My wife and I have been photographing weddings for over 10 years now and we photograph the love for ALL couples, gay, straight, bi-national, bi-racial and everyone in between. Our photography has taken us all over New England and even to England too as I am originally from the UK. Every wedding is different from the smallest most intimate of weddings to grand weddings with enormous numbers of guests and no expense spared. We could tell very many stories, funny, emotional and even incredibly sad, from the bride we had to help get into her dress using a coat hanger, to the empty chair with a rose on for a grooms mother who passed away just days before the wedding. We have literally seen it all!
We meet with all our couples to discuss their wedding day and same sex couples will almost always ask are we gay friendly, to which we always reply “we are a married lesbian couple so you can’t get more gay friendly than that!” We are often told by gay couples that they go to other photographers who say they are gay friendly but have no photographs of gay couples on display or in albums. When we did our last wedding show we made a point of going around the show to see what other photographers had on display of LGBT couples and we found, sadly, very little, just the odd small photograph tucked away almost out of sight. There are still many businesses who have not embraced the fact that it’s not just straight couples getting married anymore.
When we get down to discussing the final details of each couples wedding day, we often find same sex couples have problems with their families’ acceptance, we have had brides whose fathers don’t want to walk them down the aisle or do the father daughter dance, which is so sad. It gets really complicated and emotional when one bride’s father does want to be a part of the day and then the other brides doesn’t. EVERY couple deserves their day and their special moments that we can capture. I know from my own experience with my parents, they did attend our wedding but somewhat begrudgingly, they didn’t give us a wedding card or even the smallest of gifts. This was compounded further when after our wedding we gave them a framed photograph to add to their collection of family wedding photos on display, ours was hidden behind a curtain and then removed altogether. This hurt us, I asked my mum about it and she just said it was somewhere, later I found the frame with another photograph in, not of us!
Other times we find same sex couples surrounded by nothing but love on all sides and it is wonderful to see their family and friends coming together to support them and share the love. We did one older same sex couple who had waited 25 years to finally have the right to say “I do” to each other, after Rhode Island approved same sex marriages, and it couldn’t have been more emotional, everyone was crying at their momentous moment.
At another wedding we were photographing the two beautiful brides when a man, not invited to the wedding, starting rushing over shouting “that’s disgusting, two women getting married, there should be a groom!” We immediately rushed forward to intercept and the man ran off to his car, of course it was a horrible moment for the couple and we did our best to lift them back up and they did go on to have a wonderful day. It amazes me both with family that doesn’t support their child’s choice and how random people feel they have a right to inflict their bigoted views; it’s just love at the end of the day.
When we started photographing weddings our own was not recognized and that was hard at times especially during long catholic services when the sermon would always include “marriage is between a man and a woman.” After photographing one straight couples wedding the mother of the groom found out we were married and told us it was “disgusting, marriage is between a man and a woman.”
On a very positive note we have to say almost always our wedding couples are great, when we were fighting hard for marriage equality we had so many of our straight couples show their support in our social media campaign and that was huge for us. Just last night we booked a wedding and the future (straight) bride told us she loved seeing that we showed images of same sex couples online and in our sample albums unlike some other photographers. We find when we photograph weddings there are always same sex couples there, most families now either have family or friends, or both, who are gay and they want them included. We love it when a venue wants to share our photographs of same sex couples getting married and it’s even more important at the moment as we head to US election time when marriage equality could be in the balance that we will keep sharing Love Is Love for all to SEE!