Marshall Taylor Union - Same-Sex Ceremonies

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SAME-SEX CEREMONIES
INTRODUCTION | THE BASICS | SPECIFICS I | SPECIFICS II

INVITATION

Purpose: to provide ceremony & reception details for guests and to set the tone for the wedding

Adaptation: This one was easy. The wording of the invitation is determined by who will be hosting the wedding and Emily Post provides specific examples for ceremonies hosted by the couple themselves. The only variation was the use of "Union Ceremony" in place of "marriage" or "wedding". (Although we often used the term "Commitment Ceremony" in conversation, it seemed too much like a celebration of being institutionalized when put into writing!)

OFFICIANT

Purpose: to legalize the union though government vested authority; to lead the ceremony; to often provide a religious sanction of the marriage; to provide a sense of occasion and formality to the ceremony

Adaptation: A church would be the most obvious venue for a traditional wedding and a religious leader the most obvious celebrant. Even if a gay couple’s own faith won’t perform same-sex commitment ceremonies, the Metropolitan Community Church is available to provide the spiritual element for their union. While this is a wonderful choice for many – Peter’s own sister had her ceremony performed by an MCC minister - it wasn’t the route for us. Brandon had never been religious and while Peter had been raised in the Catholic Church he felt it would be hypocritical to have a religious union when he had rarely been to mass since high school (a “recovering Catholic”, as the saying goes). More importantly, the MCC did not offer a marriage preparation course which was something that was essential to Peter.

The other traditional type of celebrant would be a judge or justice of the peace but as far as we knew they didn’t officiate same-sex ceremonies in Ontario and they certainly didn’t offer preparation classes. That left us in a quandary. Where would we find the most important element in our ceremony? It couldn’t be just any amateur but had to be some person or organization that (1) was gay positive, (2) offered marriage preparation counseling and (3) was experienced with civil ceremonies. Would you believe we found the perfect answer by surfing the internet? Officiant Terri Hope not only offered all of these things but she was a Humanist as well which we felt would provide a couple of significant added advantages. One was the fact that Humanist officiants are licenced by the province to perform legal marriages (still not same-sex marriages, of course) which meant that Terri’s status would bring an important sense of authority and formality to her role and to our union. A second advantage was that as a Humanist she would be able to lend spirituality to the ceremony without the intolerance and small-mindedness inherent in so many religions.

Terri turned out to be a wonderful choice. An unexpected benefit of her marriage preparation course was that it allowed us to get to know her on a personal basis which made her officiating the big day all that much more special. She offered great guidance as we put together the wording and order of the ceremony and when the actual day came many guests commented on how her personable style quickly put everyone at ease.

VENUE

Purpose: originally to reinforce the religious sanctioning of the ceremony, to provide a sense of tradition and formality; now often to provide a visual backdrop that reflects participants’ values or interests

Adaptation: If we had wanted a religious ceremony (outside of the MCC), finding a church for a same-sex wedding would have been difficult - particularly if Peter would have wanted to return to his Catholic roots! However, since neither of us were religious we faced no unique challenges in sourcing a location for the ceremony and reception. Perhaps we were being naïve, but we went about the task just like any straight couple would, assuming that Toronto is such a liberal city that most venues would be unfazed by the idea or would maybe even welcome it as an interesting variation on the norm. And if a location wasn’t particularly supportive of gay weddings, we still felt there would be no problem as they would either be quite happy to take our money or very concerned about the implications of being labeled homophobic. In the end we stumbled on the perfect solution completely by accident: a non-functioning church open to the public. It allowed us to enjoy all of the tradition but forgo the religion. (A public chapel would be equally effective for anyone with similar aspirations for their ceremony.)

The historic church at Black Creek Pioneer Village turned out to be a very apropos site. As so many of our guests cleverly pointed out, our ceremony was "a pioneer wedding in a pioneer village".

