QI'm so glad I found you! My daughter and her wonderful perfect girlfriend just got engaged! We adore our soon-to-be daughter-in-law and our whole extended family is comfortable and supportive with the whole idea. But the family of our soon-to-be daughter-in-law is not accepting. Her mother is slowly, painfully coming to terms but she refuses to acknowledge the engagement ... sort of. Her stepfather is not accepting at all and her extended family seem to be fairly homophobic.

My soon-to-be daughter-in-law has stated she doesn't want to invite any of them to the wedding. I'm torn. My heart breaks for her, but the right thing to do is to invite them, I think. She has stated that she doesn't want them there if they aren't supportive, she doesn't want them to attend due to a sense of familial obligation, or to gawk.

But the goal is to give them an opportunity to see love, in all its forms, to see how normal regular people love and accept love, in all its forms. The hope is that by attending this wedding, they might experience a change of heart and see for themselves that two chicks can love each other and two families can support that love.

I would normally press for my daughter or her girlfriend to do what I think is right. But on this matter, I'm not sure if doing the right thing is right for my daughter-in-law. I don't want her feelings hurt, don't want her to be upset on her wedding day, and no one can do that better than family. Do I let it go or continue to advocate for inclusion?

The second problem and more pressing is the engagement party. I think if we were to invite her whole family to an engagement party, it might break the ice, let the cat out of the bag, and if they attend, they will begin to see how wonderful these two young women are together. They will see how this lesbian love looks in real life and how real life families accept, include, and love on. They all live about 3 hours away so attending an engagement party would be quite telling, if they attended.

Please help!

AKudos to you for being such a great and loving mom! If your future daughter-in-law (DIL) asked for my advice, my answer would be slightly different than my answer will be to you.

I would start by helping her weigh the options of what could happen if she invites her relatives. I might even suggest she write her mother a letter asking her to meet to discuss her engagement and upcoming wedding with the hopes that maybe her mother could open up her heart to the idea of her daughter being in love with a woman. If her mom allows for such a meeting, it could be indicative that she will be a gracious and supportive wedding guest. Her mother might then be a good resource for asking about whether or not other relatives, including the stepfather, should be invited—and could be counted on for behaving nicely.

However, as her future mother-in-law, my advice to you is not to play the peacemaker but to consider your role more as a protector. She’s clearly been very hurt by these unsupportive people, including her parents, who should love her no matter what. Why should she want her wedding—a personal, private and intimate celebration of the lifetime commitment of two people who love each other—be turned into a “teachable moment”?

I absolutely see your point that this is a great teachable opportunity for your DIL’s family, that if they could only see how beautiful, natural and normal it is for two woman to be in love than they will "evolve," to use our president's word, on their stance on same-sex marriage. But imagine how awkward the tension might be at the wedding to have these unsupportive relatives present, walking around nervously at the reception, looking away when the brides kiss. Or possibly worse, to receive declines from all the homophobic relatives or no response at all. This is a heart-wrenching feeling, to be rejected by your own family, and one that happens often in the LGBTQ community.

Consider your role in your DIL’s life beyond the wedding. You two will undoubtedly become closer, especially if her relationship with her own mother becomes more strained. If you insist that she do something she doesn’t want to do—invite these unsupportive relatives to her wedding—and something goes wrong, she might hold you accountable, or at the very least, resent you for not understanding the severity of the problem.

If you’d like to help mend fences or build bridges, perhaps you could offer to sit down with your DIL’s mother and talk to her about what you see when you look at your daughter and her daughter: love, commitment, happiness. Maybe if she just had another straight parent with a gay child to talk to, she’d start evolving faster.

But if none of those conversations are going to happen, my advice is to not invite anyone who isn’t currently devoted to celebrating the relationship and the commitment they’re preparing to make. You can always send lovely wedding announcements to the questionable would-be guests after the fact.

Kirsten Ott Palladino is the co-founder and editor in chief of Equally Wed, the world's leading gay, lesbian and allied wedding and honeymoon digital resource. Follow her on Twitter. Connect with her on Facebook. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your gay wedding questions. If she can't answer it, she'll find another expert who can!

Q I just got engaged (yay!) and a coworker told me about your site. Thank you for existing! So now that I’m getting into the planning of our wedding and setting a date, etc., I’m hearing from my straight friends that we should have an engagement party. Who throws that for us? Parents, family, friends, us? How does it all come about? Start from the beginning … I’m new to this! Thank you in advance.

ACongrats on your engagement! What an exciting time in your life this is. By all means, a celebration would be wonderful. An engagement party isn’t required, but it’s a wonderful way to kick off the wedding festivities and announcing your engagement to the world—or rather, your world. It’s also a lovely time for your friends and family to get to know one another. Plus, if one family is showing any hesitation over your engagement and the other isn’t, this is a perfect place for them to pick up a few lessons on how to better support your plan to wed.

