Welcome to our ninth annual Wedding Issue! In this issue, we look at the full spectrum of marriage, from proposals, to the ceremony and beyond. Four couples let us in on their wedding journey and all the planning and dreaming that goes into creating the perfect day, while long-term married pairings give the lowdown on how to keep a relationship strong. For those not into all this wedding malarkey, there’s a couple perfectly happy not to walk down the aisle.

On the culture side, we have a pair of interviews with two wonderful musical acts - the iconic Indigo Girls and the thrilling Cub Sport.

We discuss the cold facts that families of same-sex parents aren’t as equal as their straight counterparts, and that our family in the North still battle for the right to love.

Our cover image is by the artist Joe Caslin. He speaks inside about art as activism and the power of solidarity, something that our whole community can very much agree with. The North Is Next.