scorpio fashion, my sister took two full days to get back to her but ultimately gave her the green light for a Christmas proposal. It was a perfect setting honestly, because it meant we didn’t have to spend two hours on our proposal day FaceTiming all my relatives lol — we could tell them irl! I wrote a short essay about some of the other proposal details, but something that stands out to me about it that I don’t go into there is how lost for words she was when she gave me the ring. Kristen is someone who is never lost for words, but she was nervous! She’d been having stress dreams about it for weeks! It was honestly so cute, and I’d take that over a rehearsed/carefully scripted proposal any day. It was so real and also signified to me how big of a deal it was for her.
What’s the most surprising thing so far about being engaged?
How quickly people ask you about wedding plans! I get it, it’s typically the “next step,” but I think I mistakenly thought maybe because we’re queer, people wouldn’t have had these normative timeline expectations locked and loaded for us. This didn’t just come from my family (expected!); it came from other queer people, too. Also, I think neither of us has necessarily fallen in love with the word “fiancé” haha. We LOVE being engaged; I like to talk about it all the time, but something about that word! We liked “girlfriend” and we really like “wife” and like yeah who cares we should just use the words we wanna use and don’t HAVE to use fiancé if we don’t want to, but I find it funny that neither of us has super taken to it.
Are you planning a wedding?
Haha yes, I know I just complained about this question, but YES! We are. We’re in the earlyish stages of it, but knock on wood, it’s going well so far. We have a venue, a date, a caterer (who is a queer friend!). Sometimes it feels stressful, but most of the time it feels good, especially since I’ve made a point to be like we have to talk about it as much as possible. It’s going to be complicated in a few ways that are relatable to most queer folks; we’ll both have family members who won’t be in attendance, but she has significantly fewer who will be invited. But so far, we’ve been navigating all these things really well together. The stress doesn’t come from us but from outside sources.
What would you say is your “reasoning” for getting engaged?
We’ve both known we wanted to marry each other for a while. I can’t remember the exact first time we talked about it, but it was something we were on the same page about early on. I don’t think she necessarily thought she’d marry again after her last marriage, but that shifted when we started dating. For me, I’ve wanted to be a wife for a while now haha. Once I came out as a lesbian, I knew I wanted to be married. I’m deeply monogamous; I’m deeply drawn to domestic life. Not that either of those things are required for wanting to get engaged, but it just really fits my desires for relationship structures and life. I knew I wanted to specifically marry Kristen pretty early on in our relationship and can even remember the first time I thought it, but I don’t wanna say it here in case it’s something I wanna save for my vows, and she reads every Autostraddle article lol.
If you could give One Hot Tip to other queers before they got engaged, what would it be?
Obvs find a way to talk about it ahead of time. Get on the same page about whether you want to have a wedding or not before the engagement happens. Be open to changing your mind about specific details though. It’s not a big deal if you think you want a big wedding and then realize you actually wanna elope, so long as you’re talking about it. I think even for queer folks there can be a pressure as to how you’re supposed to do things. Do what you want! My very wise friend Christina keeps saying during the wedding planning process: “You are never gonna make everyone happy, so why not make yourselves happy?”
Sa’iyda & Beth
Start doing your research as soon as possible!
Did you expect to get married in your life?
Yes! I didn’t think I’d marry a woman, but I always knew that marriage was in my future.
Tell me about the proposal.
My fiancee Beth and I had talked about proposing to each other. She’s been married before, but she did the proposing. I felt like she deserved to know how it felt to be proposed to. My original plan fell through because of COVID, so I proposed on Thanksgiving 2020, sitting on our bed while we watched TV after dinner. She proposed to me on Christmas 2020 using a book that she had commissioned by a friend who’s an artist. It told our love story and had “Will you marry me?” at the end. When I finished reading it, she was in front of me on one knee.
What’s the most surprising thing so far about being engaged?
How little things have changed, lol. We’ve been engaged for two years now, and honestly, it hasn’t changed our lives that much.
Are you planning a wedding?
Yes! We’re still figuring out the financial aspect of things, but we’ve got our plan mostly solidified.
What would you say is your “reasoning” for getting engaged?
It felt important to me to get engaged because I’m surprisingly traditional. Getting engaged is the natural progression to getting married. Plus, I really wanted a pretty ring and to celebrate the fact that I’ve found my person.
If you could give One Hot Tip to other queers before they got engaged, what would it be?
Start doing your research as soon as possible! You may think you know, but it’s so nice to be able to hit the ground running when you start planning.
Yasmeen & Clio & Their Polycule
I want to get married to emphasize to each other and to our community that commitments like this can extend to more than just one person, more than just romantic relationships, and that the four of us are a family, that this is something a family can look like.
Did you expect to get married in your life?
Yasmeen: I definitely hoped to! I had a childhood with a lot of change in it, so to me marriage and home ownership were markers of a stability I really longed for. When things first started becoming serious with me and Soren, the partner who brought me into our polycule, it was important to me to know if (non legal) marriage between us was within the realm of possibility so I could temper my expectations early on.
Clio: Not really! It wasn’t something I was particularly expecting until I was asked (the first time around, with my husband Soren — with the four of us, I was the one doing the asking). Growing up, my parents were divorced and so were the parents of most of my friends, and it just never really seemed like a particularly good idea. In high school and college, I developed more political objections to marriage as an institution, so it took some convincing to get me to think that it was possible to approach it in a way that didn’t feel so straight and patriarchal. Everyone in my life was pretty surprised when they found out *I* was getting married, especially so young.
Tell me about the proposal.
Yasmeen: My polycule was already all living together and committed to each other when I met Soren, so I’d always said that if there was a proposal, I wanted it to be from all three of them, since we’d be living one life together. We’d already had talks as a family about heading toward marriage/building a life together, but I wasn’t expecting a proposal for another year or more when Soren asked my ring size. Clio, Soren, our other partner and I were at Clio’s family lakeside cottage on a road trip around the East Coast and Canada when they proposed to me. Before we left, they let me know that the ring wasn’t going to arrive before our trip, so I really wasn’t expecting it to happen when it did! They suggested playing some guitar on the dock one afternoon just before sunset, so we were all sitting down there singing along when Clio said “I think I’m going to grab a folding chair to sit in instead.” Then they came back without the folding chair and I thought, I guess they changed their mind, and they went “actually I think this would be a better way to sit” and everyone was on one knee with the ring!
Clio: ^Ditto the above. It wasn’t that sly — we really didn’t think the ring was going to arrive in time, and then it arrived in the mail early the *night before* we left on the East Coast trip! So, we decided at the last minute to bring it anyway and propose in Canada even though we told Yasmeen we wouldn’t — we figured a surprise would be fun and she probably wouldn’t be too mad about it. The rest we figured out via text in our groupchat during the trip.
Yasmeen: I was not at all mad! There were so many emotionally touching moments on that trip, even before the proposal, that if I knew it was coming I think the anticipation would have taken me out.
What’s the most surprising thing so far about being engaged?
Yasmeen: For me, it was that it didn’t magically fix my insecurities or fear of abandonment — I’d always thought that if I reached a certain threshold of commitment I would suddenly be totally chill, but it’s really brought home for me that that stuff is way more internal than situation-based.
Clio: This really shouldn’t be a surprise, but — how big a deal it is, how much weight everyone puts on it, especially people who aren’t the ones getting married (family, etc). I haven’t known that many people who have gotten married, and I tend to be pretty hands-off with my friends’ and family’s relationships, so it can feel strange to suddenly have everyone all up in mine. It’s stressful but it’s also nice — getting engaged lends a sense of legitimacy to things, and it feels nice to be celebrated by others.
Are you planning a wedding?
Yasmeen: We have a Pinterest board, but that’s about it! We want to get married in whatever new town we move to on the east coast, and that move won’t be for a couple years.
What would you say is your “reasoning” for getting engaged?
Yasmeen: I wanted to get engaged as a marker of intent toward lifelong commitment before we started making steps like moving in together or (Soren’s favorite thing to do with loved ones) getting matching tattoos. One value I think we all place a high priority on is doing things with intention and being very clear in our commitments, so having a moment where all our conversations around what being married would mean to us (especially because being legally married to multiple people isn’t currently possible) came to fruition was super useful.
Clio: With Soren, I wanted two things: (1) our family and friends to know how serious we were, and (2) a party. I also wanted to be able to put him on my health insurance. That’s pretty much it — we already had the lifelong commitment to each other, and marriage didn’t really change or enhance that for me.
With Soren, Yasmeen, and our other partner, I want to get married to emphasize to each other and to our community that commitments like this can extend to more than just one person, more than just romantic relationships, and that the four of us are a family, that this is something a family can look like. Another party sounds fun, too.
If you could give One Hot Tip to other queers before they got engaged, what would it be?
Yasmeen: That being engaged is more a change of label than one of substance! Day to day, there’s not a huge difference between my life when we were making long-term plans but not engaged and now, other than I have a very pretty ring and very sweet memories. ❤️
Clio: These are good questions to have to answer. My hot tip is to answer the questions in this interview, haha — what are you expecting from marriage? What do you want? How do you want this to affect your relationship with your partner(s), or with other family/friends? It doesn’t have to be the typical responses, but it’s good to know what they are going in.
Nico & Sadie
Honestly, getting married is like the easiest way to take care of a lot of legal business.
Did you expect to get married in your life?
Nico: Well, I am divorced, so, yes. And as I always say, you can get married as many times as you want.
Sadie: I wanted to get married, but I didn’t think it was a possibility before 2015. In general, long-term relationships are something that’s very important to me.
Tell me about the proposal.
Sadie: We talked about proposing to each other, and we picked out rings ahead of time, and we knew we were going to get engaged on Christmas because you [Nico] really love Christmas. We had picked a location, a city park that had been designed by Louise Bourgeois, who’s an artist who is very important to us. We also thought that getting engaged on Christmas meant that downtown wouldn’t be as full of people and random spectators.
Nico: So it was 10 degrees F, and we had to thaw the car with a hair dryer and a portable battery. The fountain had completely frozen over and also the overflow water had frozen into a treacherous sheet of ice in the park. We held hands and made our way across the ice. We were going to sit on one of the benches that is a giant marble eyeball, but the seat had a sheet of ice, so we used the eyeball for support. Sadie went first and knelt down and said sweet things and proposed. I went second. I knelt down, and that was when about a dozen people approached the park wearing Steelers gear. I could see them but Sadie’s back was to them, so I had to propose with an audience Sadie did not know was there, balanced on a sheet of ice. One lady filmed it.
Sadie: I felt that there were eyes on me, so I turn around and see one woman was filming. They were waiting for us to finish so they could go look at the fountain I guess. We were obviously getting engaged, and no one cheered.
Nico: We awkwardly escaped into an alley downtown.
What’s the most surprising thing so far about being engaged?
Nico: How excited Sadie’s mom got! It was really sweet.
Are you planning a wedding?
Sadie: LOL
Nico: We are planning to elope. We’re torn between Ireland and Reno, NV.
What would you say is your “reasoning” for getting engaged?
Nico: Because our actual marriage is not yet scheduled until we have the means to go on our trip, we wanted to do something to symbolize our commitment to each other.
Sadie: Honestly, getting married is like the easiest way to take care of a lot of legal business.
Nico: We’ve been together for five years, and we’ve been talking about and imagining our private little wedding ceremony for some time, and I’m really looking forward to it! I love Sadie!
