White Suit Dress Wedding Male Gay Long Trai
But Now, What to Wear?
THE bride wore Carolina Herrera, the other bride wore Ralph Lauren. That was the big reveal at the wedding of Christine C. Quinn, the New York City Council speaker, and her longtime partner, Kim M. Catullo, a products liability lawyer, in a ceremony held in the meatpacking district last Saturday evening.
And with one donning a traditional wedding dress and the other a custom-made pantsuit, the couple elegantly addressed one pressing issue that many lesbians grapple with before walking down the aisle: What do we wear?
Unlike the largely codified pageant of a heterosexual wedding, the sartorial rules are still being written for lesbians. And it goes beyond choosing between things like mermaid or A-line silhouettes or strapless or long-sleeved. For some, there are tuxes and tails to consider, and those suits must be custom-cut for curves. And there are heretofore unplanned challenges, like how to fit two cathedral trains trailing side by side on the exuberant walk back from the altar.
The options multiply, rather than retract, when the two spouses are the same sex. Both partners might wear gowns, or perhaps a pair of suits, or one bride might choose a gown and the other a suit. (But which one?)
"I think that with men, there's suits and there's tuxedos," Ms. Quinn said in an interview before her wedding. "There's choices in that, but there's a lot fewer choices."
In a news conference last week at City Hall, Ms. Quinn revealed that her search didn't stop even after she found her trumpet Carolina Herrera gown with its delicately beaded waistband, after a relatively brief tour of just three bridal shops. "They say when you try on the right dress, you know it right away, and that was absolutely the case," she said. "Though I continued to try on a whole bunch after that."
Ms. Quinn said she knew what Ms. Catullo was wearing to walk down the aisle, but did not show her spouse-to-be her own gown until the big day.
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Carolina Herrera said she did not want to discuss the specific dress chosen by Ms. Quinn, but said she was "honored every time" a bride chose one of her gowns. (Ralph Lauren, who designed the suit for Ms. Catullo, declined to be interviewed.)
Some women planning same-sex marriages say they add another step to shopping that may not be necessary for their straight counterparts.
When Heather Sarver first embarked on the rite of wedding-dress shopping with her mother in the small-town bridal boutiques in Virginia where she grew up, she said she had her wedding planner, Bernadette Coveney Smith, call ahead to inform the salespeople that Ms. Sarver, 31, a lawyer, is a lesbian, and then gauge their reaction.
The reasons were both profound and pragmatic: to protect her from salespeople who might be uncomfortable in that situation, and to avoid that awkward moment when a salesperson would inevitably ask about the spouse-to-be, "So what does he do?"
Lesbian brides "need to screen the people they are working with," Ms. Smith said. "It ends up being an extra level of stress or potential stress when you're shopping." For couples like Ms. Sarver and her wife-to-be, Ms. Smith founded the event planning company 14 Stories, which specializes in non-heterosexual weddings, as well as the Gay Wedding Institute, which trains wedding industry professionals about the nuances of same-sex weddings.
Ms. Sarver and Jessica Mullan, 31 and also a lawyer, will both wear lacy strapless gowns, a decision that posed its own challenges. The pair used Ms. Mullan's sister as a go-between to analyze each choice and make sure the dresses didn't clash for the wedding ceremony in Boston, and have revealed tiny pictures to each other on their cellphones, held at a far enough distance so as to not give away the details. "I didn't want one dress to be a lot more over the top than the other one, and then have one of us look like more of the center of attention," Ms. Mullan said.
When the ceremony starts, they will walk down two separate aisles toward each other — getting their first full glimpse of their dresses at that moment — and then they will depart together down a central aisle. But there are still some wrinkles to work out. "Hopefully there's not any falls or stepping on each other's dresses," Ms. Mullan said. "But if there is, that will make for an even more memorable evening, I'm sure."
In the case of Kathy and Duffy Tucker, from Raleigh, N.C., no dresses were involved when they were married in 2010 in Boston. "I feel like I'm in drag when I wear a dress," said Duffy Tucker, 46, a bank manager who met her spouse 22 years ago when both were in the military.
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Both decided to wear suits, but white was a must. "I was a bride. I didn't consider myself a groom," said Kathy Tucker, 44, a systems analyst. "I've never been married, I wanted to wear white." White was emotionally significant. "I wanted our marriage to be as official and real as anybody else's standard wedding," she said.
But they were searching for outfits in January, when white suits go into hibernation. "Any bride can go to a bridal boutique in any time of year and find a white dress," said Duffy Tucker. "When a bride goes shopping, you have a whole store of people who cater to you." For a suit, she added, "You're pretty much on your own."
In addition, an off-the-rack tux from, say, Men's Wearhouse, won't necessarily suit a woman's curves. Jussara Lee, 44, a designer with an atelier in the West Village, has a specialty in suits with bridal flair.
"You're still a girl, so I think you kind of want certain things from the experience," she said, like wearing white, plus a fabric in satin or lace. Ms. Lee tweaks cummerbunds with white sequins and adds flouncy jabot collars and flirty fluted pleats. "You just spin it a bit and add a bit more charm to it," she said.
Dina Weisberger and Jenny Greenstein will marry in New York in late October, followed by a more traditional ceremony and party Nov. 3 in Palm Springs, Calif.
For the Palm Springs ceremony, Ms. Greenstein, 32, a visual merchandise manager at Ann Inc., has chosen to wear a dress. Not so her fiancée. Ms. Weisberger, 40, a senior director of business operations at ESPN, said she had no desire to emulate friends who chose to wear a dress on their wedding day, yet would not be caught dead in one the other 364 days of the year.
"Women struggle with, 'What do I wear?' and 'What am I supposed to wear?' and get pulled into that traditional side of wearing a dress."
Ms. Weisberger's choice? An off-white $1,800 custom outfit by Ms. Lee, the West Village designer, complete with pants.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/fashion/for-same-sex-brides-choosing-between-gown-and-suit.html
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