This blog is all about planning a lesbian wedding which is such an important topic because, repeat after me, Not. Every. Wedding. Has. A. Bride. And. Groom.

How many times have you come across wedding planning advice that states the BRIDE must do this, and the GROOM must do that…?

This insistence that hetrosexual weddings are the only thing that exists out there is harmful. 

It leaves queer couples feeling invisible, as they simply can’t see themselves in the stereotypical weddings plastered all over wedding blogs, Instagram, Pinterest and other planning resources.

And it also leaves them feeling CONFUSED. How the heck do you plan a wedding that fits your relationship when all the advice out there is for something else?!

So, this particular blog is dedicated to lesbian weddings. We’re going to share our top tips for planning a bride-and-bride wedding (though a lot of the info will apply to other queer couples, too).

We’re going to look at several major planning considerations such as choosing a location and selecting your vendor team. We’re going to deconstruct old wedding traditions that tend to be geared towards a bride and groom, and reinterpret them with a lesbian couple in mind. And we’re going to share some fun ways to personalize your lesbian wedding!

Choosing The Location For Your Lesbian Wedding

One of the first big decisions you’ll have to make when you start wedding planning is WHERE to hold your big day. 

Your decision may well be impacted by where you currently live. Because, whilst all 50 of the US states officially allow same sex marriage, we all know that in reality some places are more supportive than others. This is especially true if you are religious and would like a church wedding. It’s a sad reality that in some states you may not find yourself welcome in all churches if you don’t fit into their narrow view of what marriage is: a union between one man and one woman.

If you live in a state that does not feel fully supportive of your union, you may decide you’d like to go elsewhere for your lesbian wedding! 

Don’t worry, there are TONS of states that are excited to not only recognize, but also CELEBRATE, your union.

So, pack your bags and set off for a destination wedding!

Colorado is a great option. Not only is it considered a pretty liberal state in general, it’s also a self-solemnizing wedding location. What that means is that you don’t legally need an officiant or witnesses for your ceremony (you can still have them if you want to, if you choose to, but you don’t need them). Colorado essentially believes that marriage is only about the two of you: it’s nobody else’s business who you choose to marry, how you get married etc. And we LOVE that!

TOP TIP: If you’re planning a religious wedding and need help finding a gay-supportive church, this website is a really helpful tool.

Mapping Out The Guest List

Hand in hand with choosing your location, you’ll need to determine your guest list. One can very much impact the other: for example, if you decide to stay close to home your guest list may be longer than if you decide on a destination wedding. You may even decide you don’t want guests at all, and are going to elope instead! 

Whatever length of guest list you decide on, it’s so important that you only invite people that you know support your relationship. Do NOT get steamrolled (by parents, for example) into inviting people you don’t know or whose beliefs you are unsure of. Your beautiful lesbian wedding is NOT the time and place for homophobic distant relatives to cause disruption and upset.

It may be hard but you must stand your ground here. This is your day and you don’t want to be walking around on eggshells or hiding parts of yourself because you’re worried about who’s watching.

This is a day where you should feel 100% seen, safe, supported and CELEBRATED! 

If you’re intrigued by the idea of eloping and would like to learn more about the idea, hop on over to our home page. We specialize in planning, photographing and officiating elopements in the stunning landscapes of Colorado and Utah.

Guests Of Honor

As you’re putting together your guest list, you and your wife-to-be will also want to consider if you’d like important people in your lives to play a special role. 

Traditionally, this would be the ‘bridesmaids’ and the ‘groomsmen’ but that doesn’t really work for a lesbian wedding. Well, welcome to the 21st century! It’s time to ditch the ‘rules’ and invite whoever you want to make up your party. You can absolutely have a mix of people/genders on both of your sides if you’d like to. 

TOP TIP: If you’re in need of a less gendered way of referring to these special people, then how about your ‘I Do Crew’ or simply ‘the wedding party’?

Choosing The Vendor Team For Your Lesbian Wedding

You’re going to want some support to pull off the lesbian wedding of your dreams! So, now it’s time to start putting together your vendors: photographer, planner, florist, officiant, caterer etc. 

