Wedding Dress dilemma’s and more!

In planning our lesbian wedding, we previously hadn’t really given too much thought as to what heterosexual marriage traditions we wanted to incorporate. However, we soon learnt that trying to mesh hetero traditions with our relationship just did not work, in fact it totally backfired. We share what we discovered along the way of planning our big gay wedded bliss day.

To keep your dress/ wedding outfit a secret?

When it came to choosing our wedding dresses, we initially attempted to stick to tradition and not see each other’s dresses. For the first time trying on wedding dresses, we actually filmed as the first lesbian couple on Say Yes To The Dress UK. We were in separate dressing rooms, going out at different times to show our Bride Tribe our dresses. Whitney being the decisive one said yes to her first dress and actually put a deposit down on hers the next day. However it just didn’t feel right that something so crucial to our big day had been kept from one another. We do everything together normally. We decided going forward that Whitney would accompany Megan on her search for her dream dress.

After trying on 25 dresses, Megan finally found her ‘yes dress’ by Dando London. Fast forward 6 months for our fittings, stood next to each other we realise that we look like we’re going to totally different weddings with different colour dresses and styles. Whitney no longer likes her ivory 7 layer dress (did we mention that we were getting married in the desert?!) With 3 weeks until we were flying out to America, que a breakdown from Megan with Kim Kardashian tears (all caught on camera for SYTTD). Luckily, Megan’s dress designer Christine Dando, aka ‘our fairy god mother’, had a dress in stock that was just as beautiful and complementing with matching details, but different enough to match our
personalities.

We strongly advise for you to consider choosing your dresses together to compliment one another and to ensure it looks like you’re going to the same wedding!

Having a bride tribe?

Guess what, it’s your day so you can have whoever you want. Whitney chose to have a Best Man and Megan had a Maid of honour. We chose to only have a bridesmaid each as we had learnt from other’s weddings that it
gets way too stressful when there’s too many involved, as well as the
cost for all the extra dresses, suits, heels etc. You’ve already got double the cost for yourselves! Pick those nearest and dearest and those that care for you will understand.

Walking down the aisle?

When you’re both the bride… what do you do? The options are endless! You can go together holding hands, down two separate aisles at the same time or one after the other. We chose to walk one after the other, with Whitney choosing to go first so to watch Megan walk down the aisle. We did both ask of our mothers if they wanted to walk us down the aisle as well as our fathers, but they wanted to watch it from the front row. We also wanted a mother/ daughter dance but they felt too embarrassed. Sometimes even if you want to change tradition, other people don’t want to, and that’s fine.

Getting ready together or separately?

Tradition is that you spend the night apart and do not see each other until the ‘reveal’ (USA) or ceremony (UK). We decided that we didn’t want to spend a night apart but initially we decided to get ready separately. However on the on the day, we decided to get ready together as it made no sense to be apart and that we would rather reveal to our parents and Bride Tribe as no-one had seen our dresses. It made for a beautiful moment helping each other get ready and then our nearest & dearest’s reactions.

Ultimately we learned when it comes to a lesbian wedding, to just do what feels right for you.

Listen to the experts

We’ve also gathered some exert advice for tackling wedding traditions when you’re LGBTQ+:

“The main difference in planning a Lesbian wedding from a Straight one is that it’s double the fun! Two brides, two dresses or outfits (guaranteed more complicated than the guys), two hair styling demos, two bouquets and sometimes double the tears!

Often there are double the bridesmaids too although it’s quite common to have a mixed sex bridal party!

More time needs to be allowed in the scheduling for the styling aspects and the photo shots that might be more complex.”

– Cathy O’Connell, COJ Events.