Ooh Yes I Do!: The Ultimate Gay & Lesbian Wedding Planner :Richard Gough-Buijs

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good bloke must be in want of the ultimate gay and lesbian wedding planner.

So you pitched, they agreed, you smirked, swapped diamonds and white Welsh gold engagement rings and learnt to spell fiancé, oh and, at long long last got the permission of your government and the agreement of society to legally do what you’ve been doing for years anyway. Yes! Now it’s time to take the ultimate step, and no it’s not time for the full back tattoo of Liberace, but time to plan your wedding.

‘Ooh Yes I Do!’, hot from the ipad of Richard Gough-Buijs hopes to help you though the traumatic days of wonder and worry that lead up to the big day. Unaccustomed as you are to public wedding planning this book offers a helpful and well researched step by step guide to getting the day right. The books aims to promote thought regarding the big issues of the day, like stationary design or venue choice and the more prosaic, such as choosing your surname or colour theme.

I rather liked the parts of ‘do it yourself’ creative and craft making suggestions and giggled warm heartedly at the ideas for a home made ring cushion. LGBT Weddings are obviously an irony free zone. However, my cynical asides aside Gough-Buijs does think of everything, every small detail from the music to suggestions for bio degradable confetti.  There is also an interesting chapter full of facts on LGBT civil unions and same-sex marriages around  the world, useful for your wedding breakfast quiz.

You can check out the book on line here:

The book does come across slightly as a control freaky Martha Steward but then I suspect this is what’s needed to get a huge special day such as your wedding, exactly precisely right.  There’s lots of lovely suggestions for Sussex based LGBT wedding folk, photographers, cake makers, Gilded Llama hire etc (I made the last one up…) and the book does have a lovely collection of photos of the Gough-Buijs own very special day and those of some other LGBT folk, they do all look very happy, photo’s are from local photographer Hannah Brackenbury. You can see more of her work here:  

The wedding planner market is very competitive, with a fair amount of well produced high quality books aimed at the discerning LGBT audience too, so this book would have benefited from an editors constructively critical eye thrown over it just to iron out some of the kinks, such as the faintness of print on chapter headings and the increasingly irritating background on the printed pages which gets worse as you plough through the book, and distracts from the quality of the information being shared. A bit like inviting me to a meticulously planned wedding, which seems like a great idea at the time, however after two bottles of wine and an unfortunate lurch at the buff Latino waiter I was ‘helped’ to the taxi……other than that, for a self published book this is a well researched and very instructive book with every possible wedding thing thought out.

I’ve no plans to get wed, don’t even agree with gay weddings but if your heart is enthused for hitching to your betrothed then this book; from Gough-Buijs who’s been there, done it and done it rather successfully with panache and style; if the photo’s are anything to go by, is worth looking at.

It’s always hard to review a self published book particularly  one which is an anthology of such a personal event in a persons life, and celebrates the joining of these two charming gents as much as the planning of the fine ceremony that joined them,  but if you overlook the slightly smug boldness of Gough-Buijs and his perfect wedding then this book should be very helpful in guiding you through the highs and lows of getting the BIG DAY right, and I mean utterly hand finished antique ivory silk perfect,  not just  pasty magnolia right…..

Out now £12.99

For more info or to buy the book see here: