QUEER IRL PHOTO GALLERY: Queers in Celebration!

Amber and Victoria / Engagement!!! / Frederick, MD / 2017

“Amber and Victoria met at Hood College in Frederick. After Victoria went to a play four nights in a row in which Amber had three lines, they soon started dating. They bonded over the queerest show on earth– Star Trek. Three years later, they’re hella engaged and getting married next year!”


Amy and Amy / Attending le Diner en Blanc / Sacramento, CA / September, 2017

“It’s not technically a celebration of anything we did, but it was a beautiful evening nonetheless with delicious dinner, sparklers, & dancing & it was one of the most beautiful nights we have shared. Plus, how often do you get to be all fancy without having to buy a present?!”


Jay with Newly Married Friends / 5 Mins After Their “I Do” / Clarksville, TN / 2017

“Here I am celebrating the fact that my hella queer body felt hella comfortable being the Maid/Person of Honor for my best friend. I know the day wasn’t about me, but they made me comfortable and proud to be my entire self and that rarely happens for me at things predominantly made for the straight people’s of the world. It was basically a big moment of celebrating love.”


Clellie / 21 / Stopped Experiencing Vertigo After 8 Days of Dizziness, Did a Headstand to Celebrate / Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA / October 30, 2017


Claire and Alexa / High School Best Friend’s Wedding / Milwaukee, WI / July 15, 2017

“Alexa and I took our first road trip together, from the Twin Cities to Milwaukee, to attend her high school best friend’s wedding. The drive was filled with dangerous amounts of laughing after discovering a new hilarious podcast, the Airbnb was pleasantly underpriced and incredibly luxurious, and we spent days drinking, eating, looking at art, and falling in love. And to top it all off, it was my birthday weekend! It was the best weekend I’ve ever had, and I know it can’t possibly be relived. It was an ephemeral experience that could only have happened at that exact point in our lives and relationship, and I wouldn’t do it again if I could- it was magic, and so is she.”


Sofia and Veronica / 30, 29 / Our Wedding / Rome, Italy / 3 September, 2016

“This picture was taken last year during our beautiful wedding! We got married first in Austria (my mother was born there and I have some relatives living in Salzburg) and then we did another ceremony in Rome with our families and a lot of friends. It was a great day, we laughed, we cried, we got drunk and at the end of the day I jumped in the pool with my wedding dress on. Surprisingly, the dress survived completely unharmed!”


Vicky / 27 / World Pride 2017 / Madrid / 1 July, 2017

“This collage shows pretty much everything I did that day at Pride: played drums in the parade, waved my bilingual protest gay flag a lot, and went to party.”


Emma and Nicole / Graduations and Engagement! / Brooklyn, NY / June 3, 2017

“When Emma and Nicole found out they would be graduating from their respective programs on the same day at the same time, they were pretty devastated. So they took the opportunity to party! After five years of dating, Nicole and Emma’s families finally met at what they thought was their graduation party. Turns out they’d been planning to propose to each other for months and surprise their friends and families!”


Hannah and Ash / 23, 26 / Our Wedding Day / Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AR / December 18, 2016

“This is one of my favorite photos from my most favorite day! We had a little elopement ceremony with Ash’s immediately family at Crystal Bridges, which is one of our most beloved places to be. It was the only day we got any snow all winter which made the whole day feel so magical.”


Ashley, Marine, Edwin, Ali, Cynthia, Carmen, Joy / Our Wedding Day / Aliso Viejo, CA / August 20th, 2016

“This was the first moment we were pronounced married. Our best friend (and incredible queer poet) Edwin Bodney married us in front of our friends and family at Soka University in Southern California. Everything was super personal, even our wedding photographer, Sarah Swindle, was in our A-Camp cabin where we first met!

We could have made a big exit, but we stayed until the very end of the night to celebrate with our friends! Regardless, they helped send us off in a wave of bubbles, and the whole night was over far too fast.”

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Laneia

Laneia has written 310 articles for us.

40 Comments

  1. Oh my gosh, thank you all for sharing your joy and smiles! You are all so good-looking! So many of you are married and your weddings are gorgeous!

    Also, couple who met in nun school, please write a book. Or at least an AS post.

    • I have written several fictional pieces that use our origin story. They never quite reach the magic of the real thing. I probably will try to capture our true story someday. :)

  2. This day is too much, in the best way.

    Thanks AS and all the cuties celebrating for all the pure joy!

    • On a second note, I had to stop reading this post at work cause I started tearing up after the 3rd picture. I am a weak gay ?

  3. These photos are giving me such life today! Excellent, excellent job everybody! ? ☀️ ❤️

    Also, *thank you* Autostraddle editors and contributors for posting such powerfully uplifting content today. I was expecting this day to feel heavy af, and in some ways it still is, but I’m filled with more energy, optimism, and love than I could’ve expected.

