There is an equal sign tattooed on my body, and it has been there since June 26, 2015.

That is the day Obergefell came down and marriage equality became the law in every state in this country. A group of my friends and I went out that night to celebrate, and somewhere in the middle of it we decided that the celebration ought to be permanent. So every one of us got a matching equal sign. Not one of us has regretted it since!

I lead with that because I want you to know exactly where this site is coming from. I am old enough to remember when this wasn't allowed, when "wedding planning" for people like us meant a ceremony your own state would shrug at (or a plane ticket to somewhere that wouldn't). That isn't ancient history. That was ten years ago.

Two weddings, one divorce, and double the experience

Here is my actual résumé for this job. I have been married twice, both times to a woman. One of those marriages ended in divorce, and the other one is my whole life right now — my wife, and our daughter.

I'm not embarrassed by any of that, and I'm not going to leave the first one out so that the story sounds tidier. What it means is that I have planned two weddings from the inside. I have built the seating chart, made the vendor calls, and answered "so which one of you is the bride?" more times than I can count (cheerfully, every single time).

If you have had one wedding that worked and one that didn't, you learn things you would never learn from a single trip down the aisle. Honestly? The one that didn't work taught me more. So when I tell you that a piece of wedding advice doesn't survive contact with two brides, that is not a hunch.

Then I went looking for help, and there wasn't much

The first thing I did was type "lesbian bachelorette party games" into Google, and then I sat there for a minute feeling a little stunned. It wasn't that there was nothing — there are pages and pages and pages of results. However, almost all of it turned out to be the standard bachelorette content with the word "lesbian" stapled onto the front of the headline.

If you scroll down far enough, there it is anyway: guess what the groom said, how well do you know your man, a cocktail recipe shaped like something I don't need to describe for you.

So you do what everybody does. You buy the $12 game pack anyway, and then you spend 45 minutes at your kitchen table with a Sharpie, crossing out "he" and writing in "she" on all 30 cards, and hoping that nobody draws the one about his fantasy football league.

I got tired of the Sharpie!

Two brides is a structural difference, not a cosmetic one

This is the part that the big wedding sites keep missing. When there are two brides, you are not dealing with a find-and-replace problem. You are dealing with a structural one.

You have two people who both get to be the bride. You potentially have two squads who have never met each other, two sets of parents with two sets of opinions (and 4 parents means 4 opinions about the guest list), and two people who each want a night that feels like theirs. Then you have one shared budget, one calendar, and a group chat that is somehow already sitting at 400 unread.

Nobody writes about any of that! It isn't hostility, mostly — they simply have never had to think about it. However, the questions are real and they are specific, and "have a co-ed bach party!" isn't an answer to a single one of them.

What this site is

Both Brides is the specific, useful, unapologetically gay version. That is the whole pitch, and here is what it looks like:

• Guides — the long answers to the questions you are actually asking, like joint party or separate, how to run a weekend for two squads, and which games work when there is no groom to guess about.
• Printables — designed for two brides from the first draft, not adapted and not find-and-replaced. They are coming soon.
• This blog — the things that don't fit inside a guide: opinions, the stuff I am figuring out in real time, and the occasional hill I am prepared to die on.

Underneath all of it is something simpler. I got to have this — twice, technically! There are people who fought so that I could, and there are people planning right now who deserve better than a Sharpie and a shrug.

What I would love from you

Tell me what you couldn't find.

That isn't a throwaway line. All 4 of the guides on this site started life as a search that came up empty, so if you are planning right now and you have hit a wall, that wall is my next post. You can message me on Instagram or say hi here.

If you want the free Mini Game Pack when it drops (two-bride game cards, no Sharpie required), the signup is right below. That is genuinely the only thing I will email you about.

Summary

• I have planned two weddings, both of them to a woman, and I remember when we weren't allowed to have them at all.
• The bachelorette internet assumes a groom, and crossing him out with a Sharpie isn't design.
• Two brides changes the structure of the celebration, not just the pronouns.
• Both Brides is guides, printables, and this blog — all of it built for two brides on purpose.

Thanks for being here at the very beginning!