THE WEDDING PARTY

Purpose: to have friends and siblings provide emotional and practical support to the bride and groom before and during the ceremony

Adaptation: There is already a precedent for mixed genders in straight wedding parties: neutralize the gender of the roles by referring to the maid of honour & best man as “honour attendants” and bridesmaids & ushers as “attendants”. However, since we both wanted our best friends to stand up with us and they were both male, we stuck with custom and just adapted it slightly to end up with two “best men”. We also wanted our sisters in the party and again kept to tradition by making them “ushers” as straight weddings also now allow for women to fill that role.

ATTIRE

Purpose: add formality to ceremony, make participants look their best, exaggerate the bride’s femininity and purity, create uniformity amongst the bride and groom’s attendants

Adaptation: The gender bias in straight ceremonies is most obvious in the way that a traditional wedding party’s appearance derives all of its flair and colour from the bride and the bridesmaids. The groomsmen, on the other hand, dress in staid black or grey and the identically dressed groom is separated from them solely by his style of boutonnière! The simplest adaptation for a gay ceremony would be to just apply the traditional dress code to all the men but then the wedding party would lack a focal point because the grooms would be virtually indistinguishable from their attendants. (We had seen pictures of some gay ceremonies where the grooms wore white tuxedos but even if the suggestion of sexual piety wasn’t completely laughable, the sight of white-tie dress at a semi-formal daytime event would be garish enough all on its own!)

Therefore we stretched the rules slightly to allow the grooms to stand out by wearing coloured vests and ties as opposed to the black versions worn by the best men. We had originally chose to slightly symbolize our individuality as grooms by having Peter's vest and tie be gold and Brandon's silver, but in the end decided that both in gold looked better - for the colour and for uniformity.

The wardrobe for the female ushers was more problematic as they were expected to wear black or grey like their male counterparts according to Emily Post’s Wedding Planner (the only reference we found on this specific topic). In theory, it’s a perfect way to establish the woman’s role as usher to guests not accustomed to this variation and to provide uniformity amongst the groom’s mixed-sex attendants at a straight wedding. However, in a gay ceremony, having the entire party dress in black could easily make the wedding look more like a funeral service!

So the challenge was to add some colour to the women's dresses yet not so much that it stole the spotlight from the conservatively dressed grooms. Annette and Brandon's excellent solution was understated, wine coloured bridesmaid dresses from Fairweather. (That store's line also includes silver dresses which could be another option for people facing the same dilemma.) Dress suits would more clearly identify the female attendants as ushers but this may not necessarily fly with most straight women's understandable desire to dress to the nine's for a wedding!

As for our parents, stepparents and grandparents, Emily Post states that a groom's mother is usually expected to follow the lead of the bride's mother in choice of style and colour of dress. Regarding the men, etiquette dictates that the bride's father tends to dress similarly to the groomsmen for uniformity's sake and allows the groom's father to do the same or just wear a dark suit. We didn't have the energy to coordinate the wardrobe of so many people who had never met and who lived thousands of miles apart. Instead we just suggested that the women wear fall colours to complement the theme of the wedding and that the men wear suits. In the end the corsages identified the family members very well all on their own.

FLORAL WEAR

Since the women in our party were playing the role of ushers it made more sense to dress them with single rose boutonnières like the best men rather than to adorn them with more elaborate corsages that would normally be worn by bridesmaids. All other floral wear corresponded with our florist's usual pattern for weddings - double rose boutonnières for the grooms, single rose boutonnières for the fathers, triple rose corsages for the mothers and double rose corsages for the grandmothers.

PROGRAMMES

While we originally decided to have programmes as nothing more than an elegant added touch to the ceremony we came to realize that they are a very important aspect of a putting guests at ease at such a unique type of wedding. Most people would arrive having little idea of what to expect but we knew as soon as they would look at the programme they would recognize the standard wedding agenda and would subsequently have a familiar frame of reference for the ceremony to follow. (See Print Materials for an illustration of the programme.)

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Page last updated December 31, 2008