TORONTO TALK EXCHANGE SOUND OFF THE BIG WHITE WEDDING DRESS → For, against or indifferent? We asked lesbians why they did — or didn’t — wear a white wedding dress
Kelly Prizel Photography
Seanna Kreager
Rima Dib/Parasol Photo
Eric Spurrel/ Multy Media Memories
on their big day.
Julie & Angela Burnett Married July 17, 2010
Nikki & Jazz Married Aug 5, 2012
“Choosing to wear a white dress came naturally to me. I didn’t consider wearing anything else,” says Julie. “I gave this question some thought, and the answer was simply: I wore a white dress because it was my wedding day!” says Angela. “Julie asking me to marry her was a dream come true. I wanted Julie to look at me on our wedding day and think I was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. In my opinion, my wife is strikingly beautiful, and I loved seeing her in her wedding dress. With my mom being part of a design team, I grew up with strong fashion influences and I was really proud to be wearing something that day that she had a hand in making.”
“We believe in fluidity in everything, even what we wear,” says Jazz. “Our wedding was inspired by peacock feathers. In my culture peacocks are proud animals and often compared to a person who flaunts their colours without shame. Kind of like being queer. My partner wore a silver suit and I wore a backless flowing forest green and black summer dress. We wanted to wear something we felt sexy in without being attached to a ‘look’ or emulating some sort of gender binary traditions that too often gets tied into weddings.”
Heather Claridge & Natalie Strang Married Sep 23, 2011 “We are totally for the wedding dress! We both wore white princess-style dresses,” says Heather. “For us, the wedding dress symbolizes a piece of history and culture colliding with diversity and empowerment for same-sex rights. We wouldn’t have had it any other way. We got married in Iceland, and loved our dresses so much we wore them for the next 10 days after the wedding as our photographer followed us around taking photos of us at waterfalls, geysers, beaches and the glacier lagoon that was in the James Bond movie Die Another Day!”
Ange & Robin Beever Married June 17, 2004
Mandy & Bekah McNeil Married May 29, 2010
“We felt like we had a unique opportunity to do what we wanted, so we felt free to reject a lot of wedding stuff we didn’t care about,” says Robin. “We were already engaged when same-sex marriage became legal, and nobody could really tell us what our wedding was supposed to be like. The white dress is such a loaded symbol — I certainly spent time in my childhood dressing my Barbies in wedding gowns I made! I understand its allure but our whole wedding was so arty and DIY. Ange had a linen suit made and I wore a custom dress from Peach Berserk. Owner Kingi Carpenter created a collage of personal stuff (photos, notes, invitations) and screenprinted it onto silk, then sewed the dress and dip-dyed it.”
“We got married at city hall with no guests and I didn’t wear a white dress,” says Mandy. “A year later we had a big wedding ceremony and reception with all our friends and family, and that time I ended up wearing a white dress. At first I was opposed to the idea; I didn’t feel it fit my queerness and I wanted to reject its hetero-patriarchal associations. But I fell in love with a dress that was perfect — except it only came in white. I did some hard thinking about why I was resisting it in order to have positive associations with the dress on the day. Bekah wore a men’s three-piece suit, but she had her own struggles in deciding what to wear to our wedding.” [Read the full version of Mandy McNeil’s response at intorontomag.com.]
intorontomag.com
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