What I Learned Planning a Wedding as a Wheelchair User
This piece was originally published as a guest post on the Wednesday Wedding Co. portfolio.
When I was growing up, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted my wedding to look like. It was going to be a big event on our family farm, full of floral arrangements put together by the women in my family, and I would walk down an aisle towards my groom flanked by people sitting on hay bales. There would be a big feast, and everyone would dance the night away.
That’s true for a lot of kids growing up, no? Many of us have specific images of what our wedding should look and feel like and how it should play out. We think about the details, picture our favourite colours in flowers and table settings, and even choose the song for our first dance. Some of those ideas are shaped by family traditions (see the hay bales mentioned above) and others by what we see in movies, Pitnerest boards, and bridal magazines.
However, after I became a wheelchair user at 14, I stopped picturing my wedding. Any time I got to thinking about going down the aisle, I was stumped. I wouldn’t be walking down, arm in arm with my dad, I’d be rolling down with my chair — and that visual just didn’t match what I had grown up imagining. Not only that, there was no point of reference for me as to what a bride in a wheelchair could look like, so I stopped thinking about it all together.
It wasn’t until my husband, Anar, proposed in 2019 that I started letting myself imagine a wedding again. Our original plan was to have that big event on my family’s farm in Argentina — but the pandemic soon put a big red stop sign on that. Instead, we had a tiny ceremony at Queen Elizabeth Park, overlooking Vancouver, and set a plan to celebrate with all our friends and family at a later date.
That later date ended up being June 3, 2022 and we had a lovely, small-ish wedding in Vancouver with some of our nearest and dearest people. It’s an event I look back on with so much love and fondness, not just because we had our favourite people there, but because we were able to truly make it our own. But that in itself didn’t come without its challenges.
The wedding industry — like most other things — isn’t designed for disabled experiences. Think about it, when was the last time (if ever) that you came across visibly disabled individuals on the pages of bridal magazines or in Pinterest boards? This makes planning an accessible wedding a huge undertaking, and it really shouldn’t be.
My concerns as we started planning
When we first started looking into having our wedding celebration in Vancouver, my biggest concern was the venue. We knew we wanted a space for around 80 people, maximum, and that it needed to be fully accessible to me. That didn’t just mean it had to be step-free and have a wheelchair accessible washroom — those are just the basics — I also wanted to feel like I could move around freely during the event, without having to push my way through people or ask them to move their chairs in at dinner. Fortunately, I had done some marketing and writing work for a wedding planner in Vancouver, Alicia Keats, and she was kind enough to suggest a couple of places that I could look into. One of the venues on her list was Shaughnessy Restaurant, and after a site visit, Anar and I felt comfortable that they could provide the space for our celebration.
I think we were incredibly lucky to find a venue that fit our budget and requirements that quickly. Vancouver has lots of lovely spaces for weddings, but a lot of them are older buildings and spaces that haven’t really taken accessibility into consideration. And when you add in a really competitive environment for even finding a venue at all, it really limits the options available to couples that include a disabled individual or that want to host an accessible event for their guests.
The other thing that was really important to me was finding a wedding planner that understood our needs — or was at the very least willing to listen and learn about them — and could help communicate those to our vendors. And while Alicia wasn’t available to take on a new couple at the time, she did recommend Morgan and Wednesday Wedding Co., and I’m so happy we followed that recommendation.
The value of working with a wedding planner
As our wedding planner, Morgan was an amazing advocate for us. Not only did she keep us organised and help us make decisions, she was incredibly open to feedback and took any requirements we had from an accessibility standpoint and ran with them. Beyond the venue for the wedding itself, we were also in need of a spot for the rehearsal dinner and brunch the morning after, and Morgan came back to us with choices that really made sense for us.
In terms of setting everything up at Shaughnessy, she worked with the venue staff to ensure there was enough space between the tables, which made it super easy for me to go up to people on the day. She also took that careful consideration into mapping out the space for the ceremony and the cocktail hour. For the latter, she made sure that we didn’t just have high-top tables, but also other seating areas that were lower down and more comfortable for me and anyone who might want to sit for a spell.
