The recent announcement by Jerry Sanders, mayor of San Diego, that he would approve a measure legalizing gay marriage reminded me that I’ve been sitting on a post for awhile about using inclusive language in documents that I give to wedding clients.

One thing I rarely hear other wedding professionals talk about is how to make sure their services and businesses are welcoming to LGBT couples. While the US is in the midst of large-scale public debate about the legal status of gay marriage, LGBT couples continue to make public declarations of their love and commitment in large numbers. LGBT couples are having weddings despite the lack of legal protection for their relationships. As a queer woman myself, I am heartened and excited by the increasing regularity that I see these ceremonies.

One way I can participate in the marriage equality movement is to make a concerted effort to photograph the weddings of LGBT couples. As a photographer, I have the opportunity to increase the visibility of the unions that LGBT couples are making to one another simply by taking photographs of these unions. However, while that’s a wonderful step, I recently decided that it wasn’t enough. I don’t want to simply capitalize on the new “gay wedding” market. I want to be a pioneer of social change!

That may sound like a tall order, but there are some very simple things that those of us who work in the wedding industry can do to make sure our business and services are welcoming to LGBT couples. While we may not have any images or examples of LGBT couples in our portfolios, one very simple thing we can do is to erase gender-specific language from our business documents.

Now, I say “simple,” but actually this is not the easiest task to accomplish! I recently took a close look at all of the verbiage on my website an in the printed materials that I give to wedding clients, with an eye toward making sure the language was inclusive of LGBT couples, and it was really difficult to find word substitutions that didn’t make things that much more confusing. To give you an idea of some of the difficulties I encountered, here’s some of the roadblocks I faced:

• If there’s no “bride” or “groom”, then do we still have “bridesmaids” or “groomsmen”?
• If a couple has two brides, and their attendants are a mix of men and women, what do we call them?
• If the couple is two women, are both “brides”? Are two men both “grooms”?
• Who gets their photo taken with the flowergirl? What about the ringbearer?
• If I want to use the same documents for ALL of my couples, how do I use language that isn’t gender-specific without either becoming confusing or alienating the heterosexual couples that I work with?

Those were just some of the questions I asked myself during the process of making by business documents inclusive. Part of what sparked this pursuit was a wedding that I photographed a few years ago in Toronto for a lesbian couple shortly after Canada legalized gay marriage. While it was wonderful that gay marriages were legal, their marriage documents had not been updated to reflect the change. It amused the brides that one of them wrote her name under the space for the “groom,” but not everyone would have a sense of humor about it. I don’t want to run the risk of alienating any of my couples while we plan for one of the most important days of their lives, and I definitely don’t want to leave LGBT couples feeling like their relationships are an afterthought.

After a lot of thinking and brainstorming with friends and colleagues, I was able to come up with some solutions. (Big thanks to Cheryl and Jane!) Rather than referring to people as “brides” or “grooms”, I am leaving space for people to write in their own names. On my list of formal wedding photos, each person has the same list of individuals (or groups) for potential photos, and they can check boxes to let me know who is being photographed with whom. On my wedding contract, I no longer have spaces for the “bride” to write her name and the “groom” to write his name. Instead, there’s spaces for the couple to write their names, give me their phone numbers, and tell me to whom the numbers belong.

Going through the exercise of making my documents welcoming to all my wedding couples—regardless of gender or sexual orientation—may seem like a hassle, but it’s one that I think is important to face. I invite any other wedding professionals reading this to take a look through my new, inclusive wedding documents for ideas on how to make your own paperwork accessible to your clients, whatever their orientation may be.