The Lesbian Bride Chronicles: How Many Dykes Does It Take to Plan A Wedding?

You know the story. Girl meets girl. Girls kiss outside each others' tents. Girls spend the next day talking under an oak tree. Girls fall in love, move into a tent together and start planning their Canadian wedding.

( I know, you're thinking "Wait a sec, What's this with tents?")

Well, last year I met my beloved, "Luckdragon" at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. It was the safest way to U-Haul. She slept in my tent almost every night, and we got a taste of what it would be like to be together all the time, in the heat and sweat and 'skeeters of a Michigan summer. We held hands as Elvira Kurt regaled us with her humor, we kissed and fondled while Melissa Ferrick belted out "Drive." We cooed as we got our picture taken with Bitch. I worked one night in Sprouts, the toddler "daycare" and Luckdragon said she knew when she saw me changing a diaper that she wanted to have my babies.



Okay, maybe it wasn't quite that dramatic, but we did fall in love at Fest. Unfortunately, Luckdragon lives in Detroit and I am a grad student in Tallahassee. Throughout the week, fellow lesbians cooed over how cute we were, and asked, "So, what happens after Fest?" We'd grimace and answer in unison: "We haven't talked about that yet."

We didn't know what would happen after Fest, but we did realize that if we were going to make a long-distance relationship work, we had to want the same things. The relationship had to be going somewhere.

Yes, it's true. I bought my wedding dress two months after meeting her.

I like to think, though, that we didn't rush into things. Sure we talked about marriage during the first week, but it's been 8 months now, and though the wedding plans are well under way (June 20, 2009!), we still live six states apart. Luck is moving down here in August, and that will be a year together. It will be almost two before we tie the knot. So we stick it out in Florida while I finish my thesis, and then comes the fun part. Applying to PhD programs and moving in May before the June wedding. There aren't too many programs for Creative Writing, and we're pretty particular about where we live.

Did you know that only eight states in the US officially allow second-parent adoption?

You see, we want to have kids in the next four years (Luck is training to be an LD nurse (Labor & Delivery, not Lesbian Drama--I know what you're thinking!) and she'll be 30 by the wedding, and would like to give birth before she's 35.

So amid picking out chair covers and ring pillows, we're also shopping for sperm and investigating the intricacies of adoption codes and current legislation.

Follow along as we navigate my brother's wedding (to which Luck is invited as my "special friend"), the fact that my mother watches The L Word to "see what you lesbians are up to," unfriendly wedding vendors, the Florida marriage amendment on the ballot this November and how hard is it to publish a dyke-themed poem, anyway?