Exactly who you’ll need will very much depend on the size and style of your wedding. But the same general rule applies to whoever you book: make sure they are openly accepting and supportive of gay marriage, that they make a real effort to be an ally. As we said above, you want to feel fully seen and supported throughout this entire process.

Simply sharing a token rainbow flag or a ‘love is love’ statement on their website is not enough. Are you actually seeing that belief in action? When you look over their website and social media are you seeing gay couples, are you reading their stories? If you’ve followed them for a while, do they make a point to publicly share their beliefs on equality and LGBTQ+ rights? It’s easy to talk the talk: make sure they walk the walk as well.

Selecting Your Photographer

We think choosing the photographer for your lesbian wedding is particularly important. One, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time in their company on your big day and two, they’re creating the images that you’ll be looking back on with your wife in the years and decades to come. 

Take a look through their portfolio and make sure you’re seeing a variety of couples. And also look at how those couples are being posed. Some photographers get stuck in some really weird mindset of gendered posing – ‘the man does this, and the woman does that’ – to create a nice photo. And then they simply don’t know what to do when there isn’t a man as part of the couple!

We’d also suggest getting on a call with any potential photographer and checking you vibe well together.

TOP TIP: We’ve seen it asked before ‘But how do you pose same-sex couples?’. Ummm, for us, exactly the same way we pose any couple. We give them the space and the confidence to be themselves, to interact in a way that feels true to them and then we capture the magic as it unfolds. Choose a photographer that wants to capture the real you, that doesn’t need to fit you into some perfect little Pinterest-worthy box!

Choosing The Outfits For Your Lesbian Wedding 

Oooooh, this can be one of the most fun parts of planning your lesbian wedding… Deciding what to wear!

We once saw someone ask on a public forum ‘At a lesbian wedding, who wears the dress?’ and it made us want to scream: we legit couldn’t believe that question was being asked.

We thought the answer was blindingly obvious: whoever wants to, whether that’s one of the brides, both of the brides or neither!

Here’s the deal: there’s no right or wrong way to dress, and you get to decide what makes you feel good.

If either of you would like to wear a traditional white dress, then go for it! But if one or both of you don’t want to, then don’t.

There’s plenty of other amazing options: from white jumpsuits, to colored dresses, to fitted suits… The choice is yours.

If you’re looking for a women’s suit, The Suit Shop is amaaaaazing: they have lots of beautiful color options, and you can mix and match the top and bottom sizing.

Floral Options For A Bride And Bride Couple

We’re including this as part of choosing your outfits, as we think florals are so fun and can really elevate your ‘look’ on your big day.

As a lesbian couple, you’ve got options: perhaps you’d both like florals, perhaps one of you would, or perhaps neither of you would. There’s truly no right or wrong!

If you’d like to go big, we’d suggest both of you get bouquets, which will make a beautiful statement and really pop in photos. Oh, and please don’t think if you’ve chosen to wear a suit rather than a dress you can’t have a bouquet: of course you can!

If you don’t want a full-on bouquet there are other, more subtle options. If you’re wearing a suit, you might like a boutonniere or a ‘pocket garden’. Or you might like floral jewelry: we’ve seen live succulent earrings before that were AMAZING! Or you might like something a bit more quirky like a floral headpiece or a floral hoop.

TOP TIP: Work with a florist who is excited to create with you. Show them your outfits, your venue, your decor plans etc. and see what they suggest. Trust in your pros to work their magic!

Customized Details To Personalize Your Lesbian Wedding

You don’t want your wedding day to look exactly the same as everybody else’s, right? A really fun way to personalize it is to add some customized details.

For example, this shop on Etsy has beautiful vow books which can be ordered with any variation of pronouns, so you can get cute ‘Her Vows’ x 2 for your lesbian wedding.

This shop on Etsy does custom Mrs and Mrs cake toppers, where you can choose the outfits and hairstyles to suit the two of you!

Maybe you’d like matching Mrs and Mrs jean/leather jackets to jazz up your outfits?

