I would never begrudge anyone a nice wedding - as long as I don't have to cater it.

When my husband and Igor married, we were well into adult life and we had all the towels and toasters we needed, so in lieu of a traditional registry, we asked people to donate to Fredom to Marry.

One more thing straight married couples can do for their gay friends - make sure you treat them equally when making the guest list. That means if you invite your straight friends' spouses and fiances, you also invite your gay friends' live-in and/or long term partners.

I totally read that very same reading at a (straight) friend's wedding in 2008. Maybe it is catching on....

Damn, Dan. THis is one hell of a set of posts today. Brava.

An excellent response. Thank you.

Ms CHFLAD - Consult a few of the same-sexers you're inviting. The reading seems like a winner; you'll likely find other good ideas, given that there's so much ritual, for the asking that will focus on potential future good rather than present misery.

May I raise a potential pink flag over the complete absence of your fiance from sentences 2 through 6, especially sentence 2? How fully on board is your intended, and what about *his* friends? I've heard fairly often about excruciating events when one half of a marrying couple was completely gay-accepting and gay-friendly, but the other half not so much (or not at all).

Or you could just have a wedding without turning it into a 'cause'. (Even if Dan Savage hurls a slur at you via Twitter for not furthering his agenda during your personal time.)

@9 You have it backwards. People desiring equal justice under the law are not the ones who create the "cause" by pointing it out. It's the status quo that creates it by legislating the separation. When you drink water at a public fountain, you don't think it's a "cause," you just do it. Fifty years ago, it was a "cause." Because activities like that were segregated by the government.

So once there is no longer any discrimination in regards to marriage, it will cease being a "cause." Unless your goal is to just be an asshat wherever you go, in which case you'll have to find some other situation where good people are trying to improve their world and verbally spit on them.

@3 I can only guess that, rather than "When my husband and Igor married", you meant "when my husband and I GOT married"? Or was/is your hub-person married to a scary hunchback in a castle somewhere? That'd be pretty cool.

@10, no need to feed the trolls, a lesson I'm learning more every day. The user's handle tells you all you need to know about their agenda.

This is a super idea, & I think the couple should feel free to do as much of these suggestions, or as few, as they wish. The wedding should remain about them, of course. Being warm & inclusive doesn't mean the whole wedding is spent on a soapbox. This is so touching!

Mr. V @ 8, you may just be being paranoid, but good point - she says "my" friends, not "our" friends. Although some grooms just turn the reins of a wedding over to their brides in the interest of peace.

I have also heard that quote from the Massachusetts decision as a reading in a same-sex non-licensed wedding ceremony held in Ohio in 2009. The couple obtained their actual marriage license in Connecticut, but wanted to have the ceremony with family and friends. This was in 2009, so that quote is well on its way to being an old standard.

My wife and I used that reading at our wedding 2 years ago. The one conundrum we felt about it was whether it was appropriate to have one of our gay friends read it, or a straight friend. We thought that it would be powerful either way, but ultimately decided it was better to not put our gay friends in a a position of having to advocate for themselves like this, and that we would be better allies to have a straight friend read it. We gave a couple of our gay friends other, less political, readings and it was all quite wonderful. We also made sure the source of the reading was printed very boldly on the program.

Inspired by Dan's original post, I wanted to do a reading along the same lines, but my now-husband complained that it didn't sound poetic enough. So here's the reading we did. The first two lines come from Griswold v. Connecticut, the original Supreme Court case affirming a constitutional right to privacy (and birth control).

Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, a harmony in living, and a bilateral loyalty, and is for as noble a purpose as any other. It is perhaps the greatest and most challenging adventure of human relationships. No ceremony can form your marriage; only you can do that – through love and patience; through dedication and perseverance; through talking and listening, helping and supporting and believing in each other; through tenderness and laughter; through learning to forgive, learning to appreciate your differences; by learning to make the important things matter, and to let go of the rest. What this ceremony can do is to witness and affirm the choice you make to stand together as lifemates and partners.

I'd echo other commenters. Hopefully it wasn't mentioned because it's not a problem, but first priority is to make sure the other half of the guest list is not about to start some shit at the wedding. That doesn't mean excluding any gay marriage opponents (the more often they are forced to mingle and confront the common humanity of gay people the better) but it does mean ensuring you don't have any nuts who will make your gay guests uncomfortable.

@4, of course inviting all significant others is important. In this case though I think the LW is way ahead on that point. Her language is not that of a person who would dream of treating gay friends as automatically single.

Another thing you might do is to make sure that all the caterers/venues/etc. you use would not discriminate against gay couples. Ask them if they do gay committal ceremonies before hiring them and only accept companies that give an enthusiastic 'yes'.

to the person who wrote the question: what a great question to ask. i think having donations to a charity is a fantastic idea, what a compassionate friend they have in you.

The only issue I have going to weddings as a gay person is that most of them tend to be in Churches that are anti-gay. In just a couple of weeks I am off to another Catholic wedding, and crossing the threshold of the Church is like entering into enemy territory. On top of that it has been my experience that recently priests are using weddings as opportunities to proselytize, since they know that there will be non-Christians in attendance.

I just grin and bear it for the sake of my loved ones, but it can be rather unpleasant. I rarely go to a wedding now that isn't for a relative.

Many years ago, long before gay marriage was legal in any state, a bisexual friend asked me how she could make it okay for her to marry her boyfriend, when she knew how deeply unfair it was that gay people couldn't marry.

I asked her to talk to me about that unfairness and discovered in listening to her that it wasn't so much the social support or legitimacy that she felt bad about, but the monetary savings they'd get from tax breaks. I suggested that she keep track of how much money she and her husband-to-be saved on taxes and donate her half of that money to a gay rights organization. (It would be nice if her husband did so, too, but that part wasn't up to her.)

Special note to Episcopalians/CoE - make sure that the church you marry in is a member of Inclusive Church, the group which campaigns for LGBT rights within the church worldwide. If your local church isn't a member, tell them why you won't marry there unless they join.

This is kind of an old thread at this point, but I just wanted to comment that at my brother's wedding they had little cards that said "in lieu of party favors, we've made a donation in your name for marriage equality" and listed the charity to which they'd donated. (I happen to know they couldn't have afforded favors *and* donations, so they used the opportunity to make a lovely statement of their values.)

As a guest, I felt super warm and fuzzy about that choice, as though I'd donated, but without having to lift a finger. Something to consider.