For this event planner, family history helped her focus on gay weddings
By Molly Guthrey – mguthrey@pioneerpress.com – Posted:   05/04/2013

Julie Lyford of Fabulous Functions is an event planner who works on a variety of gatherings and specializes in gay and lesbian weddings and commitment ceremonies.

It is her career, but it also a ritual she takes personally.

“I grew up in a very small, very conservative community in Pella, Iowa,” says Lyford, 45, of West St. Paul. “My parents were married in the ’60s; they were married for a long time. In the mid ’70s, my dad came out to my mother. They stayed married and he stayed closeted.

“He was a professor at a small private college; she was a teacher at small private school. It was not the time or place to come out, not if you wanted to keep your job. They could have separated and moved, but they both loved me and wanted to raise me. My dad wanted to be a full-time part of my life.”  Lyford was 17 when her father told her he was gay (Lyford’s parents waited until she graduated from high school before they divorced and moved to Des Moines).

“My reaction was, ‘Oh, OK.’ I didn’t care. My dad didn’t believe that I actually didn’t care. But my dad was a theater professor; I’d been around gay and lesbian people my whole life.  “To me, when he said, ‘I’m gay,’ it wasn’t like he was saying, ‘I’m an alien.’ It was more like, ‘Oh, just like Ron and Herb,’ our family friends.”    Not only did Lyford not judge her father; she followed him onto the stage, working in theater as a professional stage manager on the East Coast after college.

“Because theaters often host other events, I began helping with parties, weddings and commitment ceremonies,” Lyford said. “An event is just like a show, really; you have a theme, a deadline, a cast of characters, an audience. And you have also more control over your schedule as an event planner than as a stage manager.”

After moving back to Iowa, Lyford continued working as an event planner; she also got married; she and her husband have two children. They moved to Minnesota in 1999, but she has maintained her ties to Iowa, where same-sex marriage has been legally recognized since 2009. She helped her dad and his longtime partner plan a celebration after they tied the knot.  “It was a big backyard get-together with gay people, straight people and grandkids running around,” Lyford said. “My mom is a master gardener with an English garden in her backyard; she basically clear cut her garden for the wedding. Yes, my mom was at the wedding; she and my dad are still best friends.”

Fabulous Functions also helps plan other events, including straight weddings and celebrations of life (funerals). But gay weddings make up about half of Lyford’s business and currently, business is slow in Minnesota.  “It could be legal in August, so couples are waiting,” Lyford says.   (The Minnesota Legislature is considering expanding the state’s legal definition of marriage to all genders.)

In the meantime, Lyford organized a “LGBT Wedding Dreaming” photo shoot that will appear in “Lavender” magazine and is working with the magazine to create a “wedding fair” of sorts at Twin Cities Pride on June 29.  “I’m trying to get the pictures out there, because a gay couple doesn’t see themselves in ‘Bride’ magazine,” Lyford says. “There are not a lot of high-end weddings happening here. We want to show couples what it could look like. We’re trying to give them ideas — from traditional to artsy to offbeat.”

In many ways, a wedding is a wedding.

“Really, gay weddings are not different from heterosexual weddings,” Lyford says. “But there are some slight differences. At gay weddings, there’s a tradition of two aisles instead of one. And I have noticed that at gay weddings, the people attending are smaller in number. They don’t invite the side characters, like their dad’s boss. They invite the people who truly love and support them, the ones who are totally 100 percent on board with it. There is so much love there — every single person at the wedding really knows the couple and the situation. The guests also tend to know each other, too. It’s a more intimate feel compared to the wedding with 250 guests.”

A wedding planner also plays a different role in a gay wedding.

“Part of what I do is go out and vet the vendors,” Lyford says. “Are these vendors gay friendly? Are they going to feel comfortable working with my couple? My couples know that the vendors I recommend are totally fine with it.”

Not all vendors are. — “I worked with one lesbian couple who, when they first started planning their wedding on their own, tried to buy a dress and the bridal salon refused,” Lyford says. “They told them, ‘We don’t feel comfortable selling it to you.’ ”

Lyford has faced similar issues.  “I’ve lost straight clients because of it,” she says. “I was planning a straight client’s wedding. The client’s parents were paying for the wedding, but when they found out I did gay weddings, they told my client, ‘You can’t work with her.’”

Lyford shrugs off that kind of attitude.

“I believe if you’re in love, you should be able to get married,” she says. “Weddings can be stressful enough — for any couple. I enjoy being able to help couples not have to deal with some of the hatred out there, to be their buffer.”

Share your turning point with Molly Guthrey at mguthrey@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5505.

Direct Link to Article