  4. Dear Lesbian Murder Mystery Totally 80s Prom people, please write a post about how to host this event

    • gonna work so hard as your community editor to make this happen — Lesbian Murder Mystery Totally 80s Prom People, i am gonna be contacting you! we must give the queers what they want!!

  5. Wedding at Crystal Bridges! I worked there from the beginning of construction until early 2014 and would have LOVED to be there for your wedding! I helped lots of cute couples get engaged and do elopement ceremonies on the trails and at the LOVE sculpture but I just know y’all would have been my faves.

    If you ever come down to Shreveport, hit me up and I’ll buy you a beverage of your choice!

  6. my favorite part of this gallery is that there are so many weddings and engagements and group celebrations and i’m just like I LOVE MY BIRTHDAY LOOK AT MY COOL PINK SPARKLY DRESS PAY ATTENTION TO ME!! which, frankly, is very on brand and i have no regrets.

    but for real, this whole gallery makes my heart explode, thank you everyone who contributed and thank you laneia for tirelessly putting these together and thank you queer people for making my whole goddamn world go round <3

    • I keep wanting to have a big blowout birthday with everyone I’ve met but I find it hard to even get ONE PERSON to show up -_-;;

  7. I love everything about this. You are all incredibly pure and wonderful people. Bookmarked for days when I’m feeling blue.

  8. It was such a joy to be a part of Jack and Darcy’s day. They are both loving and caring individuals, and I feel so lucky to have them as friends. If either of them are reading this, love you both!

    Saying that, it was such a joy to look at all these celebratory pictures and read their words. On a day that feels very positive for queer people, this post gave me one more reason to be happy today.

  9. This is adorable and all the weddings (and all y’all!) are beautiful!

    ALSO: Vicky – Madrid??? Because I am also here and am lacking in English-speaking queer lady friends, so, like, send me a message or something so we can maybe be friends? Awesome.

    • @gasp-its-harto HIIIIII! Yes Madrid, I live here! And I am a very-queer, very-lady, and very-English speaking person and we should def be friends! I know a lot of other queer ladies (a few who speak English lol). Let’s meet up ?

      • @vickys1 Awesome! Wanna maybe grab coffee or something this weekend? Cool. I’ve followed you on insta, so we can carry on chatting on there ???

  10. I love this. So many weddings and friends’ weddings! So many Pride celebrations! And engagements! And birthdays! And sparklers! And a unicorn boat! Life is good.

    • Not to mention the graduations and misc friend groups having fun in beautiful places. Love the backpack photo and the Spice Girls.

  11. I read every caption on every single picture, y’all are so sweet and happy and this is wonderful and pure and good

  12. OMG, I’m loving all these celebrations! I am so excited to see so many weddings, and engagements, and I really want in on that murder mystery, it looks like so much fun. Also, shout out to all the Andrea’s in here ❤️

  13. This is so sweet and pure and I love it so much. Thank you for helping us get through this day today.

    • This is amazing!!! I saw Taylor Mac do a lecture/radio broadcast interview at my university on art and activism this past January, around inauguration time (along with Bill T. Jones, a modern dance legend, and Niegel Smith, a playwright). The three interviewees were so incredibly insightful and inspiring, and…I’m just so grateful for queer artists. As a queer dancer/performance art person myself, I’m super excited to know that Autostraddle folks have connections like this! How cool that you are/were in this production!

  14. oh autostraddle! i did not realize how much i needed to see page after page of smiling, in love, happy, celebrating queers on this day; but here i am with tears streaming down my face beaming back at it all. thank you for this. and for everything. literally so worth my A+ membership just for this feeling. thank you.

  15. I LOVE ALL THE HAPPY QUEERS. Also, I gave up wedding photography because I’m so incredibly tired of straight people and they far outnumbered the queer folks I worked with, but damn this makes me want to go find way more queer weddings because they are genuinely the greatest experiences.

    • Queer weddings really are the best. My partner’s a wedding officiant and my favorite weddings to try to invite myself to are the queer ones – especially for older, long term couples who never expected to be able to marry.

  16. This is just lovely, all of you beautiful people. Congratulations to you all on your engagements,weddings,graduations,fun with friends, theatre parties…..everything. You’re all doing you with love and style.

  17. Love that there were a few A-Camp marriages in here! so many lives have been drastically changed because of this website ❤️

  18. These are all such lovely photos <3 <3 also, hey Erin and Sarah who got married in Wandsworth! That's where I grew up, it's so nice to see some happy queer people getting married there :)

  19. You all are lovely. Seeing all of this happy makes me so happy! (And not just because my darling girlfriend and I are featured in it)
    Keep it up, friends. Remember – better days are coming. :)

  20. Maggie, you’re going to have to write back and update on the Cinnamon situation. Now I’m invested in this story…

Comments are closed.