Sadie: When we talk about our future, it seemed like the next logical step. Who wouldn’t want to wake up to you every day? (Unless we’re at residencies or something.)
If you could give One Hot Tip to other queers before they got engaged, what would it be?
Nico: Have all the hard conversations (money, kids, end-of-life/dying, parents and family, debt, future plans and career) before you get engaged so that after you get engaged, it’s about planning the fun part (eloping to a beautiful green island or the desert!).
Amanda-Faye & Jo
My views on marriage, for myself at least, have fluctuated through many different forms of not feeling necessary due to my queerness and politics to wanting the same protections in my relationship that other people have.
Did you expect to get married in your life?
Not really! I never dreamed about it as a little girl or anything like that. Then, once I was old enough to understand marriage and feminism but wasn’t out to myself yet, I definitely knew I didn’t want to be a man’s wife (lol). I grew up Catholic, and nothing about a Catholic wedding or marriage ever appealed to me.
I came out when I was 17, which is sadly (for me) a VERY long time ago at this point, so my views on marriage, for myself at least, have fluctuated through many different forms of not feeling necessary due to my queerness and politics to wanting the same protections in my relationship that other people have. At the end of the day, though, it has come down to really liking my partner a lot and wanting to have a ceremony with them.
Tell me about the proposal.
We had been talking a bit about the ring, so I knew it was coming at some point in the near future, but I was very surprised by the proposal moment, which is difficult to do for me, as I am very clever and intuitive (nosy and annoying).
Jo took me to tea at The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in Pasadena, which I had been wanting to do for a while. While we were waiting for our reservation, we walked around the rose garden. I found a rose that matched my coral-colored gel manicure and Jo saw me taking a photo of my hand next to the rose and said, “wait, I have something that will make the photo even better” got down on one knee and proposed with the ring. Then there was crying and laughing and a tea lunch I don’t remember because I was buzzing with excitement, and also it was like nine years ago, hahaha!
What’s the most surprising thing so far about being engaged?
I can’t really think of anything here, or maybe I don’t remember! Mostly I guess I was surprised by how quickly the novelty of saying “my finacé” wears off and makes you feel kinda douchey when you have a long engagement ahead. I was so ready to shed “boyfriend/girlfriend” for something that felt like a greater nod to the time we had been together (almost 7 years) and was more gender-neutral, as “partner” didn’t roll off the tongue as easily then, but fiancé was only fun for a little while before I felt like a straight gal in a romcom. I pretty much only use it now when I don’t want to come out in conversation with a random.
Are you planning a wedding?
Real planning or perpetually mentally planning? It’s the second thing! By the time this wedding happens, it better be amazing because we have ideas for days! The long engagement has been mostly for financial and timing reasons, but at this point we also really want it to be exactly what we want, which is pretty modest but also specific… and changes a lot for something so specific.
What would you say is your “reasoning” for getting engaged?
Yeah, just the boring answer. We wanted to have a ceremony to celebrate our commitment to each other and I want to have a very fun semi-destination situation in which my aging queer friends are forced to party with and pay attention to me for two solid days at least! That’s the plan so far, anyway.
If you could give One Hot Tip to other queers before they got engaged, what would it be?
This isn’t necessarily queer-specific. I loved our surprise proposal, so I’m not totally sure about this, but I think if we could do it again, I would have liked us to exchange rings mutually. I see a lot more queer couples doing that now and I really like it. I didn’t really expect my partner to want a ring other than a wedding band because they aren’t much of a jewelry person, but the more we have talked about it over the years, I think they would have liked that as well.
Evette & Teré
Don’t ever give up on love! And, most important, advocate for the type of love you deserve.
Did you expect to get married in your life?
Evette: No, I never expected to get married. I’ve also never been engaged before now. Before I met Teré, I’d been writing and thinking a lot about what it means to be intentionally single in a world that prioritizes romantic relationships. I’d even gone through the egg-freezing process as a single woman. For years, I’d been really investing in other important relationships in my life, and, in turn, I was able to invest in myself and better understand my desires and needs. By the time I met Teré on a dating app in January 2022, I was pretty disinterested in a partnership that didn’t allow me to pour into the other relationships I value. Teré understood that notion from the start, and he also modeled it in his own life. Our relationship felt effortless from the first day, so by the time Teré proposed, I knew this was the kind of relationship I could invest in day after day for the rest of our lives.
Teré: I’ve been married once, and I never thought I would get married again. My therapist encouraged me to start dating after a period of time focusing on myself, so I created a dating profile. After a couple of failed attempts, it kind of reaffirmed my expectations of never marrying again. Then, I met Evette, and I think what made it so successful is that we spent so much time getting to know each other. Of course, we were attracted to each other. We’re both beautiful people, but I think the first spark was this kindred-spirited, ancestral friendship. Through the good, the bad, and the ugly, Evette’s my best friend. I trust her with anything. For me, that’s a first.
Tell me about the proposal.
Teré: I know that family is really big for Evette, so I knew I wanted to do it in a way that included her family, specifically her nieces. I think it’s really important that we set generational examples of what Black love can be. Anyway, I was falling in love, and I knew I wanted to marry her, so the first thing I did was ask her parents and her closest friends. I talked to my little sister as well. Once I got the blessing from everyone, I knew it was a done deal. My grandfather taught me that if you’re serious about someone, start saving a little bit of money each month while you’re getting to know them. That’s how you can afford the ring. And, if the relationship doesn’t work out, you then have a lump sum of money to really take care of yourself.
I’ve been saving money from the first month I met Evette. Once I secured the bag and got the ring, I decided on a Christmas proposal. Winter is really hard for Evette, and I thought it would be really cool to tie the engagement to what is typically a tough time mentally. On Christmas Day, picture it: Black family around the Christmas tree, mysterious gift box, handwritten letter, and kaboom! I was on one knee, and she said yes.
Evette: I sure did! Teré tricked me. A couple of nights before Christmas, he’d said that we should wait to get engaged, so I wasn’t expecting it at all. I bought my dad and Teré designer boots for Christmas, but I got them in two separate colors. When we were about to leave to have dinner with my family, Teré said he wanted to take his boots to show them to my dad. I thought that was strange, but I didn’t think much more about it. After we’d all opened our gifts, Teré passed me the shoe box and asked me to open it. Inside was a series of decoy boxes that ultimately opened into a beautiful, handwritten letter. I knew something was going on when he told me the read the letter out loud. It was such an amazing moment. I’m so glad I got to share it with my family and that Teré was so thoughtful about the engagement. It’s a memory I will cherish forever.
What’s the most surprising thing so far about being engaged?
Evette: I guess what’s been most surprising is that we haven’t really been able to enjoy our engagement because people keep asking when we’re getting married.
Teré: I know, it’s wild! One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is to go at godspeed. I don’t know when we’re going to get married, but we’ll both know when the time is right, just like with the engagement.
Are you planning a wedding?
Teré: See what I mean? LOL. Just kidding.
Evette: No, we haven’t started planning the wedding, but we do intend to have one. We’d love to have a destination wedding, but we haven’t decided where yet.
What would you say is your “reasoning” for getting engaged?
Teré: I feel like I’m a part of one of the last generations that remembers what it was like to live and love in a time when it was illegal to get married. Not to be rude, but my first immediate reaction is I got engaged because I can — and that feels important to me. I never really had a close-knit bio family, and even when I didn’t want to get married again, I always desired to create a family. I come from a pretty intense broken home, so, as an adult, I wanted to create a better family representation for my inner child.
Evette: That is a beautiful answer, babe. For me, getting engaged feels like a natural extension of our relationship. Everything in my body and in my spirit tells me that Teré is my soulmate. I want to share Teré’s last name and have children with him, so becoming engaged and eventually getting married, just feels right.
If you could give One Hot Tip to other queers before they got engaged, what would it be?
Evette: My One Hot Tip would be to only get engaged because you desire to. Don’t get engaged because you feel pressured to or because you’re getting older and everyone else is doing it. That’s a surefire way to set yourself up for misery.
Teré: Don’t ever give up on love! And, most important, advocate for the type of love you deserve.
Blush and Bashful is a biweekly queer wedding planning column.
Blush and Bashful: How One Fat Femme Bought Her Dream Wedding Dress
I was not excited about buying a wedding dress.
Or I guess it’s more honest to say I was not excited about shopping for a wedding dress.
I’m a fat femme, and I love dressing up like a fairy princess. In fact, I’d say possibly the best representation of my gender may be exactly that: fairy princess. So perhaps you’d think that finding a wedding dress would feel exciting to me. But if you know anything about the bridal industry, you’d know better. The key part here is that I’m a fat fairy princess. And I’m immersed enough in our culture to know, even though I’d never really seriously considered being a bride, that it’s not easy for fat girls to find beautiful wedding gowns. Even thin people are encouraged to lose weight before their weddings. I felt overwhelmed and flustered before I’d even begun.
My best friends suggested that we go shopping together, but I was hesitant. I understood what “shopping for a wedding dress with your best friends” was supposed to feel like. I knew they were envisioning champagne, giggling, gushing, and a lot of white tulle. “I would die to go wedding dress shopping with you,” my one friend texted me, and I knew she was being supportive and loving and genuine. I wanted to crawl under a rock, never to emerge again.
Actually, what I wanted was to feel excited with them; the two friends in question are also fat femmes, and we live in Portland, so I know I’m lucky when it comes to being surrounded with emotional body positivity and also material options when it comes to fat girl fashion. And yet, I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm. I wasn’t sure what I wanted my dress to look like, but I knew that trying on lots of options that were too small for me or getting weird energy from a sales assistant or maybe simply looking at my body and having other people perceive my body too was going to feel really bad. But I didn’t want to disappoint my friends, and as a chronic people pleaser, I was at a loss.
Luckily my future wife has no such qualms saying no when she doesn’t want to do something, and after I spent another afternoon stressing and complaining, she solved the problem simply. “Baby, just tell them you don’t want to go. They love you. They’ll understand.” I texted my friends immediately; of course they understood. I told them I was probably going to buy a dress online. There was a Selkie option I had my eye on. They were excited for me. I tried to relax. I window shopped on my phone. I felt dread.
The thing I learned about shopping for a dress as a fat bride while browsing plus size wedding dresses (I’m rolling my eyes at the designation “plus size” but I’m also here to tell you unfortunately it gets so much worse — the amount of “curvy collections” and “busty bridal” links I had to click through to find things that might cover my body successfully was disturbing) is that there actually is quite a large inventory out there — but it’s very expensive! I had hoped to spend no more than $1500 on a dress; most of the dresses I loved were more in the $3000-$3500 range. But I wouldn’t say that’s a fat tax — it seemed like that’s just the cost of a lot of traditional wedding dresses. I was genuinely shocked!
A lot of my friends who have had weddings have purchased off the rack dresses as opposed to “wedding gowns” from “bridal shops” so I just didn’t have an accurate price in mind for how much this item costs. There’s a passage in Michelle Tea’s book How To Grow Up where she writes about accepting that certain produce at Whole Foods just costs the amount it costs. Radical acceptance, I believe my therapist would call it. You don’t have to like it, but it is what it is. I’m not a couture expert and I won’t pretend to be, but I’ve read enough of Cora Harrington’s work to know that we should pay appropriately for the labor it takes to make custom clothing. She’s tweeted about how a wedding gown is the closest most people will ever get to a custom clothing experience, and I kept that in mind while browsing. What I mean here is I don’t want to simply roll my eyes about how much dresses cost and ignorantly say they should be more accessible, because while the industry is overwhelming, when it comes to a dress, someone has put a lot of labor into creating it. So I want to acknowledge that. Wedding dresses that are essentially custom pieces are expensive! I just didn’t really know that before my research, because I was more familiar with people purchasing ready to wear dresses online, at cheaper stores, or from vintage boutiques.
