Luke here from Journalistic Skepticism. The lovely Sara asked me to write a little bit about my own tumultuous wedding planning experience. But I exaggerate – it’s actually been a relatively eye-opening learning experience. And before you become too confuddled, let me clear things up – yes, it is possible for a male to plan a wedding.  (Well, just barely at least.)

We’ve set a date for August 14, 2010 (based almost entirely on the economic sensibility of a late-summer wedding), and it will take place in Minneapolis, so hopefully the snow will have disappeared by then.  Though we’re currently living in Sioux Falls and plan to move out to the East Coast in June, we chose a location like Minneapolis to centralize our guests, who range from mostly Midwesterners to some out-of-staters.  Though neither of us are originally from Minneapolis, it’s a major city with more options in terms of site choices, and it’s a familiar, easy-to-get-to locale for our guests in neighboring states.

For our wedding my fiancé and I found ourselves in a predicament.  Though we were ready to name several people to be a part of our wedding party, when it came to traditionalism we faced a problem – our subset of friends included far more females than males.  In fact, our final tally of attendants includes two men and – count ‘em – 10 women.  When choosing our party, we opted for a mix of mostly college friends, siblings, and high school friends.  And with such a large core wedding party, it became easy to bestow some of the other ceremony functions on others, though we haven’t entirely filled every other role.  One of our as-yet-undecided bits is whether or not to have ushers.  Our ceremony count is around 100, so I ask you: are ushers really necessary?

But I digress. In lieu of the boy-girl pairs of the typical wedding, we opted for mix-and-match gender aisle-walking companions.  This shake-up also involved coining some new terms for our crew – groomsmaids and best women, since our best men ended up being some lady friends of ours.  And in order to break up the uniformity of having the many groomsmaids dressing identically, we opted for a single color scheme with three different dress options, a feature that I know many of the wedding party members greatly appreciated.  Because, let’s face it – everyone is built differently, so not every design is going to be suitable.  So to come to terms with the fact that these ladies were buying the dresses for keeps, why not opt for something they actually enjoy?

Our chosen groomsmaid attire

When planning a wedding, perhaps seamless traditionalism is your number-one concern.  But for the sake of picking the best possible wedding party, there’s something to be said for being a little gender-blind and breaking just a couple rules.

A big thank you to Luke for shedding some insight on how to beautifully break down the Wedding Industrial Complex’s so-called “rules.” I can’t wait to see the fruits of your efforts, Luke!

[Image credit: David's Bridal]