IT WASN’T NECESSARILY love at first sight for Atlanta newlyweds Aly and Elroi Windsor, but they both agree that it was worth taking a second look.
They each stand out slightly among their peers, family and co-workers. They particularly enjoy at least some of that, and fittingly, dub their relationship one between queers, and their May 2007 trip down the aisle in front of a cable TV documentary crew as a queer union.
“I knew pretty much early on that I would marry Aly,” declares Elroi, a sociology instructor and student at Georgia State University.
After starting out as friends through Elroi’s one-time partner, Aly and Elroi drifted apart, largely thanks to a falling out between Aly and Elroi’s ex. They reconnected in September 2004 at an Echo Lounge rock show in East Atlanta Village — The Butchies were playing — and, as the evening rolled on, something occurred to Aly.
“It dawned on me that Elroi was not only attractive but single, and a really good person,” Aly says, still enthusiastic as she recalls "the moment."
Aly was a little nervous when she saw Elroi, and didn’t stick around to talk. Instead, she hauled it across the street to Mary’s, thinking she’d let it all pass her by.
Elroi had a different idea, and followed Aly over to the bar. She worked her way through the crowd up to Aly and asked her if she’d like to go somewhere quiet to chat.
“So we ended up talking for hours there on the back porch at Mary’s,” Aly says.
They were still talking just over two years later when Elroi proposed marriage during a Decatur Halloween festival for dogs. A very emotional scene later, Aly said yes. And then she got a load of her ring.
“Oh my god. It’s even better than I hoped,” she recalls of her first thoughts after seeing the sterling, wide band with princess cut stones.
AS THEIR LIVES INTERTWINED, neither Aly, nor Elroi could ignore a very pressing problem, blending their families. Together, they have five dogs and three cats, all of which live in the couple’s spacious Cabbagetown home.
“It really is all Aly’s fault,” Elroi explains. “I came with a Rottweiler and a cat. Our ideal number is two dogs — eventually.”
Aly also brought her love of Dolly Parton — whose likeness she has tattooed on her forearm. Elroi loves pirates. Throw in the dogs, and it all combines for an interesting, if slightly unusual household — and the couple couldn’t be happier about that.
They identify — separately and together — as queer, a moniker left open to some interpretation. It’s how they blend the elements that separate men from women, gay from straight, and masculine from feminine. It’s complicated, they agree, but it’s better, they say.
“Not everyone fits into the categories that are set out for us all to fall in," Elroi says. "There’s always going to be someone excluded if we stick to those labels and those labels alone.”
Besides, “the status quo is boring,” she adds.
More practically, Aly, who identifies as a queer femme, says by rejecting the label of lesbian, she’s simply being honest.
“I feel like lesbian culture can be kind of assimilationist,” she says. “It came down to me just feeling confined in that world. I got acceptance — I just wasn’t happy. I just wasn’t comfortable.”
The couple was at home together being happily queer one evening when they caught a story on gay weddings on the Logo network. At the end of the program, viewers were asked to share their own stories about relationships, religion, coming out, and overcoming obstacles for a documentary series called “Be Real.”
The "Be Real" documentary series, which profiles real life gay men and lesbians, has also featured the story of Theron Stuart, a gay, HIV positive minister to HIV positive people in metro Atlanta through the Atlanta Interfaith AIDS network.
“I just kind of randomly sent off this e-mail, and then the next day at work, Logo was calling,” Aly says of the first steps the couple took toward getting their wedding on cable television. The show begins airing June 11 on Logo.
THE WEDDING COUNTDOWN began in February. They started finalizing wedding plans at about the same time the cameras started rolling. During the process, the couple was interviewed together first, then separately, about their lives and their wedding plans.
“One of the main reasons for participating was to see more people like us on TV," Aly says. "I wanted to show a different side of the queer community. And I wanted our dogs to be on TV.”
They designed a commitment ceremony that was distinctly Aly and Elroi — with tons of help from their friends, who helped design their wedding outfits, catered, and entertained at the event. The setting was the Moulin Rouge room in Paris on Ponce, which they chose because of its own queerness.
“We just kept saying, ‘this is perfect,'" Aly says. "It couldn’t have gotten any better.”
By the time the actual ceremony rolled around on May 12, the TV crew largely became an afterthought.
“There’s so much to do on the last days of your wedding anyway,” Elroi says.
The cameras, they say, were hidden away as much as possible — so not to intrude.
Elroi’s love of pirates, Aly’s love of glam, and their mutual love of animals shined throughout their ceremony. Their attendants walked the dogs down the aisle. Each partner walked down the aisle alone — each forcing back the tears.
“I was walking down the aisle, and I heard, ‘Huh, she’s already crying,'" Aly says. "I pretty much sobbed through my vows.”
ALY AND ELROI are fully cognizant that Georgia laws don’t recognize their union, and they scoff at people who criticize their ceremony as aping straight tradition.
“We are creating and redefining marriage for ourselves — and we hope, for our community — by choosing each other before our family and friends as people have done for centuries,” Aly explains.
They share their lives, and now, fittingly, they share a last name. Windsor is a throwback to Aly’s paternal grandfather, who supported their union from the beginning.
He met Elroi and was impressed. Although as Aly recalls, he said, “I thought she’d be a blonde.”
Aly's grandfather was unable to attend the ceremony, but he wrote his best wishes for the couple in an e-mail.
“He said ‘now when it says to love, honor, and obey, change obey to respect, because you cannot have a good relationship without respect,’” Aly recalls.
Aly’s grandfather’s last name is to emblazon a family crest the couple are designing. The crest will read “Homeward Bound,” the couple’s motto.
“It’s basically thinking of each other as home,” Elroi says. "We keep coming back to each other. Homeward bound means we’re always coming back to one another.”
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