Once I had done a fair amount of online browsing, I got my heart set on this shop in North Carolina, near where my brother lives. They have an entire section for plus size gowns, and a lot of their designers seemed to make exactly what I wanted: a ballgown that would make me feel like a fairy princess. My mom and I made an appointment to go dress shopping when we were visiting my brother for the Thanksgiving long weekend, and I accepted that my dress would cost thousands more than what I anticipated.
Meanwhile, my friends had taken my refusal to dress shop with them in stride and had asked my fiancée, who they’re also friends with, if she wanted to receive the bridal shopping treatment. She was insistent that she’d buy a dress online “for like $100″ but didn’t want to deprive my pals of their fun (and is never one to turn down a day to be a diva and get drunk on champagne) so the three of them went off bright and early one Saturday morning to three different bridal stores. And guess what? My sweet frugal babe found a dress she loved for $400 at the last store they visited and she bought it on the spot! It was a sample so she could take it home with her immediately, and it didn’t need a single alteration. I was like “wow babe, check out your size privilege!” — just kidding. I mean, I did say that, but we have a very healthy ongoing dialogue about fat liberation and living in different sized bodies, and I was joking — mostly.
So here’s the twist. My fiancée had her dress. My friends had experienced their fun day of bridal dress shopping. My mom and I were ready to spend an exorbitant amount of money in North Carolina. And then — my friend texted me. She’s the one who is helping me plan the whole wedding, and as such, her phone’s algorithm decided months ago that she’s getting married and treats her like a bride. Instagram had advertised a sample sale at a local bridal shop in downtown Portland for the following weekend, and she wanted to know if I wanted to go. “It’s very lowkey. No champagne. We can go, just the two of us. You don’t have to buy anything. It just might be good to try some things on in person. I called and they have a lot of dresses in your size.” I knew that I wanted to buy my dress in North Carolina — I already had my heart set on one in particular, in fact — and maybe relieving the pressure of actually looking for something is what made me change my mind. Or maybe it was that I could tell she had so heard my concerns and was trying to cater to them. Or maybe I was just feeling spontaneous that day. I said yes.
You know how this story goes. I bought the very first dress I tried on. I mean, okay, I tried on several more afterwards just to make sure I really loved it, but I did, I loved it, and so I bought it. It’s a ballgown. It has layers of sparkly tulle. It has iridescent beading. And my tits look incredible. I’m a fat fairy princess when I put it on, and it’s going to look fantastic with my bedazzled white Tevas (listen, I’m getting married in rural Southern Oregon — she’s a fat fairy princess but she’s also a land dyke, ya know?) And best of all? Because it was a sample sale, I could take the dress home right away, and the final cost was $1000.
The reason I wanted to write about this experience is explicitly to say to other fat brides that buying a dress does not have to be a negative experience. Here are the things that were most helpful to me: I did a lot of browsing before I ever went into a shop so I knew what I liked and I also knew what I did not like, I stayed true to myself and didn’t let myself get swept up in someone else’s idea of what I “should” do when it came to the shopping experience, I took one trusted friend with me and we agreed if the sales assistant had bad vibes we would leave (our sales assistant had amazing vibes), I went to a store that stocked gowns that would actually fit on my body, and I decided to shop a sample sale to get a gown that would have been much more expensive for a much cheaper price point. If any of these options are available to you, I would strongly recommend taking them (if, of course, you want a more traditional gown — there are plenty of options outside of a bridal shop wedding gown, and plenty of reasons to go that route if you’d prefer).
One other thing I would recommend, if possible — ignore the actual sizing in the dresses. I’d heard that for some reason the wedding dress industry sizes up a lot, so if you’re typically a size 20 or 22 you might be a 24 or a 26 in a wedding dress. That can make it frustrating when asking for sizes and can also mess with your head. Even though we all know there’s nothing inherently wrong about being a larger size, we live in a world that tells us there is, and when you’re feeling vulnerable and (literally) naked in a dressing room, things that we could usually be logical about sometimes have the power to ruin our whole day. The sales assistant helping me never mentioned sizes, she simply brought me dresses she thought would fit me. To this day, as it hangs in my closet waiting to go to the seamstress who will make all the necessary alterations next month, I have no idea what size my wedding dress is. “Who cares,” said my best friend when I told her that. “It’s your size, and that’s all that matters.”
So! I’m not saying buying a dress when you’re a fat bride is easy or completely stress free — I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be a nightmare. It can even be pleasant! I had only heard really awful horror stories about the experience of shopping for a wedding dress as a fat bride, so I wanted to put something hopeful and encouraging out into the world of wedding editorial!
When my fiancée and I both reflected on how adamant we’d been about buying our dresses online, and how funny it was that we’d both ended up purchasing options we found in person instead, she concluded with this very sound lesson: “It turns out, when you go shopping for a wedding dress, it’s very hard not to buy one!”
I think it would be fun to use the comment section as a place where anyone can talk about their wedding outfit shopping experience — tell us about your bridal gowns, tell us about your tuxedo, tell us about your thrifted outfit, tell us about your themed costume wedding — but I’d like to explicitly state that this is a space for fat people to talk about their experiences, share tips, and also vent or share fears if we want to, without being policed or concern trolled or body shamed. This is always true for Autostraddle’s comment policy. That said — okay y’all, tell me all about your experience of shopping for your wedding outfits! Let’s goooooooo!
Blush and Bashful is a biweekly queer wedding planning column.
Blush and Bashful: You’re a Lesbian and You Want To Buy an Engagement Ring
Engagement rings! There’s so much to say about them! And today, we’re going to get right into it. By far the most common wedding-related question we receive at Autostraddle is some version of HOW THE HECK DO I BUY AN ENGAGEMENT RING OR EVEN START THINKING ABOUT IT so it made sense to me to address that right at the beginning of my lesbian wedding column. Also, if we think about things in a linear fashion, buying an engagement ring is often one of the first steps when it comes to wedding planning and actually getting gay married, so it’s a logical beginning.
photo contributed by VENVS
In terms of personal experience, I did not feel equipped to tell anyone how to buy an engagement ring. My ring is one I inherited from my grandma and then gave to my partner to propose to me when she was ready because I couldn’t imagine finding a ring I loved more and it also seemed excellent to not spend any money on the ring if we could help it, and my partner’s ring is the very first one she tried on in the very first antique shop we visited — she declared she loved it, the salesperson declared it was on sale, and I declared I would be buying it immediately. This is not particularly useful advice to the general lesbian population — “inherit a diamond” and “have an easy time at an antique store” is actually extremely useless advice — so I decided to go to the experts.
Luckily, I was able to interview not one but two queer jewelers who specialize in creating and selling gorgeous engagement rings (and other jewelry) to the queer community. The following information is what I learned from talking to Haley Biemiller, founder of VENVS, and Ashley McGinty, founder of Chouette Designs. Each woman founded their jewelry companies after finding the traditional jewelry industry lacking — for Haley, she felt othered during the experience of trying to buy an engagement ring for her wife, and for Ashley, she felt frustrated that she worked with fine jewelry but could never try on the rings she worked with because they didn’t fit her ring size. Both Haley and Ashley are determined to make shopping for engagement rings — and jewelry in general — a more inclusive and positive experience. Here are all their tips for finding your dream engagement ring!
The first step when looking for an engagement ring
Both Haley and Ashley agreed that the number one step when thinking about buying an engagement ring is to talk to your partner! Of course you want to talk about marriage in general, and if that’s a thing you’d like to embark on together, but in a more granular sense you want to understand what kind of ring your partner is looking for and excited about.
Ashley suggests starting a Pinterest board together and taking note if your partner really has their heart set on one specific design. Haley shared that even though the sentiment of the ring is of course important, it can be really disappointing (to both people!) if the ring purchased isn’t something that the person wearing it wanted or can envision themselves wearing. Both jewelers affirmed that there are plenty of ways to keep an element of surprise to the engagement while still checking in about what kind of engagement ring one or both partners want.
For my part, I’ll say that my fiancée and I talked about rings very openly and there was zero element of surprise for either of us when it comes to the actual jewelry, but we both planned surprise proposals for each other that were meaningful and exciting; knowing exactly what our rings would look like as the proposals were happening did nothing to take away from the sentiment of them, and the end result is simply that we both love our rings and have the exact rings we each desired. Ashley suggested that if you’re the kind of person who really wants to surprise your partner and the idea of talking about rings beforehand ruins that for you, you can purchase a very inexpensive but still beautiful piece of CZ (cubic zirconia) jewelry or costume jewelry and use that for the proposal, then once the cat is out of the bag you two can plan together what kind of ring you’ll get. This is also a great idea if you can’t afford a piece of fine jewelry right now but still want to propose — you don’t have to wait until you have “the ring,” you can always propose with one ring now and purchase another one together in the future (that’s actually what my dad did for my mom and I have always found the story very romantic!).
photo contributed by Chouette Designs
How much does buying an engagement ring cost?
During my research for this piece, I learned that the average American currently spends $6,000 on an engagement ring (and, full disclosure, I was shocked because that price seemed so high to me!). I also learned that the advice to spend X percentage of your paycheck is very dated, and apparently started as a way for women to insure they’d have a certain “security” in case their husbands ever left them, or possibly as a scheme from jewelers to encourage men to spend more money at their stores. Yikes! Very toxic all around.
Both Haley and Ashley emphasized that the most important thing to consider when thinking about your budget for your engagement ring is what makes sense for you and your budget. They both agreed that you do get what you pay for, but also that it’s very possible to get a gorgeous ring for a lot less money than $6,000, and that an engagement ring should never feel like a financial burden. “It’s a big purchase,” Haley said, likening it to a milestone like buying your first car, “but at the same time, I don’t think it should be a daunting ‘how am I going to come up with this money’ kind of thing? It should be comfortable.” She emphasized that buying a ring should be an exciting time, and that the purchase should feel fun and meaningful — to that end, choosing a very, very comfortable budget before you start looking can help make the experience only feel positive.
Haley said many of her clients are in the $1500-$2000 price range, and Ashley said many of her clients are in the $2500-$3000 price range, but both emphasized multiple times that it’s very possible to find a perfect ring for you for less than that. Like anything with a wedding, there’s really just such a giant range — I have one friend who spent $100 on a ring, another friend who spent $800 on a ring, and another friend who spent $10,000 on a diamond. The important thing is to figure out what you can afford (really truly, not in a I-will-go-into-debt-for-this-purchase way) and stick to your budget. I’d recommend not window shopping too much outside of your budget. There was one jeweler who I adored while my fiancée and I were in the pre-engagement phase and all her rings were about $5000 — eventually my partner told me to stop looking at them because we couldn’t spend that much money on a ring, and she was right. I unfollowed the jeweler on Instagram and it made me happier.
photo contributed by VENVS
How to figure out your (and your partner’s!) ring size
Figuring out your ring size is an important part of buying an engagement ring — and if you’re shopping for your partner, figuring out their ring size is obviously even more important! You can order cheap ring sizers online, and if you go into any jewelry store they’ll let you use their rings to find your correct size. If you go to an in person boutique they’ll probably take a bit more time and care to go over it with you, but it’s very easy to do by yourself, so don’t be intimidated. And the best news? Even if you get the size wrong, you can always get the ring resized! It’s true that occasionally with a custom design it can cost a lot to resize a ring (because of labor and changing the shape of the design) but in general, wherever you purchase your ring will allow you a free resizing after purchase, and most jewelers will offer to resize your ring even years after you originally purchased it for a small fee. This information made me feel a lot better when thinking about sizing my own ring (which I’m constantly worried is a little too tight? Or maybe it’s fine? Should it be looser?) so I think it’s important to impart on others as well. When it comes to ring size, you can always change it! Don’t overthink it and don’t stress.
photo contributed by Venvs
How to make ethical choices when buying an engagement ring
One of the biggest questions we’ve received from readers is how to shop ethically for an engagement ring! Full disclosure, I thought the answer would be obvious — lab grown diamonds! — but both Haley and Ashley taught me that things are a bit more complicated.
