Two Brides Are Better Than One // a Q&A about Chelsea + Brittany's wedding planning experience
november 2017
For us here at a&bé the only thing cooler than a bride is 2 of them. We are lucky enough to be a destination for a lot of same sex brides and we couldn’t be happier about that. We chatted with our bride Brittany and her new wife Chelsea (they’re high school sweethearts!) to get some tips for all of our other brides who are in the planning process! These two threw the coolest wedding up in Fargo so keep scrolling and check it all out!
What brought you to a&bé to shop?
Brittany: I actually found out about it from Chelsea because she really wanted to go there to shop but scheduling didn’t work out for her. My sister lives in LA so she flew into Minneapolis and my mom and I drove down from Fargo to make it a sort of “meet in the middle” opportunity. The Minneapolis bridal shop was so beautiful and intimate and it was our first stop. We found my dress within an hour or two of working with you and then canceled the other appointments!
What were your favorite parts of planning? Least favorite parts?
B: I loved planning food and figuring out what parts of our reception would give us the chance to interact with our guests and make sure everyone had a great time. I was all about setting out Cards Against Humanity and playing a round with guests and then setting up bean bag toss in the hall so we could face off with our guests and then when we were running around, know that there were things other than dancing/drinking that people could have fun with! My least favorite was planning decorations but Chelsea really shined there.
Chelsea: My favorite part of planning was choosing the flowers. I have an obsession with them so it was fun letting the florist know what I wanted and seeing her vision. She is truly amazing at what she does and is the sweetest person! I agree with Brittany, we really wanted to focus on a non-traditional feel to our wedding, so it was important to have things that our friends would typically do on a night out. It allowed for a fun evening for everyone! I am not a big dancer and neither is B, so although we did have a DJ, if you didn't feel like dancing you could do other things too. My least favorite part was talking about planning while planning. Everyone would ask questions all of the time and I got sick of talking about it. A few of our family members were concerned we didn't have anything actually planned, so they were pleasantly surprised when they came and it looked nice and the day flowed smoothly!
Same thing with the day! Favorite part and maybe something you maybe didn't feel like needed to be there?
B: Oh my goodness, the whole day was perfect. I absolutely loved seeing Chelsea for the first time and then walking around Bluestem taking photos with her and our sisters/maids of honor. Our ceremony was beautiful; our friend Mike officiated and it was so small and intimate and hearing Chelsea’s vows and looking out at our closest family and friends and seeing how supportive they are of our relationship really made me feel so special and loved. Our reception was great; the toasts were lovely, catching up with everyone was great… I don’t know if there was anything I’d pull out of the day since everything went well! I will say the one unpleasant part of my day was when I walked in in the morning and realized my dress had fallen on the ground overnight and was all wrinkled but Monica and Ashleigh (our sisters) ushered me out of the room and steamed the dress using a steamer that Chel had brought along and made sure everything was just fine.
C: My absolute favorite part of the day was the burst of cheering after we were pronounced married. My family and friends have always been very supportive of our relationships, but there was something magical about that moment, it was like being hit by a trainload of love and it felt amazing! I wasn't sure we would have the right to be legally married in our state for a long time, so it was very emotional and exciting for us. I'm sure for others before us that have fought a long hard battle it meant even more. So many have paved the way for us and I am grateful for that because it allows me to live a happy and fulfilling life with the woman I love! We had also given everyone at the ceremony a glass of champagne to cheers after we were married and that was super fun too, all Brittany's idea! There isn't a part that I didn't feel like needed to be there, but if I were to do it over again I would find a company to come and clean up afterward. We had some family stay and help, but Britt and I stayed until the very end and cleaned up the party.
Was there any set idea or want you knew you wanted in a dress?
B: I’m very much a low-key person. My top priority was that the dress be comfortable since I’d spend the whole day in it and then, of course, I wanted to look good. I’m not a sequins/sparkle kind of person so I wanted something elegant but understated if that makes sense? I had a hard time describing it but you found exactly what I wanted; I love my dress.
Do you feel like there were certain things about planning that were harder or different for you guys with 2 brides?
B: figuring out who would walk down the aisle first/ who was “given away” and other “traditional” things were tricky at first but then we came to this realization that our wedding was to celebrate our love and while there are things that most weddings have, we don’t need to do anything just because that’s the way it’s always been done. We ended up having both our parents walk us down the aisle instead of just having our dads and both had our sisters as our only maids of honor.
C: I agree with Brittany, I think it actually turned out to help us in the planning process because it was very liberating. Any couple can obviously do this, not just two brides or two grooms, but we would get asked a lot well how are you going to do this part or who is going to wear what, and we would be able to tell people we are going to do it the way we want to! Which I think a lot of couples should think about without conforming to traditional ideas of what a wedding should be, we could make decisions on what we wanted the day to look like. Unless you want a very traditional wedding, that's fine too! The point is, it is the couples day and do what makes you happy.
I would also love your thoughts on how you both approached shopping! I know you didn't see each others dresses beforehand so was it a conversation you had? Did this make approaching shopping feel different for you?
B: Well I am kind of the person that typically hates shopping and Chelsea had already gotten her dress when I went to a&be so she sent a picture of the dress to Monica so she could kind of keep a “okay, this dress may go well with Chel’s” in the back of her mind. She shared that picture with you and since I didn’t really have any clear expectations of how I wanted my dress to look other than being comfy/low key, you had a lot of liberty to pick and choose things that would look good on me and also go well with Chelsea’s dress. It was really nice to know that you had previously sold the designer that Chelsea bought because you were familiar with it and ended up getting really fired up when we picked the dress. I remember you going “ahhhh, I know you don’t know what Chelsea’s dress looks like but these are going to look SO GOOD TOGETHER!” and that made me feel so happy we went to a&bé. I could tell that even though Chelsea wasn’t your customer, you were thinking about her and our wedding in the decision making process and that made me really happy to have worked with you.
C: I was honestly very worried about what Brittany would pick, hence why I sent her sister a picture of mine. But in the end I had no worries because like Brittany said, you guys were so helpful in finding her dress and she looked drop dead gorgeous, and the dress fit her personality perfectly!
We for real can’t get over these two. Love is the coolest and we are so lucky to get to hang out with it all day.
Venue: Bluestem / Florist: Love Always Floral / Photographer: Britta the Photographer