Pride London 2013 - Love (& Marriage)!!

As we are sure you know by our Instagram photos, tweets and Facebook posts, it was Pride London yesterday!! Pride is our second favourite event of the year (next to Thanksmas of course) so we've been looking forward to it... well since last Pride!

This year, Pride was under new management, so we were extra excited to see how it went. The theme was Love (& Marriage), so we had planned our costumes, to be cute grooms with big hair and tutus (ironic as we'll be brides for real next year!). Unfortunately, our tuxedo t-shirt tank tops got lost in the mail, still haven't shown up two months after they were sent in the USA!

This caused for some last minute planning last week. We wracked our brains, asked Twitter for help, and finally came up with the perfect costumes! What do you think?

Snow White and Cinderella!

We were inspired by the below painting by José Rodolfo Loaiza Ontiveros, by Lord Tebbit's recent comments about the possibility of a lesbian queen - and the thought that perhaps princesses don't always have to hold out for a prince. Oh, and L's been wanting to find a reason to dress as a princess for years!

We arrived at the parade in time to get a front row seat at Trafalgar Square, which has been where we've watched the parade for the last four years! On the way, we were stopped by a few excited children, and we were struck by how two girls dressed as princesses could accidentally be role models for youngsters - we definitely need more diversity in role models for young girls and boys!

The parade was fantastic, with less floats than in previous years (except last year), but it flowed really well and everyone was so excited! We spent the whole parade dancing along with everyone! We were pleased to see our bank (Barclays), our grocery store (ASDA) and our fav restaurant (Nandos!) all represented - and of course we took note of the other companies that marched. With 500,000+ people at Pride in London, it really is good exposure for them - we are definitely more likely to spend money with a company that supports LGBT rights, and I'm sure we aren't the only ones.

People seemed to really like our costumes and sign, and we got a lot of 'awww's, photos taken, and hugs from those in the parade. We were very pleased, and Sarah even found herself four cute gay 'dwarves' to her Snow White!

After the parade, we met up with our friend Dave (straight ally) to check out the concert in Trafalgar Square, then went to lunch at Chipotle. We must have been quite a sight eating in our princess outfits with bibs on (you know how messy Chipotle can be!).

Sarah won a competition put on by Dattch Dating, an awesome lesbian dating site, so we met one of their members to retrieve our prize - a Pride survival kit! We were so pleased, and used a good few of the contents on the day!

Afterwards, it was time to wade through the throngs of fabulous lgbts in Soho. It's always one of our favourite parts of Pride, checking out everyone else's costumes and just soaking up the joy and, well, Pride, to be part of this extraordinary subset of London. We sat on the sidewalk and people watched for awhile, Laura was used as a chair back for a random woman, and Sarah got a good few kisses from strangers (on the cheek, no hanky panky was allowed on Laura's watch!)

After Dave parted, we headed back to Trafalgar to finish off the evening watching the Pride London concert. We sat (with a large bottle of Diet Coke, of course) and listened to some awesome performers and DJs, made a few friends, and just basked in what a good day it had been. Relaxed, lots of fun, with great weather - what more could we ask for? And of course getting to spend the whole day with each other really made it a fairytale.

We have a feeling that we may miss next year's Pride London, which would be a little sad if we weren't instead writing our very own 'happily ever after' at our wedding next June! So we'll be happy to look back on this wonderful Pride until we can attend again.