“The most ethical thing you can do is use a recycled piece of jewelry,” Ashley said. “But not everyone has an heirloom piece available!”
So what are some other options?
“It’s a tricky subject,” Haley said. She explained that for the past few years many people have been gravitating toward lab grown diamonds because they’re theoretically more ethical, but it turns out that the carbon footprint of making a lab grown diamond is just as bad for the earth as mining them. At the same time, The RJC (Responsible Jewelry Council) has enacted some heavy regulations on natural diamonds. If a jeweler is buying natural diamonds from an RJC certified vendor, they know they’re being audited 2-3 times a year to make sure all of their practices are ethical — that their workers are being paid fairly, that there’s no corruption going on in these processes. Lab grown diamonds are also heavily regulated, but with the power that goes into creating these stones, you can’t say it’s great for the environment.
If you don’t have an heirloom diamond and still don’t feel great about buying a natural or lab grown diamond, Haley recommends moissanite, which she says is the most ethical of stones. They are all created in the USA, and it doesn’t take as much power and energy to create them.
Ashley shared that with most traditional jewelers, the process of how they find their gemstones is quite “cloak and dagger” (which made me LOL, truly), but there are more jewelers out there now that have made being transparent about their process a part of their business model. For her jewelry, she works with a company called Misfit Diamonds. “They’re big on finding what the rest of the industry would call ‘trash diamonds’,” she said. I asked what trash diamonds meant and she told me those are stones that would traditionally be thrown away (!!!) because they’re not perfect. Apparently salt and pepper diamonds used to make up a big portion of those that are thrown away, but they’ve become very trendy. “Consumers are starting to realize that [‘trash diamonds’] can look really cool and interesting and unique.”
As you can see, the process of buying an ethical engagement ring is not necessarily simple — which is probably why so many of us are wondering about it. I think the information Haley and Ashley shared is a helpful starting point, and then considering your own particulars can help you come to a clearer conclusion. Is it important to you to have a very sparkly ring? Moissanite has major bling factor, and most people can’t even tell they’re not diamonds. Price point might also guide you in this process — Haley told me that whereas a one carat natural diamond would cost between $4000-$6000, a moissanite around the same carat weight would be $600-$800 (and lab grown diamonds would fall somewhere in the middle). It seems to me that choosing a queer jeweler who is transparent about where they source their gemstones is a really good step to take if you’re buying a new ring — then you have the added bonus of supporting a small queer business as well when buying your ring.
photo contributed by VENVS
Advice specifically for queer people looking for an engagement ring
Haley had some practical advice for queer couples that I really loved: “There are really no rules,” she said. She shared that she sometimes meets with queer couples who have internalized the stigma that one person’s ring needs to be more feminine and one person’s ring needs to be more masculine, but that’s not true. “Traditional jewelers will tell you it’s not an engagement ring if it’s not a diamond, or it’s not an engagement ring if you didn’t spend X amount of dollars on it… that’s not true! You don’t have to play by any rulebook.” And Ashley emphasized that for queer couples in particular, finding a jeweler you feel comfortable bringing your whole self to is ideal. “Find someone you vibe with,” she said. “You want to be excited about the ring – it’s representing you, and representing your relationship – the process of buying the ring should be something you’re excited about and something that’s affirming, not just something where you have to settle.”
photo contributed by Chouette Designs
Advice specifically for fat people looking for an engagement ring
As a fat person who, for years, just told myself “rings aren’t for me,” I was particularly excited to hear Ashley’s advice for how fat people or people with bigger fingers could have a positive experience shopping for engagement rings.
She recommended finding jewelers who have extended size runs in a lot of their offerings, but acknowledged “that can be a huge challenge, because there aren’t a lot of us.” She said scrolling social media for hashtags like #sizeinclusivejewelry and #plussizejewelry can be helpful, although she warns that some brands are proud of themselves for going up to size 10 — “which is great, it’s a start, but I would encourage you to look for brands that go even higher.”
She also emphasized that finding an affirming jeweler, ideally someone who shares your experiences, can create a better experience. “Not that I’m biased or anything,” she laughed.
photo contributed by VENVS
What these professionals wish they’d known before shopping for their own engagement rings
Okay, get ready for a truly harrowing story! When I asked Ashley this question she laughed ruefully and said, “I wish I had known not to put a raw diamond in the engagement ring.” In an effort to get her wife, someone who works in the jewelry industry, a unique and gorgeous ring, Ashley’s partner got her a ring with a raw diamond — an uncut stone. But because diamonds are so hard, the stone started to eat away at the setting — and then fell out, to be lost in the streets of Portland forever!!! “I made that mistake so that my future couples don’t have to,” Ashley joked. But seriously, she said that particular style of stone is gorgeous, but it just doesn’t hold up in a ring setting. Put it in a necklace, or earrings — something that won’t get beat up in the same way a ring does.
Similarly, Haley shared that she encourages couples to do research on the stones they’re interested in. VENVS works with a lot of gemstones and Haley says she frequently sees couples pick out their own birthstone, or their partner’s birthstone, or the stone of the month they met, which is a beautiful idea but some of the stones are very delicate. She says one stone people often pick that is not a great choice for rings is opal (I personally really wanted to buy my fiancée a moonstone ring, but decided against it when I learned how soft they are and how likely they are to get scratched in a ring setting). Haley said she wouldn’t necessarily tell people they can’t buy those stones, but it’s good to be aware that you’ll probably have to replace it down the line.
Haley also said her biggest piece of advice is to just do a lot of research in general about what’s possible for engagement rings. “There are so many endless options on what you can do,” she said. “There are so many ways to individualize your ring and make it super unique for your relationship and yourself.”
I am extremely grateful to Haley and Ashley for taking the time to educate me about this subject, and I hope this installment of Blush & Bashful helps you and your partner when thinking about how to buy an engagement ring. And remember, even if you don’t want to go to a jeweler or spend a lot of money on a ring, there are other options. If your family (or your partner’s family) has rings or even just stones that they’re willing to pass down to you, that can be a really sentimental (and cost effective) option. Scouring Etsy, antique and vintage shops, and second hand jewelers allows you to buy rings with their own histories and often with a significantly lower price tag than what you’ll find with new or custom jewelry.
And! You don’t have to get a ring. Some couples both really want to wear rings to symbolize their union, in some couples it only feels good for one partner to wear a ring, and some couples simply don’t want rings at all, either opting for other jewelry or ignoring the tradition altogether. I’ll try not to belabor this point in this column, but it must be said: the absolute best part of getting gay married is that you really don’t have to follow the script of “what it means to get married” — you can literally do whatever you want, and as long as you and the person you’re marrying agree, you’re golden.
Blush and Bashful is a biweekly queer wedding planning column.
Drew Barrymore and Natasha Lyonne Say They’re Aubrey Plaza’s Mommi and Daddy, I Personally Won’t Recover
HAPPY MONDAY HOMOS, guess what, I have some great news for everyone who loved the Drew Barrymore / Aubrey Plaza / mommy / baby clip that went viral at the end of last year (aka everyone with a pulse!!!). Shelli brought to our attention in this perfect write up and breakdown in December, thank the goddess. If you missed it, here’s the most important thing you need to know: Aubrey called Drew her mommi, and Drew completely played along. It’s really worth watching, so if you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend you take 36 seconds of your life to go check it out!
So okay, what’s the great news today? Our favorite talk show host — that would be Mommy Drew Barrymore, noted 90s bisexual — is at it again!
I was happily going about my day, minding my own business and scrolling Instagram stories while I took a bathroom break (as one does) when suddenly my jaw hit the floor as this incredible and lightly unhinged clip started to play on my phone:
https://twitter.com/DrewBarrymoreTV/status/1620154341242945537
Drew Barrymore is interviewing Natasha Lyonne, the two of them each looking fucking hot as hell in very different outfits but equally alluring outfits, and at the very top of the clip Drew says, “You were with my baby. Aubrey Plaza is my baby now, and I’m her mommy.” It’s a clear throwback to her segment with Aubrey Plaza, and it’s beautiful. But the duo don’t stop there. The audience cheers wildly, I almost dropped my phone before passing out, and then, not to be outdone, Natasha smiles and says, “But but but, I’m the daddy.”
Drew is delighted and plays along immediately, exclaiming, “Are you the daddy?!” She then slides off her chair with ease, slides across the studio floor on her knees with her arms out to Natasha and asks, “Did we make a baby?!”
The two embrace, and it’s impossible not to just die on the spot. I mean okay maybe you are fine, but I do feel as though I am personally being bullied by Drew Barrymore and Natasha Lyonne in this moment and frankly, I love that for me!!!!
Not to be left out of the fun, Aubrey hopped onto Drew’s Instagram and posted two very important comments, one right after the other. Mama. Dada. IT’S FINE, I’M FINE.
The clip is only 42 seconds long, and I had no idea I could have my life ruined in such a short amount of time, but it’s cool to know we can still learn new things about ourselves all the time!!! Drew and Natasha conclude by gushing over Aubrey, their “baby,” with Drew cooing “Isn’t our daughter doing so well?” and Natasha responding “She’s thriving, I’m so proud of her!” Then they both say, “She did such a good job,” a couple of times, and well anyway, I am a ghost, I am dead, goodbye, I’ll miss you all, what a way to go!!!
Is Drew pandering to a very specific kind of dyke (me)? Is she catering to anyone/everyone in a mommy/baby dynamic? Is this a joke straight people understand or is she literally just doing it for the gays? I don’t know! I don’t care! I have watched this clip 50+ times at this point and I shan’t be stopping anytime soon. Mazel tov to Aubrey Plaza’s proud mama and dada, Drew Barrymore and Natasha Lyonne — I’m so happy for your family, I love you all, and I am forever grateful for this gift!!!
Blush and Bashful: I’m Writing a Lesbian Wedding Column and You’re Invited
Feature image by Wondra
According to the wedding website my fiancée and I are using, we’re getting married in exactly 137 days, nine hours, and 28 minutes. The website also includes a “seconds” barometer for the countdown, but I could do without that level of granular planning! To be honest, I could do without the countdown entirely. As I’ve written about a bit already for Autostraddle, I’m getting married this summer and I’m actually, for the most part, really enjoying the planning process. But give a Capricorn a countdown, and she’s going to feel a little anxious!