Morgan was also instrumental in finding vendors that made the experience so special for us. She introduced us to Olive & Bean, our photographers, and they were so great at asking questions about my comfort levels, researching spaces for our practice shoot to make sure they were accessible, and doing a walk-through of the VanDusen garden before the actual wedding so as to determine where we would and wouldn’t be able to go. This meant that on the day, I had zero concerns about anything to do with accessibility when we did our photos — and I think it shows that I was as comfortable as I could be.
She also connected us with Estefani from De La Flore, who did a fantastic job with all the flowers for the space, and our bouquets. She was the one who suggested we do a floral arrangement for the back of my wheelchair. It wasn’t something I had thought of, but I loved the idea, and the result was magical. She thought carefully through the placement — asking me for the measurement of my chair back, the width between the tires, and the diameter of the bar the flowers would sit on — and was able to create something unique that complimented all the other decor. As a bride, this made me feel so special, because it felt like I was getting a custom touch, and wasn’t just trying to conform with what was “normal” or “traditional” for a wedding.
All in all, all I can say about the experience is that there are very few days in my life where I navigate through spaces and feel completely at ease in my body and in my interactions with people. Morgan, her team, and our vendors made sure that our wedding was one of those days — and I could not be more grateful for that.
What vendors can do to make weddings more accessible
Looking back on my own experiences and what I’ve seen at other weddings, here are some suggestions I have for wedding professionals that want to create more accessible events.
Everyone
Rethink everything. So much of the “traditional” wedding experience isn’t accessible, so make sure you’re taking the time to think through every element you’re responsible for and consider how it might pose a barrier to someone with a disability.
Listen to your clients when they identify an accessibility need or potential obstacle, and carry that into every other conversation you have with them.
Be willing to learn from your clients, other disabled people sharing their experiences, and vendors who are sharing best practices.
Remember: not all disabilities are visible. Give your clients room to express needs that you may not be able to anticipate.
Venues
Start building a plan for making the inaccessible parts of your spaces more accessible. Engage a consultant as needed.
Take a closer look at your proposed layouts. Do they leave enough room for people to move around safely with their mobility devices?
Consider your seating arrangements and where you serve food. Can everyone reach what they need easily and without having to ask for help?
Planners
Add accessibility related questions into your initial questionnaires. You can ask up front if the couple has any specific needs you should be aware of or if they know of any guests that might have specific accommodation needs.
As soon as a client shares an accessibility-related need, take the time to review your checklist and see where you might have to make accommodations.
Use what you know about your clients to narrow down the list of vendors or venues you put in front of them.
Don’t be afraid to be proactive with thinking about how to address a particular accessibility request. You have creative minds and you might come up with something that your client hasn’t even considered before.
Photographers
Take the time to think through your photo session process from a different perspective. For example, a wheelchair user won’t be able to participate in the poses you typically use — so what are seated poses that can evoke the same sentiment? Someone with chronic fatigue won’t be able to walk through the forest for an extended period of time, so what are local spots that are beautiful but don’t require a lot of walking around?
If you’re able, walk through the setting for your shoot beforehand and consider the accessibility of the space.
There are so many other things to consider and voices to listen to on this topic, but this is a good starting point as you start to rethink what weddings could look like.
There’s still so much work to be done
Planning an accessible wedding shouldn’t be hard. Disabled individuals deserve the opportunity to celebrate their love in the way they choose, without additional barriers to making it happen, and with access to all the options and opportunities that non-disabled couples have. Disabled guests also deserve the opportunity to participate in these milestones for friends and family. It’s as simple as that.
So, my hope is that the industry starts thinking about all weddings as accessible weddings. I hope that vendors start thinking about their offerings differently, providing alternatives that account for different people with different experiences.
As a disabled individual, having options is huge. I hate the idea of having to choose something because it’s the only option that is actually accessible to me. So if the wedding industry wants to better cater to every individual, regardless of their experiences, they need to keep creating different, accessible options. It’s the time to keep learning and providing accommodations that invite everyone in to celebrate love — because that’s what the wedding industry is all about, isn’t it?
My experience with my amazing vendors tells me that there’s a new generation of planners and wedding professionals that are thinking about this more, and that’s exciting to me. There’s a disruptive voice looking to change the game for the better, so that more kids growing up have points of reference that they can look to and start dreaming up a wedding that truly reflects them.
