Picture this: you have just gotten engaged. You are excited, you are in love, and you sit down to start building your wedding team. The first vendor you email signs off with “Looking forward to celebrating the bride and groom.” You are two women.

It is a small thing. It is also not a small thing at all.

I photograph and film those days for a living. I am a queer-led wedding photographer and filmmaker based in Dublin, originally from Rio de Janeiro, and LGBTQ+ couples are at the heart of my work. The gap between what couples deserve and what many vendors still offer is something I think about all the time. Enough that I eventually stopped just thinking about it.

Why the gap still exists
Legalisation changed the law. It did not automatically change culture, training, or habit.

Many wedding vendors are well-meaning people who simply have never had to think about this before. They learned the job in a world built around one kind of couple. Their intake forms say ‘bride’ and ‘groom’. Their sample albums show one type of wedding. They have not updated any of it, not out of malice, but because no one pushed them to.

The result is that queer couples spend a disproportionate amount of their engagement doing emotional labour to find their wedding team. Vetting vendors. Sending cautious emails before committing. Scanning Instagram feeds for signs of life. Reading reviews for anything coded. Asking yourself, before every single meeting: Is this person actually safe to talk to?

That last one is the part that does not get talked about enough. There is a very specific feeling that comes with not knowing whether the person you are about to hire truly sees you, or whether you are going to have to spend the next few months managing their discomfort. And there is an equally specific feeling of relief when you realise you do not have to do that at all.

The questions that reveal whether a vendor truly gets it
These are the questions I wish someone had handed me early on. What you want to know is not whether a vendor is friendly. It is whether they have done the work.

• “Can you show me examples of couples like us?” A vendor who is genuinely experienced with LGBTQ+ weddings will have them. Someone who is just supportive in theory may not.
• “What does your intake process look like?” Listen for whether they use neutral language naturally, or whether they stumble and correct themselves.
• “Have you worked with two grooms, two brides, or non-binary partners before?” How they answer matters as much as what they say.
• “How do you handle pronouns for your wedding party?” A vendor who has thought about this already is a different proposition from one who is hearing the question for the first time.

Trust your gut after these conversations. If something feels off, it probably is.

 

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A post shared by Anna Mello | Dublin Photographer & Videomaker │ LGBTQIAPN+ (@annamellostudios)

What I decided to do about it
The problem I kept seeing was not just that some vendors were unwelcoming. It was the process itself. Couples were going vendor by vendor, one by one, doing the same detective work over and over again, trying to piece together a team of people who were not just individually safe, but who actually shared the same values, the same approach, the same understanding of what this day means.

That is an enormous amount of work to put on two people who are just trying to plan their wedding.

So I started building something to change that. WE DO is a collective of LGBTQ+ affirming wedding professionals in Ireland, brought together so that couples do not have to go searching piece by piece. Wedding photographers, celebrants, DJs, content creators and more – a team that is still growing, because the more of us there are, the easier it becomes. People who are not just willing to show up, but who have built their practice around this community. People you do not have to vet. People where the relief is already built in.

The idea is simple: when you find your WE DO team, you already know you are safe. You can spend your energy on the parts that actually matter.

What working with the right team actually looks like
When the safety question is already answered before the first meeting starts, something shifts.

Couples stop performing. They stop pre-explaining themselves. In my first call with a new couple, I ask them to tell me about their relationship, not their wedding. I want to know how they met, what makes them laugh, who cries first at a film. I ask about the moment they knew. I ask what they want to feel when they look at the photos 10 years from now.

Those are the conversations that produce real photographs. Not posed, not managed, not translated for someone else’s comfort. Just two people on one of the most important days of their lives, completely themselves.

That is what every queer couple deserves. And that is the version of this industry I am trying to build.

One more thing
I recently made a short documentary called A Love to Celebrate, in which I asked three couples the same questions about love: a sapphic couple, a trans man and a poly woman, and a hetero couple. I wanted to see what was universal and what was specific. What surprised me was how little difference there was in the answers.

Love is love is a slogan, but it also happens to be true.

You deserve a wedding team that already knows that. If you are starting to build yours, you can meet the full WE DO team at www.thisiswedo.com or contact us at [email protected].

 

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A post shared by Anna Mello | Dublin Photographer & Videomaker │ LGBTQIAPN+ (@annamellostudios)

Anna Mello is the founder of WE DO, a collective of LGBTQ+ affirming wedding professionals in Ireland, and a wedding photographer and filmmaker based in Dublin. Find her work at www.annamellostudios.com.