The Ceremony at The Gazebo

Our Wedding Ceremony was held at The Gazebo Guest House in Ogunquit Maine on October 3, 2004. Paul has been going to The Gazebo for several years and first brought Bill there during the summer of 2003. Bill had asked Paul to "Be Commited" with him, this was before the Goodridge decision in Massachusettes to allow same-sex marrage. Paul accepted and we both decided to hold off until some things in our live were calmer and we could do this right. We both knew that we wanted a nice ceremony, something that our friends and family would be prowd to attend. After the Goodridge decision in Massachusettes we both talked about having a wedding instead of a Commitment ceremony and both agreed that we wanted to do it. We started planning a date for the wedding and after bouncing some dates back and forth, we both agreed that the perfect date would be our annaversary of October 3rd. We started thinking about a site for the ceremony and we both agreed that The Gazebo would be a great place, with the pool-side garden in back of the house we both figured it would work out perfectly. So we went up to meet with Kevin and Robin (the owners of The Gazebo) and talk over with them the plans we have. Kevin and Robin were very intrested in hosting the event there. As it ended up we were not only the first gay wedding they had there but the first wedding at all. They had done a lot of work in the back of the house in hopes of having weddings there and now we were going to be the first.      The Gazebo is a wonderful place, there is a nice calm and homey feeling about the place. There are 9 rooms in the guest house, a outdoor pool, garden area to sit and relax in, a living room area to relax and read the morning paper, and a cute breakfast nook that they serve breakfast in. The Gazebo is located on Route 1 South in Ogunquit Maine, just north of the shopping area of Ogunquit center. This is a wonderful area to visit, the beach is close by, there is plenty of shopping in Oguinquit as well as other areas nearby.      When we were planning our guest list we were faced with a little delima, The Gazebo has parking for the guests that are staying there but not enough parking for 80+ guests for our wedding. We visited the area a few times to scout out places to park cars and ended up talking to the owner of Capt'n Nicks, just up the road from The Gazebo. Capt'n Nicks has a large parking lot for the restaurant but they are only open for Breakfast/Brunch and then again for Dinner. We were planning our ceremony for 2pm and where as this was in between the times they would be open it worked out great. We were going to be able to have our guests park at Capt'n Nicks, now the only thing was how to get the guests to The Gazebo and back. After a little research and talking it over with each other we decided to hire a trolly to shuttle our guests back and forth from the parking lot to The Gazebo. This worked out great and was also a very nice touch for our wedding.      The ceremony was held in the garden are in the back of the house, poolside. We rented a large tent just incase, after all this was being held in October and you never know. We also bought a fountain for the middle of the pool that added a nice touch to it for the day. We entered the poolside garden area from just outside the Breakfast nook, walked down the path and up the stairs to poolside, around the pool into the garden and up to just in front of the archway of flowers that we had done for us. We had a good friend of ours Dan as our soloist sing three songs for our ceremony. Dan had talked to us when we were planning the wedding and said that he would like his gift to us to be his singing at our ceremony. Dan flew in from Minneapolis to sing, he even re-wrote one of the songs we had picked just for us. It ended up a great day, the sun was out, there was a slight breeze, and not cold. The garden was unbelievable, Kevin and Robin had gone out and bought several pots of flowers to add to the garden because some of the ones they had there had gone by.