Due to the enthusiasm of our readers and of Autostraddle’s senior staff (a couple of whom are also now engaged!), I thought it would make sense to write a dedicated wedding column as our wedding site continues to (un)helpfully count down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds (lol) to the big day. Immediately after pitching this column idea, I became a little bit anxious. I’m not an expert, I’m not having a traditional wedding, and I’ve worked really hard to enact some boundaries around my personal writing that make it difficult to share as openly as I once did. Was I the right person to be writing this column? Would it be interesting and/or useful to anyone? Would it feel good to me? Was I being a little silly to add one more thing to my Wedding To Do List?
After I calmed down, I reminded myself that no one is an expert when it comes to being a bride or planning a wedding — unless they work in the wedding industry, and even then, no one has had a wedding until they, well, have had a wedding. And of course, it’s silly to worry about whether or not my wedding is traditional when writing for a bunch of queers. As for my own boundaries, I promise to listen to my heart and only share what genuinely feels good here. As a way to mitigate making this feel too much like a diary or a personal essay series (which it is not!), I’m going to do a good amount of interviewing other people — actual experts in the industry and fellow queers who are also planning weddings.
So without further ado, allow me to introduce you to my new little column called Blush and Bashful (please tell me you get the reference), running biweekly right here on Autostraddle dot come for the next few months, right up until my website wedding countdown hits 0 and I’m walking down the aisle to say I do.
I’ve written this before, but the truth is I never really thought I’d be a bride. I wasn’t one of those girls who thought about my wedding when I was growing up. In 7th grade, my best friends and I had a notebook we passed between the three of us and wrote extensive notes in during class, and the two of them were always sketching their “dream engagement ring” or “dream wedding dress” and I just couldn’t relate. It’s not like I was so radical and anti-marriage — I fully thought I was straight back then, and definitely assumed I’d marry some guy — I just didn’t really care about planning for the future party. I was more interested in creating blackout poetry with print outs of Indigo Girls lyrics — go figure.
As I grew older, the idea of marriage seemed incredibly far away. Gay marriage wasn’t legal when I first came out, but beyond that, it just wasn’t part of the game plan for most of the queers I considered (and still consider) my chosen family. And I guess in some ways, I just wasn’t ready. I was in my twenties. I was having a nice time, or a terrible time, or a messy time, or just like, a time. I remember my most serious girlfriend from that time period was eight years older than me, and when we broke up I told her honestly that I just didn’t think I ever wanted to settle down with someone and build a life. She was convinced I was looking for someone else, and I wanted to assure her that wasn’t true. I think I’ll be alone forever, I told her. I think I like it that way. I don’t want to be alone forever, she told me, just as honest. We were in the basement of my favorite teashop trying not to make a scene. I didn’t get it.
I get it now.
I could explain it in so many ways, but I guess who cares. I wanted to be alone for a long time, and I was — and then one day I realized I didn’t want that anymore. I could find other ways to be “not alone” but I happen to have found and fell in love with a dyke who loves me and wants to grow old with me. We want to play Wingspan and have kinky sex and host dinner parties for our friends and drive to Southern Oregon and fly to Boston and raise babies and grow garlic and build a home together until we don’t want to anymore. And we want to get married and host a wedding to celebrate our love. So we’re gonna do it!
Perhaps shocking absolutely no one, as soon as I realized I was going to have a wedding, I slipped very easily into the role of Bride. As much as my younger self didn’t want to plan our a fantasy wedding to a mystery man, my 34-year-old self has embraced her earth sign femme sensibilities and feels as though she was born to plan a wedding. Growing up is weird and surprising and fun.
Here are some details about our wedding, along with the little bits of wisdom I’ve acquired from the experience so far:
- We talked a lot about getting engaged before it happened, and we were both very much on the same page about wanting to get married. The actual engagements had surprise elements to them (we each proposed separately) but no part of the “we’re getting engaged” sentiment was a surprise. I personally would hate to be caught off guard by a wedding proposal, and it’s such a huge decision I think it makes sense to talk about it seriously before moving forward.
- My partner and I initially had very different ideas about what our wedding would look like, and luckily we talked this through almost immediately after we got engaged and were able to compromise and get on the same page. My partner initially thought we’d do a very casual picnic-style situation, and I initially thought we’d have to spend more money than she expected to achieve the dreamy princess blush and bashful situation I envisioned. We talked for a long time about what was important to us in terms of the celebration, how much money we could realistically spend as well as how much money we actually wanted to spend on what is essentially an elaborate party, and how we wanted to split up the labor of planning the wedding.
- We’re having a small campout-style backyard celebration this summer. We are incredibly lucky that our friends have agreed to host our wedding on their property in Southern Oregon, which is both gorgeous and large and also incredibly sentimental to both of us. This means there are a lot of logistics to manage (both because we’re not using a typical venue and because the location is four hours away from where we live), and there’s also a very fun DIY element to the entire event, which is what I wanted.
- One of my best friends is a literal miracle human and has never met a task she can’t take on — seriously, she’s an incredible cook, she runs her own vintage shop with her sister, she’s an interior design maven, she cuts hair, she does nails and makeup like a professional…she’s just truly the most competent person I’ve ever met in my life. She volunteered to help me plan the wedding right away. It is not an understatement to say I could not do this without her. I don’t have a wedding planner, but it feels like I have a wedding planner because I have her. I would strongly recommend anyone planning kind of DIY wedding have a right hand babe like this — either someone you’ve hired or someone you’re lucky enough to call family — because it will end up feeling overwhelming no matter how prepared you think you are to take it all on.
- I should also note here that my fiancée and I joyfully decided I would be the Wedding Project Manager — we both know if it was up to her, we’d be having a picnic. She is our House Project Manager, and I genuinely don’t feel resentful or sad about her not being my co-planner for the wedding, but I would definitely recommend talking about this and making sure you’re comfortable with the level of help each person can contribute to wedding planning before things get underway. I’ll also note that I’ve heard from some friends that family members and friends can be kind of weird about making assumptions about who is the “Wedding Project Manager” (if you will) depending on gender — the more femme presenting person in a relationship is often assumed to be the one taking charge, which is obviously fucked — so if that becomes a bother to you, don’t be shy about insisting people ask both of you about wedding plan, or perhaps better yet — don’t ask anyone at all.
- For me and for my partner, the most important thing about our wedding is that it’s a celebration with our loved ones. We want to have good food and fun music, and we want everyone’s memories to be filled with hot queers and loving energy. We’ve prioritized our planning accordingly: We’re spending the most money on the catering budget and the photographer, and we’ve chosen to ignore certain aspects of a “traditional” function that just don’t make sense for ours. We won’t be assigning tables or making place cards; we don’t have a wedding party; we aren’t printing out menus or programs. It’s not that I think those things don’t matter — they just don’t matter to us. And I think ultimately that’s my number one piece of wedding planning advice so far: There is no right way or wrong way to have a wedding. The only thing that matters is that you’re on the same page as the person you’re marrying and that the two of you stay true to what you both want your wedding to be.
So! That’s an introduction to me, my wedding planning, and the position from which I shall be writing this column. I’m excited for future installments where I’ll write about how to choose engagement rings, what shopping for a wedding dress as a fat dyke was like, the art of balancing traditions with creativity, and so much more. To conclude, I leave you with the most perfect Julia Roberts gif of all time:
Same, babe. Same.
Blush and Bashful is a biweekly queer wedding planning column.
You Need Help: I Feel Like I’m My Girlfriend’s Second Choice
Q:
My girlfriend and I have been dating for six months. My girlfriend came out this past year (we are both in our 30s). We have a good relationship — great sex, solid communication, compatibility, etc.
However, whenever my girlfriend talks about her first crush, I feel uneasy. She speaks reverently about cuddling in the dark with her close female friend while they watched SNL every week — neither one of them out of the closet or out to themselves at the time. This person is significant to her.
Her friend came out several years ago and is married to another woman. When I asked my girlfriend if she wished they had ended up together, she responded, “what does it matter? She’s married; she’s not an option.” Admittedly this isn’t the answer I want. My girlfriend doesn’t keep regular contact with this old friend and hasn’t come out to her yet. My instincts are telling me this is unrequited love. When I ask her why she hasn’t come out to her yet, she gets quiet and doesn’t respond.
To add insult to injury, I once asked my girlfriend what her type was, and she described “tall, masc of center, sporty, long curly hair.” I looked this girl up on social media, and that describes her exactly. As an uncoordinated artsy femme of average height, I’m measuring myself against this girl and coming up short (literally and figuratively).
The question I want to ask my girlfriend is, “If your friend and I were both single, which one would you choose?” I’m scared of her answer, but I don’t want to be my girlfriend or anyone’s second choice. My girlfriend is, hands down, my first choice. On the one hand, maybe I’m overacting, but on the other, don’t I deserve to be her number-one pick?
A:
Oh, babe. This situation sucks, and I’m sorry you’re going through it. I’ll say upfront: I think you and your girlfriend should break up. But that’s rough news to just hear first thing on the third day of the new year, so I’d like to invite you to make a cup of tea, grab a warm blanket, cozy up on the couch, and take some deep breaths before we get into the nitty gritty of what’s going on here. I’ll make some tea too. See you in a moment.
Whew, okay. Hi. So like I said, I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. Ouch! It would hurt my feelings so much if I asked my girlfriend her type and she didn’t describe me, and worse, she described her friend who I suspect she has unrequited feelings for. It’s such a bad feeling to feel as though you are anyone’s second choice, especially when it’s the person you picked first. I spent some time reading over this question and trying to pick apart what everyone (you and your partner) could be doing differently, but ultimately I came down to this very simple sentiment: you and your girlfriend should definitely be picking each other first. You say “don’t I deserve to be her number-one pick” and the answer is wholeheartedly, absolutely, resoundingly, yes.
When I first read your question I found myself asking some of my own. How long has your girlfriend been out? How frequently does she speak with this old friend? Do you both post about your relationship on social media, and if so, shouldn’t we assume that this person knows your girlfriend is gay, even if she hasn’t formally come out to her? Why are you asking leading questions to your girlfriend instead of just asking what you want to know? Do you have experiences in the past that have led you to feeling anxious in a relationship? Have you considered attachment theory and has anyone ever recommended DBT to you to help with intrusive anxious thoughts? (Admittedly, I am projecting with that last line of questioning — I am not a therapist and I am not offering a diagnosis, I’m simply an anxious woman who has been working with a DBT group for just over a year and has become evangelical about it because the tools have helped me manage my own intrusive anxious thoughts so much!) But the more time I spent with these questions, the more I concluded they don’t really matter.
What matters is that you don’t feel secure in your partnership with your girlfriend. So you either need to get to a place where you feel secure, or you need to break up. And I, personally, would not be inclined to put the hard work that is required to overcome feeling like my girlfriend’s second choice into a relationship that is only six months long. Maybe you will be! But you wrote in for advice, and I am imagining myself sitting on my blue velvet sofa drinking tea with a dear friend and offering them advice, and this is the advice I would give: Break Up.
Not because your girlfriend is bad! Not because you are anxious or overreacting or not overreacting or any other such weeds we could get into it. But because part of the magical sparkly unbeatable joy of being in love and in relationship with someone is feeling like you are choosing them and they are choosing you over and over and over with glee, with zest, with happiness, with excitement, and most importantly: without reservation. And for whatever reason, that isn’t the feeling you’re experiencing here. And it seems, from taking your letter at face value, that you have some evidence to support your concern. Sometimes our brain makes up stories to wreak havoc on our emotions, but sometimes our intuition is sounding an alarm. It seems to me that in your case, the latter is happening.
