If you’ve been following the wedding planning journey of our guest blogging grooms, Gordon and Euan, then you’ll know that they had their hearts set on a drag queen for the big day. But that was before they spent an evening crying with laughter at a LGBTQ Comedy Night in Aberdeen. Here’s Gordon, to tell us more…
Okay, so no drag show as yet but we have managed to arrange the sparkles. Euan and I banded around other different ideas for forms of “fun” for our guests on the day… Clowns – well having watched the film It far too young I’m a straight up no, absolutely no way. Magicians – hmm, seems a bit meh to me (sorry to all those magicians!), maybe if we had more children amongst our guests. Face painting? I immediately took to this idea, even now when I’m writing about it, I’m smiling, and I can tell you I’ll be first in the queue getting my face painted like our handsome dog, Bear. All those ladies and gents dressed up to the nines with their faces painted, and we all know what people are like, they’ll be shy at first but once they’ve a few whiskies in them, they’ll be queuing up.
After a quick search online, we come across Stina Sparkles, who’s not only happy to come along but will provide a gel bar also. No idea what a gel bar is, but their images of face painting are spot on.
We’ve even scattered a few hints about this in various communications to our guests and one in particular seems to have made them nervous – in our info for the day email, we’ve encouraged guests not to wear too much makeup and my, oh my, the messages we’ve had from some of our female guests. For that alone, it’s been worth it!
CRYING AT THE LGBTQ COMEDY NIGHT
For my birthday, Euan arranged a weekend up in Aberdeen which happened to coincide with my gay rugby team’s promoting evening. So, I went along, and low and behold it’s a LGBTQ unknown artists evening – drag shows, musicians, poets and comedians, to name but a few. All new on the scene.
Well, there was one lady, a stand-up comedian called Violet. She opened with “I’m going on Tinder and I’m gonna get…” sung along to the tune of “I’m going to the chapel and I’m gonna get married”. Now I’m aware that might not exactly be wedding material, but my team was in tears. I’d forgotten that with them being a new team for me, they hadn’t heard me laugh before. Genuinely, they were crying and I thought, this is what I’m looking for -someone that makes me laugh so much that everyone else is incapacitated. Her whole set was funny, I couldn’t even remember any of it now, but I do remember never stopping laughing. Well, the moment the poor girl is off stage and sat down I’m right beside her, asking if’s she’s free to be the opening act of our evening’s entertainment. And she said yes!
Am I sad we didn’t get a drag queen? Yes. Would I change anything knowing where we are now? Absolutely not. Not only do I think it’s great to support up and coming artists, but Violet has actually come to visit us so she can build her material for the show around us.
To round off the evening’s entertainment, of course, is the obligatory photo booth – categorically we cannot have all these guests dressed up, alcohol fuelled, and face painted and not have photos taken of them. Halo Booth seems to be ideal; they have assured me that they’ll actively encourage my guests to partake of some photographic silliness.
There is one last thing arranged for the evening, though I’m not going to call it entertainment. Euan and I are going to throw in a little seriousness to the evening, just a touch to give our guests that poignant reminder to enjoy themselves even more.
To give you a little background, when my brother was 24, he suffered an aneurism and the operation to fix the aneurism caused a stroke. Although because of his age, statistically he should have recovered from the stroke fully, instead he became addicted to alcohol and developed issues with other drugs. So, I’ve asked Addaction to come along to our wedding and set themselves up a table and give a short talk to promote the work they do. Specifically, they support people to make positive behavioural changes, most notably with alcohol and drug misuse, and mental health. The plan being to use our wedding as both a platform to raise awareness and of course to raise money by “encouraging” our guests to donate.
Sorry to leave you all on such a serious note, it is the only one though. Catch up next time to see what other madness we have in store!
After meeting at CC Blooms in Edinburgh, Gordon and Euan now run a B&B in Angus together. With stand up comedy, their beloved American bulldog and a glitter bar for starters, their wedding plans are making us smile lots.
Photos via Unsplash
