Gay Marriage Is Big News, and While Not yet Legal Here, the New Civil Partnership and Changes in Europe and North America Means the Skittles Are Beginning to Topple for the Exclusion of Same-Sex Couples. Bring On the Pink Cadillacs, Says Vicky Allan, As She Meets the Foursome Behind a New Gay Wedding Planner Service in Edinburgh

Sunday Herald › August 09, 2004

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Summary

GREG Fleming, his friends tell me, goes head over heels when he falls in love. True to form, he does get a bit mushy when he talks about marriage. This is the one for him, "the big love of my life". He had never, he says, thought about it with anyone before. "I was with my ex for 14 years and he would never have entertained the idea of getting married. But for Brian and I it was just about sharing life with someone. We wanted to do that extra bit of saying, making it public. For us both it's very specific. We've thought about it long and deep and it's very spiritual for us. We would like our union to be blessed in a spiritual way."

Greg and Brian Combe will perform a commitment ceremony later this year, probably, he says, in front of both a rabbi and a Church of England minister. When Greg talks about marriage he uses words such as fidelity and spirituality. He takes it very seriously. "Marriage for us is about fidelity. For Brian and I that's certainly the case, although that's not what it's always about. For us it is a very deep, lifelong commitment."

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Extract

Gay Marriage Is Big News, and While Not yet Legal Here, the New Civil Partnership and Changes in Europe and North America Means the Skittles Are Beginning to Topple for the Exclusion of Same-Sex Couples. Bring On the Pink Cadillacs, Says Vicky Allan, As She Meets the Foursome Behind a New Gay Wedding Planner Service in Edinburgh

Fleming is one part of the team that has set up By Any Other Name, an Edinburgh-based gay wedding planners who can also plan almost any other gay event, "gay christenings, gay funerals, possibly even gay divorce parties."

"You want a pink Cadillac," they say, "we can get you a pink Cadillac. You can just let your mind go wild."

Fleming has moved to Brighton to be with the love of his life and is sentimentalising over the phone, but the rest of the team, Jean- Philippe Hertzog, Robin Scott and Lorna Mitchell, are sitting in their home from home, The Claremont Bar, an Edinburgh pub once bizarrely dubbed the 'grandaddy of gay sci-fi bars', demonstrating their website on a laptop surrounded by a fortress of wine gl...

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