I want to tell you about a time I ignored my own intuition. I used to date someone I loved very much who was simply not the right match for me. And I struggled so hard to make our relationship work; I believe she struggled to make it work too. We both wanted to be right for each other. And yet — we simply were not. But because I am A Good Queer Who Goes To Therapy And Reads Books About Attachment Theory I had bought into the idea that Relationships Are Work. And they are! That’s true. But my therapist used to challenge me every week, when I showed up for our sessions to cry some more about how much my partner’s behavior was making me feel terrible and how I was working so hard but nothing was changing, and she’d say, “Vanessa, relationships are work, but they shouldn’t be this hard.” I didn’t really get what she meant until my ex and I finally broke up, goddess bless us both, and I met my current partner who is going to be my wife. And yes, my relationship with my fiancee is work — I wasn’t entirely wrong about that, all relationships of course are work — but I understand my therapist now. The work I do with my current partner is not hard. And even when we are struggling with a challenging moment, we are not struggling about whether or not we should be together — because that is easy. It is Known. We have chosen each other, without reservation, and we are In It Together. That is obvious and true. So all the work we do surrounding us is manageable because we’re doing it together. That feeling of panic or anxiety or mistrust in my last relationship wasn’t me overreacting — it was the terrible way we feel in our bodies when we ignore our intuition.
It sounds to me as though you do not necessarily feel as though you’re In It Together with your girlfriend, and whether that’s your perception or her truth or somewhere in the middle doesn’t really matter. You deserve to be in a relationship with someone who chooses you enthusiastically and proudly and obviously every single day, and your girlfriend deserves to figure out exactly what she wants and needs from a relationship (and perhaps from the personal closure she still needs to find from her past significant relationship with someone who, as she astutely and wisely can point out, is no longer available as an option for her to date or be with romantically). Perhaps this sounds callous, but six months is really not very long in a relationship. I think it makes sense to take this moment and call it off, so you and your girlfriend can both get back out there and find people who can do the work of a relationship with each of you in a way that feels manageable, enjoyable, and mostly just not this hard.
I don’t want you to go through another moment of feeling like a runner up. You don’t need to ask your girlfriend any questions to figure out what to do here. You just need to ask yourself what you deserve, and then you need to choose yourself. I want you to start 2023 feeling like your own number-one pick. That way, when the right person comes along, you’ll be ready and confident to be her number-one pick, too.
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
Some Things I Didn’t Expect When Planning My Lesbian Wedding
Hello, it’s me again, an unsuspecting lesbian bride planning a DIY backyard lesbian wedding even though at one point in my life I was quite adamant about never getting married. And yet, life is long! I fell in love with a triple water sign! I’ve decided I want a wedding after all! My dad was right, my priorities changed in my thirties! I’m excited to host a big party for all my friends and wear a white dress and eat cake! C’est la vie! La vie est belle! I don’t really speak French, I’m unsure why I’m leaning into these phrases!
I’ve developed better boundaries over 15+ years of writing on the internet (thank you therapy) but I’m still inclined to (carefully) share some of my life with you as it happens, which means you get to join me on this fun gay wedding planning adventure! There are many things one expects when planning a wedding (hiring someone to feed your guests, purchasing a dress, feeling somewhat stressed out about where your out of town friends will stay) but some things about the experience thus far have truly taken me by surprise! For example…
1. I have become the number one purchaser of gently used rugs in my area on OfferUp
What can I tell you — I fell for this Pinterest trend. I am desperate to recreate the boho chic energy radiating out of the DIY backyard wedding photos I keep seeing on Pinterest and I am certain that curating a dance floor out of area rugs in the middle of the gorgeous large property we’re getting married on will make this happen! But did you know area rugs can be really expensive? Like, hundreds of dollars? I shan’t be spending hundreds of dollars on 10+ area rugs, no way! But did you also know that on OfferUp you can find almost everything you need in life for super affordable prices? Including… wait for it… yep, you guessed it, area rugs! Anyway I have truly spent the past few months driving all over Portland and the surrounding areas purchasing a variety of gently used rugs that I will now ask my fiancée to schlep to Southern Oregon in her truck so we can create my dream dance floor in the woods. I also greatly look forward to transitioning from the Number One Purchaser of Gently Used Rugs in My Area to the Number One Seller of Gently Used Rugs in My Area as soon as the wedding is over. If you live in Portland and need a cute large gently used rug for cheap this summer, let me know!
2. I’m in not infrequent contact with a woman named Daphne who is renting me a Fancy Portable Toilet Trailer with air conditioning
The thing is, when you get married on your dream Dyke Land Project, sometimes compost toilets are the Main Way To Go To The Bathroom. While I was all ready to tell my guests how to poop in a bucket and cover it with straw while wearing sequins, my friends who own the land gently pointed out that no one would be interested in dumping the poop out of the bucket all weekend and it would certainly need to be done at least a few times… at which my future mother in law, who is incredibly helpful and willing to do many undesirable tasks, was like, “It really sounds like you need to rent Porta Potties” and I was like okay, if she thinks this is a necessary expense, it actually is! Sold! But in my Porta Potty Research Journey I met Daphne, who works for a company that rents out Fancy Portable Toilet Trailers with air conditioning, and we are now BFF. Or rather, we’ve spoken several times on the phone and she’s assured me the only downside of renting her trailer is that guests may talk more about the awesome toilets than they do about the wedding, to which I say — at least they won’t be complaining about poop buckets! Anyway I love Daphne.
3. I care a LOT about how to organize a refrigerator to peak efficiency
Have you ever tried to host 50+ people for a full weekend of eating in the woods at a property with One Single Refrigerator? NEED I SAY MORE?!?! (In all seriousness I have been studying weird diagrams on Foodie Instagram that suggest things like putting a Lazy Susan in the fridge and using an upside down Dutch oven lid for more room, and I will likely buy a cheap second hand refrigerator to create more space so I don’t have a meltdown on the actual wedding weekend… also if anyone reading this is a guest invited to the wedding who owns a Yeti cooler, text me right now. I’m not kidding!!!)
4. You can make a couch out of hay bales
I’m not doing this, my best friend just discovered it on Pinterest while researching seating options for my backyard extravaganza and I had an overwhelming urge to share this with you. Can! You! Believe?!!!!
5. I’m earnestly excited about this party and I’m having a lot of fun planning it
A few days ago I was having lunch with a friend who is about fifteen years older than me — she just had her second wedding — and we were laughing at our younger selves and how dismissive we’d been about the concept of a wedding party. It’s true that a wedding is expensive, that there’s no way to divest the act of marriage from the state, that some dykes more radical than I am are probably judging me for indulging entirely in Planning My Wedding (and it’s true that ten years ago, I was one of those judgmental dykes) but it’s also true that I am so earnestly excited about this party, that I am having a lot of fun planning it, and that I am letting myself off the hook for all the baggage I used to have around “wedding parties” and what they all mean.
This particular friend was like, “I love love and I love to party! And I’m not sorry!” and I am really into that vibe! I’m deeply in love with my fiancée and I’m a Capricorn who is obsessed with her friends and creating color coded spreadsheets! I’m planning an event to celebrate love in all its forms that will allow my nearest and dearest to dress up in their sparkly best and camp out in the woods at my favorite place in the world for a whole weekend! My best friend is a fucking wedding planning genius and the two of us are having a ball researching how to make a dance floor out of used rugs and how to make couches out of hay bales! I met a woman named Daphne who rents out fancy toilet trailers! What a world! What a life! I feel lucky and happy and deeply amused that my Baby Dyke Self would’ve judged this version of me so hard. I guess that’s part of growing up. I accept it.
I never expected to be a bride but it’s happening and yeah — I fucking love it. So far, that’s the biggest surprise when planning my lesbian wedding.
Have you planned a DIY backyard queer wedding? Do you have any secret hot tips for me or surprising moments of your own? I’d love to hear about the in the comments! And thank you to everyone who commented on my last wedding article, too — I am listening and making notes about what kinds of gay wedding content we can publish in 2023! In the meanwhile, I’ve got some more large area rugs to pick up. Bye!!!
You Need Help: I Just Turned 65 and I’m Questioning My Sexuality
Q:
Help me, Autostraddle! I know I’m too old for you, but who else am I gonna ask? I just turned 65. I was single in the pre-plague 70s and made good use of it, fu#king just about anything with a dick. I got sober and stopped that, met my husband and soulmate. Loved him madly, and then he died. Honestly, I loved our intimate relationship but over time had less and less interest in sex. My hetero married friends my age are getting testosterone shots ~ for their husbands. Ugh. No.
I never even considered anything other than heterosexuality, but the vast majority of my friends, male and female, have always been gay. Always. I sponsored half the lesbians in AA for decades. I am attracted to lesbians in a way I can’t explain. My dearest friend in the world died four years ago and she was a self-described dyke. I adored her.
But I don’t want sex. I don’t actually want sex with anyone (well, myself, occasionally, but it’s not a driving force these days). I recently encountered a man who by all of society’s standards would be a catch. Smart, educated, well off, enchanted with me. So why was I feeling so cringe-y, the more interested he became? And as his sexual interest became clear, I actually felt revulsion.
I meditated and tried to work this out with my spirit guides (woo woo, I know), and I kept seeing my body outlined with bright white light, and hearing the word, “impenetrable.” Let that guy go. What a relief.
And yet now I’m on a lesbian dating site. What is going on with me? I really hope you can help me, or at least direct me to some resources. There’s no one in my life I can ask about this. I’d be too embarrassed to go to my lesbian friends and say “Hey, guess what? You were right.” (Because they’ve been telling me for years…)
I’ve been feminist for years, fought for the ERA, have hated men, felt compassion for them, pity most and, thankfully, love a lot of the poor creatures now (definitely have found peace there). But the idea of sharing my life with a hetero man is just a big fat nope. I just love women. And I love women who aren’t into all that male/female BS. It’s exhausting.
I don’t know what to do, or even if I should do anything. I’m happy in my life, just really surprised that all of this has come up and I guess a little disconcerted thinking I’ve been deluding myself for years?? Okay. There it is. Thanks for listening.
A:
Editor’s note: Every so often, a question lands in our inbox that sparks a lot of discussion amongst our staff! This was one of those questions, and as a special treat, Himani and I decided to have a formal conversation about it and then publish our transcript so you can get multiple perspectives — and of course we hope you’ll all share your perspectives in the comments per usual. This felt like an especially fun way to close out the year of You Need Help. Thank you all for trusting us with your vulnerable questions, and we’ll be back in 2023 to keep trying our best to help when you need it! — Vanessa
Vanessa: So my first instinct here was to just be like… “babe, you’re queer!” Because I feel like being queer is expansive, and can include many identities throughout one’s life, and to me when I read this question it was like a foregone conclusion. Duh babe, you’re queer. Welcome!
Himani: I don’t disagree with you, but when I hear people say things like that, “Well of course you’re queer,” in that kind of matter of fact way — I wonder if it just reinforces this letter writer’s fear about their friends being like “I told you so.” And, I really feel for this person, because the embarrassment of telling your friends something it’s taken you decades to come to, when other people have been insinuating it forever is so real. And not to throw shade (but also throwing shade) the smugness of the queer community in situations like this really doesn’t help. In my experience at least it makes it harder. It makes it harder to come into something that is your own because it feels like everyone is going to be like “well duh” or laugh at you. And then after you do come out a bunch of people who are way younger than you call you a baby gay, which just feels so pejorative and dismissive of the life you’ve already been living.