Perhaps you’d like to incorporate the LGBTQ+ rainbow symbol into your lesbian wedding? This can be done in obvious ways, like placing flags on all the tables. Or it could be something less obvious and super fun like designing a cake that is white on the outside but rainbow colored when you cut into it!

Your Lesbian Wedding Ceremony

Your ceremony is the real heart and soul of the day, but a lot of the stereotypical expectations and traditions are based on a heterosexual couple. So, how do things play out when you’re planning a lesbian wedding instead?

Choosing An Officiant

Take your time finding an officiant as they can really make or break your ceremony. Find someone whose personality you love, who is willing to take the time to get to know you and your story, and who is excited to personalize your ceremony.

You may even decide you’d like a loved one to lead your ceremony instead! It can be so meaningful to be married by someone who truly knows the two of you, loves you and values your relationship. It’s super easy to get ordained online these days! Just check that the certification is recognized in your state.

How To Enter The Ceremony

Traditionally the groom stands up front and the bride walks down the aisle to him. However, as a lesbian couple, you have options! Chat about it openly and see what feels good to the both of you. 

Perhaps one of you would like to be up front, waiting for your bride? Or perhaps you’d rather enter the ceremony together, hand in hand, exactly as you intend to spend your life? If you’re close to your families, maybe you’d both like a loved one to walk you down the aisle?

Really, there’s no right or wrong and it’s all about what feels right to you.

Significant Readings You Might Like To Incorporate

As a same sex couple, it may feel important to you to recognize that gay couples have not always had the rights that you currently do. In fact, it wasn’t until 2015 that all 50 states recognized same sex marriage.

Perhaps you’d like to include this excerpt from the SCOTUS same-sex marriage ruling in your lesbian wedding ceremony, as a poignant reminder to all present that it isn’t until recent years that your love has been recognized:

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.”

Sharing Personal Vows

We hiiiiiiiiiiighly recommend writing personal vows as well as the legal ‘I Dos’ as it’s a beautiful opportunity to share with your wife-to-be exactly how you feel. You can reminisce on how your feelings grew over time, share your favorite memories together, talk about your hopes and dreams for the future, as well as make promises for your life together.

If this doesn’t feel like something you’d like to share in front of your guests, you can keep your ceremony more traditional and then carve out some private time in the day to step aside and share your personal vows just the two of you. That way you can speak truly from the heart and hold nothing back.

Personally, this is one of the reasons why we, as photographers, love shooting elopement weddings: the free expression of emotion when it’s just the couple with no expectations and no pressure is incomparable.

Your First Kiss

Typically, once you have shared vows and exchanged rings, the officiant tells the groom ‘You may now kiss the bride!’.

In this situation, you can change just one word to make it suitable: ‘You may now kiss YOUR bride’. That way it’s an invitation for both of you to enjoy your first kiss!

Alternatively, you could change it to ‘You may now share your first kiss as a married couple’.

The Pronouncement

This is the part of the ceremony where the officiant typically pronounces you as ‘Mr and Mrs X’.

You’ve got a few choices to make here…

Do you plan to share a last name? You could both take one of your existing names, you could double barrel your names, you could combine parts of the two to create a cool new name, or you could pick a new name altogether!

If you do intend to share a last name, you can simply be pronounced ‘Mrs and Mrs X’.

If not, it’s still super simple: you could be pronounced ‘Mrs X and Mrs Y’.

Or, if none of that is sticking or feels right, you can skip it altogether and opt for something more quirky and fun, such as being declared ‘adventure buddies for life’!

TOP TIP: Really take some time to think about how you’d like your ceremony to look. With all the other wedding planning going on, it tends to get overlooked a little. Remember, the ceremony – the actual getting married part! – is the whole point of the day and shouldn’t be an afterthought.

Ok, so there you have it, all our top advice for planning your lesbian wedding. Ultimately, it all comes down to one thing really: this is you and your partner’s day, nobody else’s. Plan a day that the two of you are excited about. A day where you feel seen and celebrated! We wish you both a magical wedding day when it comes around.

Let’s do this thing!