Image Source: Courtesy of Jamie Pandit by Ikonica Photography and Courtesy of Gigi Gorgeous Getty by Yvette Roman Photography
Corey Rae grew up dreaming of her fairytale wedding. At five years old, she started to draw pictures of herself in a wedding dress and wanted to emulate her favorite Disney Princess, Ariel from “The Little Mermaid.” But for Rae, a content creator and trans activist, this daydream meant more than seeing herself walk down the aisle in a beautiful white dress. It was the first step in affirming her gender identity and manifesting her life as a woman.
“I always wanted to get married, and I’ve always visualized myself as a bride,” Rae tells PS. “In high school and definitely in college when I started dating, I was like, ‘Oh, now I’m really visualizing what a wedding would look like in the body I have now and as the woman I’ve always wanted to be.'”
For Rae and countless other trans women who have walked down the aisle, their weddings are powerful expressions of gender euphoria. That euphoria can manifest in a myriad of different ways, especially when it comes to beauty choices and self-expression. Rae, for instance, leaned toward a glamorous yet natural princess-inspired approach to her makeup, hair, and even her nails. “We actually planned our flights around me getting my nails done because I refused to get my nails done in Chicago,” says Rae. “I went to a place called Bellacures, which I’ve gone to for the last two and a half years in Los Angeles. I did nail trials two to three months leading up to the wedding. I tried pearls, I tried chrome, I tried french with chrome, but a nice, simple french manicure seemed like it would be the classiest option for me.”
Image Source: Courtesy of Corey Rae by Ashley Henry
YouTuber Gigi Gorgeous Getty went in a similar direction as Rae with her bridal beauty, even citing “The Little Mermaid” and other Disney Princesses as inspiration for her Michael Costello ball gown. Initially, however, Getty had a very different image of herself as a bride. “I always thought I was going to do minimal makeup – no false eyelashes, no sparkle lid, no lip gloss, almost a no-makeup makeup look,” she says. “Then I just thought [for] my wedding day, it’s not really me to do something like that. I want to do full glam. So I brought out some of my favorites.”
While both Rae and Getty had princesses on the brain, model and host Arisce Wanzer-Harding chose to frame her bridal beauty around a custom dress. For years, her close friend and two-time Emmy Award-winning costume designer Marco Marco promised Wanzer-Harding that he’d design her wedding dress. After she got engaged, he channeled Christian Dior’s New Look and one of Victoria Beckham‘s wedding dresses to create her bespoke gown. With the dress design finalized, Wanzer chose to lean into the old Hollywood vibe when it came to her bridal beauty, starting with a sharp cat-eye and embracing a headband in lieu of a veil. When it came to her Audrey Hepburn-inspired hair, Wanzer-Harding also had to contend with Australia’s summer weather.
Image Source: Courtesy of Gigi Gorgeous Getty by Yvette Roman Photography
“I love the va-va voom hair with a swoop,” she says. “I was going to do my real hair for my wedding, but it was so hot that day and what I was not going to do was babysit baby hairs and wisps. And you know what doesn’t need that? Human hair wigs – they’re going to stay exactly where you want them to. So I styled [my wig] myself the night before and everything turned out very elegant.”
For TikToker Jamie Pandit, her wedding location, a lush forested golf course 35 minutes from Toronto, ultimately dictated her bridal beauty plans. “The vibe of my makeup was very natural, running through the forest, just woke up in a bed of flowers,” she says. “It was glowy glam, and I wanted everyone in my bridal party to feel like summer goddesses.” Pandit notes that her bridal makeup remained very true to her typical aesthetic and was not so dissimilar from how she’d approach her beauty for a night out. To enhance the look for her big day, she added a few individual lash extensions to open up her eyes and help the makeup appear very dreamy and fairy-like.
While all four of these brides took their own approach to their hair and makeup on their big day, they each look back on their weddings knowing that they stayed true to who they are – whether they got married five years ago like Getty or in June of this year like Rae. And for each of these women, getting married marked not only a personal celebration but a celebration for trans women worldwide.
Image Source: Courtesy of Arisce Wanzer-Harding by Remy Hii
Many trans women may dream of marriage, yet navigating dating, relationships, and everyday life while transgender also presents unique challenges. The trans experience is continually sensationalized by right-wing media while anti-trans legislation spreads across the country. Trans people, especially trans women of color, also face significantly higher rates of violence. Unfortunately, happy relationships and marriages among trans women are still underrepresented online and in the media. That’s why these stories are particularly significant.
“To be honest, I never thought that it would be a reality for me,” says Pandit. “I think not only finding love but also getting married and having someone publicly show their love for [regardless of] what people will think, it’s something that I still think about and means so much to me.”
“Growing up, I knew that I was going to have a different life than other people. I thought that I was gonna be the rich auntie that didn’t have children but was fun to visit,” says Wanzer-Harding. “I just didn’t see [marriage] for myself and I didn’t allow myself to think of it because. . .I’d never seen that happen for a trans woman.”
Image Source: Courtesy of Jamie Pandit by Ikonica Photography
While sharing their wedding journeys online was a mostly positive experience for these brides, with an overwhelming amount of support from allies and the LGBTQ+ community, there were also plenty of people who responded negatively. Says Rae, “I have a video from my wedding day that’s almost at a million views. . . It’s gotten a lot of hate. Almost all of those comments are, ‘That’s a man in a dress; this is a gay wedding.’ A lot of people don’t even understand the idea of a trans bride [and] misconstrue my wedding as a queer wedding, despite my husband being a straight, cis het man and me being a trans woman.”
Sadly, ignorant and hateful comments aren’t unusual for trans content creators, but all four women remain hopeful that the trans experience will become more normalized in broad society and that there will be more examples of trans women in happy, healthy relationships within their community. Because trans women don’t deserve to just survive; they deserve to thrive, as well.
As Getty explains, “When I got engaged and married, a lot of my trans girlfriends said, ‘Oh my God, you’re so lucky,’ ‘Oh my God this is so rare within our community. It shouldn’t be, though. It’s something that we shouldn’t be, among many other things, limited to. We deserve marriage; we deserve children in any way, shape, or form; we deserve happiness.”
Devon Preston is a social media administrator and PS Beauty contributor. She writes about beauty as it intersects with gender identity, sexual identity, disability, and race, as well as cultural phenomena from vampires to scene queens to drag artists. Devon was the executive editor of Inked and has written for Bust, Rebel Circus, Everyday Feminism, and more.