Vanessa: Yes, I think that’s all such good info to mull over! And when we first talked about this as a group in the editorial Slack channel, you mentioned some of those feelings and I was really surprised and then really happy that you called it out and brought your experience to the table, because I hadn’t meant it that way but can totally see how it comes across that way. So then we decided to answer this question together, and now here we are! So I guess I’m wondering from your perspective, what are some ways this person can move forward that will feel affirming and empowering rather than belittling or dismissive?
Himani: I mean, I think everyone in the queer community knows this but I think we need to say it more explicitly and more often: Queerness is a journey. And also, I don’t think sexuality is a fixed thing — although that’s a tricky one to own because homophobes have been using this against us forever. But I don’t mean it that way. I just mean that if you’re older and coming out now, that doesn’t deny or negate the life and love that you’ve had. It also doesn’t negate the fact that your feelings in the present are maybe pointing to other interests than you’ve had or pursued in the past. In the case of this particular letter writer, I also feel really compelled to add: you can be straight or a lesbian or bisexual or however you choose to identify at the end of the day and also not be into sex. You can be any or all of those things and also asexual or aromantic.
Vanessa: I 100% agree on all of that. And if you’d like more resources for exploring asexuality, you can check out the articles we’ve written about it on Autostraddle, or I really loved Angela Chen’s Ace. I really want to focus on what Himani said which is that queerness is a journey. I think something I wanted to zoom in on for this answer is affirming the meaningful relationship the LW had with her husband — maybe I’m sensitive to that because my dad died just a couple of years ago and I can see how much my mom is struggling — but I feel very strongly that we do fall in love with people, not always a specific gender, and it seems clear to me they shared a beautiful relationship for many years. But I’m looking at the LW now, writing to us (which, by the way, thank you for trusting us with your question!) and wondering what her next move should be. I’m specifically looking at the end of the letter where she writes: “I don’t know what to do, or even if I should do anything.” What do you think?
Himani: Ultimately, I think there’s no wrong way about this in terms of whether she seeks out a relationship with a woman or queer community that she’s more explicitly and openly a part of or whether she continues along with the life and friends and relationships she has currently. But she does seem to be stressed by feeling like she needs a clear “answer,” and I don’t think there necessarily is one or has to be one. I think I’ve written this in response to an advice question before but when I was first coming to terms with my sexuality, I felt the most “seen” and belonging when I saw a sign at my work place that said it was LGBTQ+ affirming and included “questioning” along with the more definitive identity labels. Because it was this realization that I could just live in the Q of “questioning” forever if I wanted to and I would still have a place somewhere, and that was an ok decision to make. And I think we need to be able to accept and embrace the uncertainty. So often we get questions from folks about specific identity labels, and at the end of the day, I really do believe that you get to make a label what you want it to be (within reason, of course, I’m not sanctioning Rachel Dolezal over here) AND also you get to choose or not choose or change your labels when and how you want. In the end, I personally don’t think the labels are all that important, and sometimes I think we get caught up in them at the expense of just living. Which brings me to my next point: I do think finding friends to talk to is going to be really helpful for her, ultimately — whether that’s her lesbian friends or straight friends or otherwise. She seems like she just needs someone to talk through her feelings with, at least as a starting point. And if she is concerned that her friends will be like “well, duh” she can preface the conversation with something like, “I’m feeling really tender around this topic, and I need you to be kind to me and to take this seriously.” Or something along those lines.
Vanessa: Yes! That’s so much of what I’m thinking too. The answer to “what should I do now” is so open, and I think that in itself can be a little overwhelming, but honestly, it can be anything. I remember when I first came out to myself, I was 20, and I really gave myself such a hard time — like “if you didn’t know this about yourself how could it possibly be true now!” I wrote that in my journal! And I was only 20! So I’m thinking, if I felt that way then, it seems like possibly many queer people, no matter how old, have a really hard time coming to terms with their identity, for so many reasons… some of which are surely the idea that queer people won’t welcome them, or will scoff at them and say I told you so, or will simply be kind of cliquey. I do think this LW is at an advantage because she says she already has so many gay friends — it seems like she wouldn’t have to do much to plug into queer community because in many ways she’s already in it. My main advice is to take some pressure off yourself, be gentle with your journey, and just be open to anything. Don’t date men if that feels bad. Don’t feel like you have to date women either (though do if you want to, as it seems the Lesbian Dating Website might indicate… yes?). Roll your own eyes at anyone who acts smug about your journey. Just let it be what it is every day, and go from there.
Himani: Yeah, I completely agree with that. For me, when I accepted the uncertainty and was just like “I’m going to just keep doing me,” that really helped me just live my life and make decisions based on what I felt like doing.
Vanessa: I love that. Do you think there’s anything else we need to share with this LW? I really want to cheer her on and just encourage her to keep doing what she’s doing. Honestly, she sounds like a fucking rad person, and I wish I got to be her friend!
Himani: One last thing I want to touch on is when she says, “I guess a little disconcerted thinking I’ve been deluding myself for years.” That’s a really hard feeling to live with, and also something I can relate to, and! also something we’ve gotten asked in the past. A few years ago I responded to a letter writer in YNH who felt guilt about coming out and buried in their question was this kind of guilt for kind of letting themselves down. I don’t know if that’s the exact feeling this letter writer is experiencing, but I just want her to know that, first, she’s not alone: I think a lot of people who come out older (myself included) feel like, “How could I not know sooner? How could I have been deluding myself for so long?” And second, that ultimately she hasn’t let herself down at all. As I wrote in my earlier reply: “You came out when you did for a reason and, in all honesty, probably more than one.”
Vanessa: I will say as my final thought — if you do choose to share with your friends, which I hope you do, there’s no reason to frame it like “omg you were RIGHT and I was WRONG”… and if they’re good friends, they won’t want to feel that way either! It’s just life. You’re just living. Who cares what anyone thought until now? You’re you. This is the you of right now. It sounds like your friends are really loving and accepting, so make space for them to love and accept this version of you, even if you remain in a questioning place for the rest of your life.
Himani: I love that so much! And I think you’re right! If you’ve been friends with some of these people for so long, they probably just really love you and want what’s best for you.
Vanessa: Which is… literally whatever you want. We’re sending you so much love from Autostraddle and hoping you get everything you want and more in 2023 and beyond!
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
I’m a Queer Bride on a Budget — And I Went to a Bridal Expo
I never thought I would be a bride. Even before I knew I was gay, when I was a supposedly straight tween growing up in suburbia, when my best friends would talk about their “dream weddings” of the future, I just couldn’t relate. I like weddings — who doesn’t love a big party celebrating love? — I just never thought I’d have one. And now, here I am: a bride! Truly no one is more surprised than I am.
There are lots of ways to have a wedding, to get married, to throw a party, to legally bind yourself to another human. It should go without saying, but just in case it doesn’t: I do not think that marriage is any more or less special than any other means of making a family. It’s just a thing I’m choosing to do with my fiancée. And, lez be real: there is a dearth of media surrounding queer weddings. So I’m choosing to write about planning my queer wedding, just a little bit here and there. Hopefully, you’ll find the content useful if you are also planning a queer wedding (or perhaps dreaming about one).
Like many experiences on this planet, I barely knew anything about Planning A Wedding until I actually started, you know, planning one. So the thing about weddings is that they can be very simple (like, signing paperwork at the courthouse) or they can be very elaborate, but no matter how you do it, people are going to try to get you to spend So Much Money. If you’re throwing a party (traditional or otherwise) to accompany your wedding, you are actually going to want to hire a lot of vendors. But how do you choose them? How do you even know which ones you need? Well, my friends, I guess that’s where a Bridal Expo comes into play! I hadn’t heard of such a thing. And yet, I found myself waiting in line to attend one just a few weeks ago. I’ll get into that in a bit, but first, let me tell you about my wedding plans:
I felt very strongly that I did not want to hire a wedding planner, and I am very, very, very lucky that my best friend is an incredibly creative and competent individual who has planned several weddings already and who volunteered to be my unofficial maid of honor/party planner (we’re not having an official wedding party, so there is no maid of honor — but I have affectionately titled this pal the CEO of my wedding, to give context for the scope of how much work she’s doing). The function will take place on my friends’ property in the woods, and I’m basically doing all the decorations/tablescapes/set up myself and with the help of friends. We’ve hired a friend to do the catering, we splurged on the most incredible queer photographer whose work I have admired for years, and we’re going to make the wedding cake ourselves.
So when my best friend, who is so invested in planning the wedding that her phone and The Algorithm have decided that she is the bride, got an Instagram ad for the Bridal Expo happening in Portland, I was skeptical. Why would we need to go to a giant event with vendors trying to charge us So Much Money for things we already had taken care of? But my pal insisted that we might see some great inspirational stuff there. Also, we could sample all the cakes. Okay, sold.
When we arrived at the Expo, there was a giant line of people waiting to get inside. I’d say we were two of maybe ten people wearing masks, which felt bad. The event was free, but I’d had to give my email address to “sign up.” I later learned that was a terrible ploy, because even though I carefully refrained from giving my email to any vendors that day, it has become clear that the organizers shared everyone’s emails with every vendor. I will be receiving pleas from some man named Keith to see if I want him to cater my wedding from now until I perish. Bummer for me and for Keith.
One hot tip I would give everyone planning a wedding, no matter how tiny, if you’re going to use even one vendor or go to an event like this one: make an email address specifically dedicated to your wedding. I thought that was a silly idea because I didn’t care that much about the wedding (lol, that has changed, but I was once a sweet summer child, you know?) and also didn’t think I’d be interacting with that many people. I was wrong, first of all, and second of all, especially for an event like the Expo, I wish I’d given a specific email address that I could just walk away from once the wedding is over. Instead, it’s me and Keith for life, babyyyy. Okay, but I digress. The Expo!
It was kind of exactly what I thought it would be, which was: fun, funny, overwhelming, weird, exciting, eye-rolly, useful. I know that some people are just so sincerely Into It when it comes to weddings and I don’t want to make anyone feel bad, but some stuff is just unequivocally cringey, and I can’t hide my true feelings. White women appropriating dream catchers to make “bridal headdresses” and telling me “everyone in LA loves them?” That is fucking weird and bad! People offering “wedding coaching” services, which is “like therapy for your wedding” for when you need to wrangle the groomsmen into photos but they’re “so hungover from going to the strip club and you want to kill them?” Y’all, the straights are not okay.
But mostly, the Expo was a lot of vendors doing a very good job at selling their services, and I can appreciate that. The things I was most invested in: floral arrangements (we’re doing our own, but it was fun to see inspiration), photobooths (we’re going to have a DIY one, but I was fascinated by all the ways technology has changed since my Bat Mitzvah), cake samples (this is self-explanatory, yeah?), a bridal boudoir photoshoot situation (wayyyy too expensive, especially when I can just have my friends take nude photos of me in cute lingerie, but I think for folks who don’t have those kinds of relationships or drag closets and do have the budget, this is very cool!), and, weirdly enough, a porta potty company!
