Through Another Lens Guest Blog Series: Mercie & Dan’s Conscientious Decision to Plan a Big, Queer, Love-Forward Wedding:

So much more than “clients”, our couples are human beings that have a lifetime of stories to tell. We are happy to announce our new blog series aptly titled Through Another Lens, which captures the backstories of our most compelling couples, who voluntarily share their personal stories. From profound to mundane, silly to serious, and everything in between, please join us on these journeys as we experience life Through Another Lens.

– Mercie & Danika –

When chatting with this soulful, energetic, and beautiful couple about their wedding planning, they described how, “we considered eloping but decided that we could really make a statement with our unapologetic love for all friends and family that have supported us”.

The wedding industry is seeing a big shift in couples choosing to downsize their weddings in order to honor their love, but when Mercie told me about them upsizing their celebration as a platform to celebrate queer marriage, we couldn’t help but feel inspired and curious. But writing this simply from a straight person’s perspective felt like a disservice, so Mercie and Dan graciously jumped on a Q&A session with us, and just like that, Through Another Lens was born.

Here’s what it is like to plan a big, queer, loving wedding from two of the most qualified people we know:

It is funny how quickly a wedding can become less about the couple and more about those in attendance. We have seen it a million times. Whether it’s the parents who are paying for the celebration that want to call the shots, the internal family quibbles, the I’m not sitting at the same table as so-and-so, or the religious dogmatist that insists on lengthy ceremonial traditions. We’ve seen it all.

What we haven’t seen is a couple who has looked back at their relationship and decided that they are going to host a big wedding rather than an intimate elopement because of what it means to posterity and gay rights; that they are going to celebrate their love not only because it’s real—but because the celebration itself has a greater purpose.

We first got to know Mercie and Dan at their sunrise engagement session in Nederland, CO, learning about the origin of their relationship while marveling at their perceptive, bubbly, and unwavering connection. Between the bouts of early-morning-induced delirium and laughter, we stumbled across big topics like same-sex and interracial marriage and Mercie and Dan handled the questions with ease.

“We were never huge wedding people. Neither of us were the type of little girls that dreamed hard about the perfect day and what it would look like.” Actually, Mercie and Dan originally planned to elope, thinking that a small intimate setting was more appropriate to celebrate their love than a huge wedding, but then they got to thinking what their same-sex marriage celebration could mean to their families and communities.

They eventually came to the conclusion that the most important thing was “the impact that we could have on our friends/family/supporters by including them in the celebration of our love. We realized how neither of us had ever been to a queer wedding and likely many of our friends and family hadn’t either.”

Just like so many of their LGBTQ+ allies, Mercie and Dan fought through their childhoods against imposed familial, religious, and social values, fighting a war on so many external fronts, realizing that their internal psychological warfare was like “[a] fight against the human brain. For hundreds and hundreds of years we have been conditioned to believe that gay people are the enemy; that we are sick.” It will never cease to impress me; the bravery and self-analyzation that the members of the queer community have had to possess to overcome such a multi-faceted adversity at such formative times in their lives. 

“Coming out can mean so many different things for so many different people,” Mercie said. Dan (and to some extent Mercie), like so many others, “had to sacrifice communication with her whole family,” and it took awhile to get there because there is “never a “right” time to do it. For some it is fear of losing everything they know, for others it is a fear of the unknown, or changes in how you are perceived by the world and more importantly by yourself.” Thus, rather than privately celebrate their love in an intimate group, Mercie and Dan are planning to show the world the values they’ve come to be so proud of.

By enthusiastically having a large queer wedding, Mercie and Dan are showing that “[We] have made a decision to be aware rather than ignorant...coming to an understanding that we’ve learned more from the tough times than the privileges we weren’t always aware of.” 

Mercie and Dan’s wedding is more than a celebration of love– it is an authentic experience of life set to show the next generation a symbol of hope, inspiration and pride, liberating everyone in attendance to promote an atmosphere of consistent support to all of those that need it. In a coincidental way, Mercie and Dan’s wedding is less about them and more about someone something else—posterity—but we know that they will cherish the memory anyway, because they “are grateful for every experience.”