By Paul Phipps-Williams, Birmingham Wedding Photographer

What It Actually Means to Be a Queer-Friendly Wedding Photographer

I’m writing this on 1st June. Yes, folks, welcome to GAY MONTH.

Or not.

Be honest, it’s got a bit tiring lately, hasn’t it? Big firms slapping a rainbow logo on their socials, proudly stating that ‘love is love’, then going ‘back to normal’ in July.

I’m a queer wedding photographer in Birmingham, and when I set up my business, I did a fair bit of market research. Yes, there’s quite a few ‘love is love’ photographers out there. You’ve probably seen the articles. ‘Every couple deserves to feel seen. I’ll photograph your wedding with warmth and respect, whoever you are and whoever you love.’

Generally speaking, most people are alive to this sort of thing now. There’s a difference between pink-washing, and businesses truly going out of their way to ensure people are seen and made to feel comfortable.

If you’re anything like me, your shoulders slump a little when you see people use this phrase. Are they a supporter, an ally, or someone who knows that LGBTQ+ people get married, and therefore ChatGPT has told them this is the sort of thing they should say because it’s great business practice?

When you’re scrolling suppliers at night, getting more and more frustrated, it’s the fundamental question:

“Have I found a champion, or have I found someone that’s great at marketing?”

Let me tell you something I don’t usually lead with:

I’m a gay man.

People think you only have to come out once, and you’re done. Nah, every single job you do, every single new team you join or small talk you make you have to do it again and again. It’s exhausting.

I’m lucky, in the sense I can slap my face on a website and say these words out loud. But it’s often a difficult journey.

Being LGBTQ+ is something that starts off being intrinsically personal – so private and wrapped up in who you are, that saying it out loud feels impossible. I used to think it has nothing to do with anyone else. It belonged to me and me alone, because making it external felt like too much exposure. Too much risk.

And then, somewhere along the way, that changed.

You get to a point, if you’re lucky, where you become comfortable enough with yourself that the thing you couldn’t say becomes the thing you’re proud of. You go through all the shit to find out who you are, and the private becomes public.

And you go from being afraid to talk about being queer, to making the most public statement you can.

You get married.

You go from saying ‘I can’t’ to ‘I do’.

You stand up in front of your people. You say in the loudest voice: this is who I am. This is who I love. This is real, and I’m not hiding it.

That shift, from something whispered to something declared in front of every person who matters to you, is something I’ve lived. So, when I’m photographing a queer couple, I’m not an outsider trying to be respectful. I’m someone who understands, from the inside, exactly what that moment costs and exactly what it’s worth.

Understanding the journey you’ve been on and seeing it fulfilled with such joy – that’s what I love about photographing LGBTQ+ weddings.

What a queer-friendly wedding photographer usually does (and why it’s not enough)

Most of the time, it means a photographer won’t be weird about it.

Which, look, is a low bar, I know. But based on the stories I’ve heard from couples, you get photographers who ask which one’s “the bride,” or make awkward jokes about pronouns or transition. Most worryingly, you can get photographers who you feel might be secretly thinking ‘I can’t wait to tell my mates about this one!’

Queer-friendly, in the industry’s working definition, tends to mean: will not visibly flinch. Will use the right words if you remind them enough times. Has photographed one same-sex wedding and put it on the website so you can stop worrying about being their first.

That’s not nothing. But it’s not what I’m offering.

What I mean when I say I’m a queer photographer

I mean your wedding isn’t a diversity box I’m ticking. You won’t hear me say, ‘yeah, because love is love, innit’ or some inane nonsense. I know my bears from my pups and my butches from my femmes.

It’s not something that’s new, or scary. You’re not my ‘gay wedding’, you’re my Tuesday wedding or my Saturday wedding, or my wedding where you’ve got a Cyberman in a cave in Somerset.

It means I ask for your pronouns at the start, not because I read a guide about being inclusive, but because it’s the obvious thing to do. They’re on my contact form, so you never have to correct me.

And it means queer couples aren’t buried in my portfolio, so you have to look for ages until you find someone that looks like you. They’re on the homepage with a huge great big statement about who I’m for. Because that’s where they belong.

So, let me talk to you about the first one I ever did.

Raga and Nicola

It was Hendon Town Hall in August 2022 – with about five days’ notice. Because when I talk about the journey from silence to celebration, this is what I mean.

Raga came out at 50 and lived in silence for decades. She’d been married to a man. She’d raised twins. She’d hidden her truth through all of it, at enormous cost. Her road to that town hall ran through real trauma, through being outed by her own mother, through years of carrying something that deserved celebration and instead had to be concealed.

And then: a public proposal, live on a podcast. And then: a wedding.

The day was vibrant and deeply personal, the way it only gets when a couple has thought hard about what they actually want. Guests welcomed with a haka to celebrate Nicola’s New Zealand heritage. South Indian food served on banana leaves. Members of the Gay Indian Network carrying a Pride flag over the couple during the reception, a canopy of solidarity held over two people who’d earned every inch of that moment.

The couple told me they chose me because they felt it mattered to have a gay man at the centre of their celebration.

I think about that a lot.

Because there’s a difference between being tolerated and being understood. Between a photographer who’ll do the job professionally and one who, when the Pride flag goes up and the room fills with something enormous and hard-won, gets it. Not as an observer, but as someone who’s felt his own version of that shift from hidden to seen.

We were in the middle of a heatwave that day, but despite the sweaty mess I became, I remember thinking ‘this is what I want to do with my life’. Being part of moments like these.

Raga’s now a speaker, author and activist for older gay people and coming out later in life. Worth a follow on her YouTube.

This photo has nothing to do with queer weddings, by the way. I just thought it was exceptionally camp.

What I’m actually offering

It’s not acceptance. It’s not being respectful and polite and really excited to shoot your wedding. Those are the basics you should expect from everyone.

It’s this. When you book me, you don’t have to explain yourselves. You don’t have to manage my reaction, test whether I understand, or brace for the moment it gets awkward. You don’t have to come out to me in the enquiry email, because you can already see from the homepage who I am and who I photograph.

The philosophy I put on the front page of my website is real.

I’m here to make you feel Seen and Celebrated.

You be you, Bab.

Paul Phipps-Williams Photography – Wedding photography that feels like you. For the camera-shy, the gloriously geeky and the beautifully queer.