The land where I’m having my wedding has three (3) compost toilets, and my friends who own the land politely suggested that I might want to get some porta potties for the weekend of the wedding so no one has to deal with everyone’s extremely literal shit. Well, did you know that not only do they 
have wedding-themed porta potties (yes, they are white) — they also have bathroom trailers?! I rented something called The Farmgirl, and the woman on the phone told me the only problem is sometimes brides complain that the guests talk more about how great the toilets were than they do about the bride and the wedding itself. But you know what? If my guests are raving about the toilets at my wedding instead of complaining about having to sprinkle hay into a bucket they just pooped in while in formal wear, I’ll take it!
The crowd at the Expo was eclectic. It was clear some people had driven a very long distance just to attend, which endeared them to me. There were a lot of kids (which surprised me), a lot of brides, a lot of families, and, honestly, a lot of queer couples. My best friend and I got mistaken for brides together a million times — which makes sense, because we were wearing matching party dresses and kept referring to “our wedding” — and not a single vendor was weird or homophobic. Take this with a grain of salt: I do live in Portland, and the queers do sort of run the show around here — but still, when dealing with The Wedding World, I was pleasantly surprised. I was also pleased that not a single vendor seemed fat-shamey or body negative, another pleasant surprise in The Wedding World.
So would I recommend that you, a person planning a wedding, go to a Bridal Expo? It depends. If you’re hiring a wedding planner and don’t particularly want to be super hands-on, it might be a waste of your time. If you’re doing a DIY scenario and don’t want your email shared with literally hundreds of vendors and also know you won’t be using any of them, it also might be a waste of your time. But if you, like me, are planning your own wedding and still want a few “bridal” experiences,
even just to see what all the fuss is about, and you’re also open to being inspired by what’s there (and potentially unexpectedly finding the porta potty toilet rental of your dreams, lol), and you also feel confident in your ability to say “no, thank you” when people try to sell you things you don’t want or need, then perhaps a Bridal Expo is, indeed, for you! And if you’re planning your own wedding and are actively looking for vendors for specific things or want to compare options, I think a Bridal Expo is definitely for you and strongly recommend it (although I really do think you should make a specific email address for the wedding process — trust me, you’ll thank me later).
If anyone has questions about the Expo, please feel free to ask in the comments. I’ll do my best to jump in and answer them. And if anyone has requests about other Wedding Content for Autostraddle to publish in the future, let us know! When I’m not driving around the Greater Portland Area buying cheap rugs off OfferUp (for our outdoor dance floor, obviously) or scouring Goodwills for mismatched floral plates and silverware, I’d be thrilled to write more about planning this wedding. Though I never thought I’d be a bride, now that I’m going to be, I’m having a pretty nice time planning it all! I think my tween self would be confused but delighted for me.
Goodbye to My Gallbladder
Content warning: This essay refers to disordered eating, restrictive eating, and medical procedures.
I didn’t plan on getting my gallbladder removed on Halloween, nine days after my fiancée and I moved into our new home — but that’s exactly what happened.
Let’s rewind.
It’s March, and I’m supposed to meet a friend for dinner. A few hours beforehand, I start to feel swollen, bloated, gassy — pain. I’ve dealt with IBS for almost a decade at this point and am used to my digestion ruining my life, and this friend is also an IBS sufferer (everyone knows IBS is a common affliction for hot queer girls), so I simply text her to cancel and she understands. I complain to my girlfriend that I’ve never had an IBS flair so bad. I attempt to soothe the attack with all my regular tools, but nothing works. I eventually fall asleep in pain. When I wake up in the morning I’m fine.
It’s July, and I’m visiting my mom on the East Coast. We eat pizza for dinner to celebrate my brother’s birthday; tomatoes and cheese are challenging for me so I expect a stomachache. Instead I wake up in the middle of the night with severe back pain. I don’t make a connection between my digestion and my back pain; I do worry it might be a heart attack. Eventually I fall back asleep.
It’s August and my girlfriend is proposing to me the next day but I don’t know that yet. We enjoy a six course tomato feast at our local farm and when I wake in the middle of the night with searing pain in my chest, my back, my whole upper body it seems, I am angry at myself. You deserve this, I think, as I know nightshades cause inflammation in my body. What did you expect. I take heartburn meds, I take ibuprofen, I lie on an ice pack, I play Woodoku on my phone. In the morning my girlfriend is concerned — I spent a portion of the evening sending her memes that made me laugh and distracted me from the pain so she can see I was awake from 2am-5am. We use our Hitatchi on my stomach, thinking I’m dealing with gas and the vibrations might help move it around, and eventually I feel a little bit better, and we leave for our camping trip, and she proposes to me at a secluded waterfall, and we eat pizza for dinner, and my body doesn’t hurt, and I sleep through the night with my new sparkly diamond on my left ring finger.
It’s a week later and I’m up in the middle of the night in pain again. Then again. Then again. Then again, but worse. I lose track of exactly how many times I am woken in the middle of the night in pain; usually it’s located deep in my back, between my shoulder blades, and I go to my cardiologist to ask about the possibility of a heart attack because my dad died of a heart attack in the middle of the night but he assures me I am not having a heart attack. I go back to acupuncture. I stop eating tomatoes even though it is peak tomato season. I hurt.
It is September when I have my next attack and my best friend tells me the pain I’m describing reminds her of what her sister, a fellow fat queer, experienced when she had gallstones. As soon as she gives me this information, things start to click into place. I’ve never heard of gallstones, never thought about my gallbladder. But when I start talking about it, it seems like everyone has a story. It turns out many of my friends have had their gallbladders removed. Everyone knows someone who has had their gallbladder removed. I drastically shift my diet while I wait to see my doctor. I want a plan.
Two weeks later I see my doctor. She is very sympathetic and orders an ultrasound right away. She writes URGENT on the sheet but the hospital she faxes it to can’t see my for seven days. When we get the results back she confirms I have gallstones, that they are causing pain, that eating a diet consisting of no fat, no dairy, no gluten, no sugar, no caffeine, and no alcohol is not a sustainable solution. She refers me to a general surgeon at a hospital; the hospital calls a few days later and tells me they can see me in June 2023. I’m confused. It’s not urgent, they explain. The pain feels pretty urgent, I tell them. They are firm. They have reviewed my doctor’s notes and my pain is not urgent. I’m getting married in June. They can see me a week after my wedding, they say. I resign myself to not eating anything on my wedding day, for fear of inducing a severe gallstone attack and being unable to enjoy the party because of the pain.
Okay, let’s fast forward.
It’s a grilled cheese that ends up sending me to the ER. The day before Halloween we have friends over for dinner and I want a grilled cheese and I decide to eat one, gallstones be damned. Following a very restrictive diet for health reasons is a real trip when you’re a fat girl who is forever trying to recover from a disordered eating past. The line for me between treating my body well and hurting my body is not always clear; sometimes it doesn’t exist. I tell my fiancée I’m going to eat a grilled cheese and simply accept the gallstone attack. She supports my autonomy and the sometimes complicated choices I make around food, always. The grilled cheese is perfect. I feel certain the pain will be a reasonable trade for the delight I feel eating it.
I am wrong.
A few hours after I consume the perfectly crisp sourdough bread and the gooey melty delicious cheese, the upper right part of my belly starts hurting. The pain settles into my back, then my breastbone, then my entire upper core. It feels as though there is a belt around my midsection, just under my boobs, that someone is pulling tighter and tighter. I ask my fiancée if we can go for a walk to try to relieve the pain; we do, but the pain remains. It gets worse. We play a board game to try to distract me. I am writhing on the floor by the end. She makes up the guest bedroom for me and I tell her to go to bed — I don’t want her to see me throw up. I make it to the bathroom just in time to get the puke into the toilet right after I say that. I pee my pants when I puke. My fiancée asks if she can take me to the ER but I say no, let’s wait and see what happens. I spend the next ten hours puking. Finally, at 7:30am, I ask my fiancée to take me to the hospital. I only cry once the whole time: when I pee my pants while puking in the ER, topless, right as the male nurse opens the door to check on me. Then they give me drugs and then the pain stops and then I get my gallbladder removed on Halloween.
Because I am the kind of person I am, as soon as this happened, I wanted to write about it and talk about it with other people who’ve experienced the same thing. I’ve never been shy to talk about my body, and I was shocked that when I posted about my surgery on Instagram I received 50+ DMs from people — both friends and strangers — expressing that they too were gallbladder-free! Many had also experienced minimizing comments from doctors before eventually having their gallbladders removed, and many had ended up in the ER — either because a doctor had pushed aside their concern or because their first attack was as bad as my last one. I wasn’t shocked by the numbers — my research about gallstones and gallbladders since my own pain began made it clear that many, many people suffer from this pain — but I was shocked that I’d never heard about it from anyone else until my pain began. How could I have never known that so many friends and acquaintances had their gallbladders removed? Why weren’t we talking about this?!
I think a pretty simple explanation is that many people don’t want to talk at length about their bodies, about pain, about surgery, about things they may deem “private.” And that’s fine! But since I feel comfortable doing so, and since I think a lot of us have experience with gallbladder pain, I wanted to write about it and also create a Feelings Atrium space in the comments for people to share their own experiences. A lot of people who messaged me expressed that they still can’t eat “whatever they want” (even though pretty much all doctors insist that you can once you get your gallbladder removed) and some still experienced pain even after surgery. One person shared that they got a hernia because of the emergency nature of the surgery and the shock to their body. Some people were very sick before surgery and recovered quickly after; some people remained sick. Lots of people had advice about what works for them, and I felt so grateful for all the information. It’s not useful to tell someone else what they must do with their body, but it’s very useful to share knowledge so that folks can try out what works for them.
So please, use the comments as a Feelings Atrium! Share your own gallbladder/gallstone stories, share what worked for you pre or post surgery, share if something other than surgery helped you, share things you wish you knew, share it all! I only ask that everyone please try to stick with “I” statements, do not tell other commenters what to do with their health or their bodies, and do not shame anyone for how they choose to handle their ailments.
I was really scared to have my gallbladder removed. The amount of self judgment I felt — internalized fatphobia (fat and thin people get gallstones, but I definitely found myself feeling “responsible” because I’m fat) and pressure to heal my body “naturally” with supplements, acupuncture, and permanent change in diet — and my inability to meet with a surgeon to discuss my options when I knew there was something very wrong going on inside of me compounded my fears and made the entire experience scarier than it needed to be. The physical pain was the worst I have ever experienced — a level 10 for sure, possibly higher! — and yet I still felt guilty going to the ER when I finally did. I wish I hadn’t had to deal with so much confusion and so many unknowns. Having surgery was absolutely the right choice for me, and it sucks that I felt shame about it because I couldn’t have my questions answered even when I knew something was wrong.
Now, 30 days later, I’m so relieved. I am healing very well. I don’t have to micromanage my diet, a behavior that is terrible for my mental health, and I don’t have to fear experiencing level 10 pain when I eat “the wrong thing.” And I feel certain I can have some cake next June without ruining my wedding.
I didn’t plan on getting my gallbladder removed on Halloween, nine days after my fiancée and I moved into our new home — but I’m glad I did. What about you?
PS: As a fun bonus, I decided I wanted to publish a piece of science writing to accompany this very personal (and decidedly un-scientific) piece about gallbladders — and when I think of queer science writing, you know I think of Leigh Cowart, who does it the way nobody else can. Leigh, author of Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose, said yes to my request and put together the best History and Science Lesson About the Gallbladder that a gay could ever hope for. (What are you waiting for?! Click that link!!!)
Happy Gallbladder Day on Autostraddle dot com! I’m glad you’re here and I’m glad my gallbladder is not.