London Pride: Past and Present

This year will be our fourth London Pride together, and with a week to go we thought we would take a quick look back over our past Prides.

Laura had actually attended Pride before we were together but our first official attendance as a couple was back in 2009. Before meeting Laura I had never heard of London's Pride event, I had no idea that for an entire day everywhere between Trafalgar Square and Soho became a sea of rainbows, that a huge parade of floats and dancers filled the streets and that the Soho area became a street party.

Part of the reason may have been because before meeting Laura I had never considered that a section of society would need an event to highlight the difference in rights between the LGBT community and everyone else or that the London  LGBT community would want to come together to be visible. In all honesty it was probably because LGBT rights had never been of any concern to me.

In fact up until the grand old age of 25 I had lived blissfully unaware that the society I lived in was so unequal - how crazy is that! It is still the case for a lot of my friends, LGBT rights don't impact them so why would they care. That's not because they are selfish it's purely because it they never have to consider what rights they have or don't have. They presume that things can't be that different for Laura and I. It is not until we talk about our wedding that the difference between them marrying a man and me marrying Laura really shows how different things are. They assume, like them, we will get married as we talk about us get 'married' but in reality, as it stands we will be getting 'civil-partnered'. We really hope that won't be the case for much longer though. We don't want to have to check to see what rights we do or don't have, we want the same rights, equal rights!

So with the theme of this years London Pride being 'Love (and Marriage)' I really became aware of how important these events are. How important it is to make a noise about how different LGBT rights are and how important is to take this opportunity to create awareness. Whether this year will be a celebration that equal marriage will be legal in the UK or a protest of the decision that it will not be we will be there to show our support.

Anyways back to Prides of the past:

2009: Angel and Devil

I have no idea what the theme was but this was by the far the gayest day we could have had. Not only was it our first pride, it was also the day we saw Take That at Wembley and met the actors who play Draco Malfoy and Cho Chung in the Harry Potter films!

The HP premiere was on in Leicester Square!

2011: Bumble Bee and Lady Bird (the theme was Carnival of Love)

Blue (an English boyband) were there and the Stonewall 'Some people are gay get over' campaign made the headlines!

Wonder which member of Blue is gay?!

Oh and the next day we got our NOH8 photo done....

2012: Representing our home countries (theme: World Pride)
As we started the blog in 2012 this was the first year we had really interacted with the online gay community and as we had developed relationships with a number of lesbian couples so we used Pride as a chance to meet up.

We also got to enjoy the day with Lauren and Sarah, even though we had to rely on umbrellas to keep us dry!

We can't wait for this year. The theme is 'Love and Marriage'. Fingers crossed for sunshine! Unfortunately our original costume idea has been lost in the mail somewhere between Idaho and here so we are working on a new concept. Nothing like a last minute change of plans :)