My low-key, chill COVID drag brunch wedding
Two years ago, my partner Simon Gilbert and I made the decision to finally take our relationship to the next step. After being together for seven years, and a lot of careful thought, we decided it was time to be each other’s “people” for all of eternity. If it sounds dramatic, it’s because it is.
We both knew it was a huge step, since we both felt that the foundations of marriage were rooted in patriarchy. We wanted to have something that wholly symbolized our love and partnership. So we decided to look at rings on our anniversary on Sept. 16, 2019. We kept it quiet, not really mentioning it to anyone. We wanted to be low-key and chill about the situation. So we booked an appointment at Made You Look in Parkdale on the recommendation of a few friends. I tried on rings, going back and forth on everything from shape, size and style until I had it narrowed down and we decided to think it over and come back. To celebrate, we headed to the spot where we had our very first date, Mother India, and ordered rotis.
But then this little thing called the pandemic happened. Suddenly all of our plans were put on hold as the world was thrown into crisis and we found ourselves unable to continue working with our ring designer Deborah Lavery. At this point, I gave up my hope of designing something custom, and as I browsed through Lavery’s readily available rings I found myself immediately drawn to one oval blue sapphire ring. Oddly enough, it was the first ring I tried when we first went to
Made You Look in 2019. So I emailed Lavery in May 2021 as lockdown restrictions were starting to lift to see if she could accommodate me for either a virtual try-on or a curbside appointment. Within two weeks, the ring was mine and it felt like it was meant to be.
Because we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we thought what would be the best way to announce our engagement? Memes, obviously. So one night, we drafted several memes that announced we were getting married. We saved them and decided we would make the official announcement on June 1, the beginning of Pride Month. The response was overwhelming and well, hilarious. To be quite honest, I don’t think people expected any less from us.
As a former event planner who used to plan conferences for up to 30,000 (yes, you read that number correctly) — planning a small COVID wedding for 40 people total was going to be easy (I thought). Simon and I discussed what exactly we wanted our wedding to be: fun, formal or functional. Considering we were in the middle of a pandemic and we had not been able to see any of our family, friends or chosen family in nearly two years, we decided we wanted to have a very small wedding that really felt more like a party. A big thing that our friends used to do on weekends (and virtually during the pandemic) were drag shows and more specifically, drag brunches with Erin Brockobic at Glad Day Bookshop.
So, we decided to have a giant drag brunch with Brockobic . (Come on, how many drag brunch weddings have you been to?)
I shot Brockobic a DM on social to ask if she was interested and it was a go. We picked Sept. 18 as our wedding date since we wanted to keep it on or close to our anniversary. We thought brunch was fitting because it was an inside joke from when we first met on OK Cupid. Simon slid into my DMs with this excellent quote from “The Simpsons” after seeing on my profile that I noted brunch was my favourite meal of the day: “It’s not quite breakfast, it’s not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. You don’t get completely what you would at breakfast, but you get a good meal.”
With only three months to plan our perfect wedding, we enlisted the help of our community in a big way. We knew that at a drag brunch, one of the most important elements would be food and venue. My good pal and chef Charlotte Langley (co-founder of Scout Canning) had announced she was working with the team behind Active Studio, a brandnew 2,000-square foot content and production studio with a professional kitchen. Together we dreamed up a menu that would be the best brunch in the world: fried french toast with chocolate-covered strawberries and whipped cream, super crispy huevos rancheros and toasted oat pancakes with chocolate. Plus hors d’oeuvres that would make your mouth water. (I think everyone commented on how large the shrimp were!)
Adam Ward, director at Active Studio, walked us through the venue beforehand so we could visualize just how to — ahem — activate the space.
Our main goal was avoiding a “formal” wedding vibe. We wanted this to feel like a joyous reunion among friends after a long time away. Like a big party, and it just so happened we were getting married.
To that end, we wanted someone we knew and loved to officiate our ceremony. So we hired Kaleb Robertson (a.k.a. Miss Fluffy Soufflé) to officiate, out of drag. In our wedding vows, we worked in quotes from the web series, “UNHhhh” from Trixie and Katya, as well as our love of memes.
At the venue, we wanted to keep things minimal, bright and fun with pops of colour everywhere, letting the natural lighting and the white walls in the venue do the work for us. We added in gorgeous floral elements by Unfazed Florals all throughout, balloons from Balloons On Bloor, and gorgeous one-of-a-kind drawn signage and photo booth elements drawn by best friend Monster Cliche.
Erin called our wedding (and I quote), “like working two Glad Day brunches back-to-back” as she performed six numbers inbetween speeches from family and friends. At one point, she even gave a lap dance to my most shy friend Frank and I could not stop screaming. Then in the background was our dayof co-ordinator April Wozny handling every single fire like a champ, like getting our wedding wishes video queued up where TikTok star and comedian Darcy Michael, reality TV star Tiffany Pollard (a.k.a. New York), and Thorgy Thor (from “RuPaul’s Drag Race”) gave advice on what it takes to have a good relationship. Oh, and we also can’t forget the cooking video that we re-created from when we first started dating just to showcase how chaotic we really are. Classic.
All in all, our wedding was … non-traditional in every single sense of the word. We were surrounded by so much love, and it was exactly the way we would have wanted it to be. Our community surrounded us with so much love and helped us in so many ways, and we’re glad that in every single detail, we were able to include them.
With only three months to plan our perfect wedding, we enlisted the help of our community in a big way