Sunday, March 15, 2009

Wedding Photos

Some of you have requested my posting some photos from mine and Jonah's commitment ceremony. Since I wish to continue to remain anonymous in the blogging world (and because there are still some in Jonah's world as well as my own who do not know either that we are gay or that we had this ceremony), I have chosen to post only those photos that do not blatantly betray our identities. I suppose anybody who actually attended the ceremony could piece together that this is my blog, but it would not bother me since most of them know about all the stuff contained therein anyway.

So enjoy them for what they're worth. Sorry I can't share more. It was a very happy day.


This is the chapel where we were married. Jonah did all the flower arrangements.



Me (I'm on the left) and my guy taken as we walked down the aisle together.



Me putting the ring on Jonah's finger.



Taken shortly before being pronounced "partners for life." Again, I'm on the left.



Our wedding cake, made by my cousin. I guess there was a cake mishap on the way to the chapel. My cousin felt bad about it, but we thought the cake was both beautiful and delicious.



One of the beautiful flower arrangements Jonah made for our ceremony.



A picture taken after the ceremony. I'm on the right this time. Jonah also made our boutonnières. What a talented guy I married!

6 comments:

The Faithful Dissident said...

Simple elegance, just my style! Love the white ribbons on the end chairs and I love the red roses. Jonah has good taste!

How many guests did you end up having?

These are probably stupid questions, but what is a gay wedding and reception like? Is there a first dance or throwing of a bouquet or anything like that? Or are there new traditions being created?

Gay LDS Actor said...

Yep, Jonah does have good taste.

We ended up having a little less than 40, I think.

Actually, those are not stupid questions. I actually asked them myself as we were preparing for it because I had never been to a gay wedding. I discovered that a gay wedding is really not much different from a straight one. Obviously, some wording has to be changed in the ceremony itself to accomodate for the fact that the "man and wife" are of the same sex, and we also had to change a bit of wording since it was a symbolic union rather than a legal wedding, but I found a lot of examples online, and I also took some things from straight ceremonies that I liked and incorporated them.

A gay wedding can be as traditional or non-traditional as a straight wedding can be. For example, we chose to walk down the aisle together, and no one gave either of us away, but I suppose if we'd wanted to, we could have done it like a regular wedding. No throwing of bouquets at our ceremony. We could have done a first dance if we'd chosen to, but there wasn't enough room in our reception area, and neither of us wanted to anyway.

What I learned as we prepared for our ceremony was that our wedding could be anything we wanted it to be. In many ways, it was pretty traditional because having been to a number of straight weddings, that was the best model I had to follow.

We did try to make it fairly non-denominational. Jonah didn't want it to just be a gay Mormon ceremony, and I didn't want it to be too far out from ceremonies (both Mormon and non-Mormon) that I had witnessed in the past. I think we succeeded and were both happy with the results. I think Jonah wants us to have another (bigger) ceremony five or so years down the road.

TDawgYo said...

The photos are lovely. Makes me happy inside to see two people in love.

Gay LDS Actor said...

Thanks, TDawgYo. It makes me happy, too. :-)

Sara said...

|Wish there were more pictures, where was it done? A Las Vegas style wedding? Or another denomination?

Gay LDS Actor said...

Sara,

We actually had our ceremony in Utah at Metropolitan Community Church. Neither of us is a member there, but they are very gay-friendly and let us rent the place for a very reasonable price. My friend performed the ceremony, which was fairly traditional in nature, and the pastor of the church ran the sound for us. It was such a wonderful ceremony. I, too, wish I could post more pictures, but Jonah, especially, has many people in his family that do not know about our relationship, so I have to respect his privacy.