Why I married 40 of my friends (and it was the best thing ever)
How a Sydney-based Wedding Photographer threw the anti-patriarchy wedding of her dreams to remind others of the power of reclaiming and reimagining these spaces.
As a Wedding Photographer I see how powerful it is to acknowledge and celebrate Love publicly and with intention. I have always loved weddings and photographing the rhapsody of connection and celebration that abounds there. But I used to have some confusing feelings about marriage. When the marriage-equality laws came in, those feelings got quieter, and I realised: I didn’t have a problem with marriage, I had a problem with how we prioritise some Loves over others. With how we gatekeep who belongs to what, and who may celebrate Love via culturally acknowledged means.
Rather than focus on all the heartbreak gatekeeping and rules can create, I wanted to experiment by reimagining other possibilities. At the time I was musing on how we’ve gotten really good at celebrating romantic Love. Yet sitting adjacent to these romantic loves are lifelong friendships; generous, enduring, curious and playful Loves that often teach us some of our most valuable life lessons. Like how to be our most authentic selves, and what real inter-dependence looks like. The great Friend Loves in my life were an exquisite poem full of dance floors, vulnerability, tears, giggles and adventures; transcending the eras of life and bookending every beautiful romo-chapter.
I wanted my friends to know I didn’t take that for granted. And that it didn’t make sense to me that intentionally celebrating Love would be kept for only romantic Love, monogamous Love, or any Love between just two people..
So I threw them the Wedding they deserve:
“An Ode to my True Babes”, To Platonic, Everlasting Love.
We gathered on the magical Isle of Minjerribah (North Strabroke Island), a place filled with aquamarine mermaid waters, dolphins, wallabies, beach sunrises and sunsets. The day before the wedding we had a tour of country with local Quandamook mob, Yura Tours. It was important to learn more deeply about the land and we all felt the ways it steeped the rest of the weekend in more meaning and magic.
On the wedding day, my beloved brooms (bride-grooms) arrived adorned as instructed: in deeply extravagant, upcycled, colour-filled, fabulousness.
For the ceremony we stood in a large circle and held hands, then cry-laughed our way through poems and vows. We remembered “we have a divine right to be here, exactly as we are”. We vowed to take each other away from the swamp of assumptions and into the forest of intentions, and to ‘Truly Babe’ with each other. Which means to cultivate bandwidth for emotional availability and transformative justice.
To be humans who are able to move through discomfort toward repair. Who prioritise embodiment over theory, and leave this world better than we found it. Rather than rings, we sealed the ceremony with a beautiful wreath, made of beads which had been blessed with our intentions. Then we held hands and chanted, before erupting into a cacophony of cuddles.
After the ceremony we had a gorgeous long table feast, lovingly prepared for us by Vera Byrd; whilst roasting ourselves with blessings, speeches, poems and singalongs. Then we danced our little hearts out to deep beats and silly anthems and ran up and down the beach in blissed out joy. We eternalised it all through photography. I couldn’t photograph my own wedding, so I got the wonderful Kyra Boyer to do it. She captures energy and connection in the dreamiest, light filled way.
When it was all done we collapsed into a karaoke recovery night and our beloved broom Maddy mused “I think that just healed all my attachment wounds.” It was powerful and magical. And did everything I know weddings have the power to do. Galvanise and fortify our connections by celebrating them intentionally.
I did it for them, and did it for you my darlings.
You don’t have to marry 40 of your friends. Marry each other. I just want you to remember, when we formalise cultural practices, they are exposed (like all things) to the systems we live in. I think it’s important to notice when we’re getting washed away by norms, trends, rules and burdens that don’t belong to us. I want you to feel inspired and permissed to reimagine your wedding in any way that holds meaning for you.
And I am here (as bb witch and photographer) to help support your creation of that, and capture all the magic for you. Just ask
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.”
– Arundhati Roy
Our Wedding Vendors
Photography: Kyra Boyer Photography
Dress: Hause of Glassborow
Catering: Vera Byrd