You can have it anywhere in any style that you like. There’s no right way or place for an engagement party. It can be a BBQ held at a pool or a lavish dinner at a luxe hotel.

As for who throws it, there are no rules here. Tradition used to be that the parents of the bride gave the engagement party, but practicality (and the presence of two brides, a bride and broom, or two grooms) translates to anyone can host it. As for who to invite, only invite those who will be invited to the wedding. Yes, this means it’s time to get your list finalized!

There are some rules for when to have your engagement party: No less than two months after the engagement and at least six months before the wedding.

The guests can be invited to the party in honor of the couple, but don’t mention that it’s an engagement party. It’ll ruin the surprise announcement!

Keep in mind that gifts shouldn’t be expected at this celebration, nor should they be opened at the party. Don’t worry! You’ll get plenty later.

Kirsten Ott Palladino is the co-founder and editor in chief of Equally Wed, the world's leading gay and lesbian wedding and honeymoon digital resource. Follow her on Twitter. Connect with her on Facebook. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your gay wedding questions. If she can't answer it, she'll find another expert who can!

Q I'm planning on proposing to my boyfriend, and I'm wondering how other men propose to one another? An engagement ring is really for females since they can wear an engagement and wedding ring. While I realize there are no rules, a man with two wedding bands just doesn't make sense to me. Plus, I'd rather purchase rings together (most likely matching) with my partner when we are ready to wed. So what does one propose with? Another ring? A watch? I can't seem to find anything about this online...

A Gay marriage is all about embracing who you are and who you love, which means that you should do what makes sense for you, and if that's wearing an engagement ring, a wedding band and stackable anniversary bands up to your fingernail, then by all means, feel free.

But to give you a proper answer from a man's point of view, we deferred to a groom who's recently been in your situation, Steve Schessler, who makes up half of one our Real Weddings couples in our Spring 2010 issue. Read about his and Jonathan's wedding here.

Schessler says, "For our part, I bought an engagement ring for Jonathan after some months of sideways questioning, 'So do you like something like this?' or 'Do you remember your ring size?' Not so indirect, but he somehow still wasn't thinking the proposal was on the horizon, and coming closer. In the end, the main stipulations were no stones, simple design, fairly thin band. I found the perfect one at Cartier, from their 'Love' series.

After the proposal, Jonathan decided he wanted to get an engagement ring for me as well, so we went back to Cartier and found a complementary ring from the same collection, but bigger for my larger hands.

At our wedding in Atlanta, we exchanged these same rings, and had planned to go without a band. We then were invited to participate in a No on Prop 8 fundraiser in San Francisco, where we’d already moved, for our legal California ceremony. As part of that event at the Bently Reserve, Shreve & Co. donated two bands of our choosing—and we now wear both our original engagement bands and the very thin Furrer Jacot rose-gold bands from the legal ceremony.

We have some friends who used engagement rings (with both guys always getting one eventually) and then exchanged them at their wedding as well, while we know a few other couples who did both engagement rings and wedding bands. The biggest difference, I think, is that both of the guys have the same number of rings—either one, if they re-exchange, or two, if they add bands."

Kirsten Ott Palladino is the co-founder and editor in chief of Equally Wed, the nation’s leading gay and lesbian wedding and honeymoon magazine. Follow her on Twitter. Connect with her on Facebook. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your gay wedding questions. If she can't answer it, she'll find another expert who can!

Q My fiancé and I are getting married in a few weeks. I'm Indian, and we wanted Indian clothes for the ceremony. I went to India with my mom this past winter, and we purchased clothes for all our attendants for the ceremony. Do we still need to get our wedding party gifts, especially those who haven't really been involved much?

A It’s both beautiful and meaningful that you and your mother traveled to India together and purchased your wedding party’s attire there. What a personal touch to the day. I’m certain your attendants will be very touched that they don’t have to pay for the clothing, too.

However, it doesn’t save you from giving them a small token of your appreciation, because you are giving them something they are required to wear, albeit gorgeous handmade clothes from India. You don’t have to spend a lot on the wedding party gifts—especially for the people who haven’t been very involved. But these friends and family members are sacrificing their time for you, and etiquette dictates that you give them a thank you gift that doesn’t have anything to do with the wedding (which is why the clothing isn’t enough). That gift doesn’t have to cost much, if anything. It could be a framed photo of you and/or your fiancé with each person or something you’ve made, such as a small painting, a poem about friendship in your own handwriting on nice paper or a potted plant. The message of the gift is more important than the dollar value, and it should say, “I appreciate you in my life and for standing up for me on my wedding day.”

Kirsten Ott Palladino is the co-founder and editor in chief of Equally Wed, the nation’s leading gay and lesbian wedding and honeymoon magazine. Follow her on Twitter. Connect with her on Facebook. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your gay wedding questions. If she can't answer it, she'll find another expert who can!