Already Wedding Ready: We're a Transgender Couple Planning Our Dream Day

As part of our #AlreadyWeddingReady campaign, we spoke to Eden-James and Cameron, a transgender couple who open up about their experience and journey to feeling 'wedding ready'. If you're inspired by Eden & Cameron's story, download our #AlreadyWeddingReady badge and join the campaign, sharing your own story on your social channels.

Hi everyone, my name is Eden-James and my partner is called Cameron. We’re both 27 years old and have been together for nearly two years now. 

Both Cameron and I are transgender, and it’s one of the things we love most about each other. Being with someone who understands you on that deep a level makes being in a relationship as a trans person that much easier. 

Cameron and I have supported each other through every stage of our transitions, being there for one another through transition surgeries and hormone injections, to buying our first home and navigating our relationship during very troubling social and political climates. 

Everything in our relationship and lives has been done in the way we want things to be done, so why should it be any different when it comes to planning a wedding? 

• What Being Wedding Ready Means to Us
• Our Journey to Being Nearlyweds
• We're Already Wedding Ready & So Are You

What Being Wedding Ready Means to Us 

To us, being wedding ready means being completely comfortable in our bodies, and living as authentically as possible. 

We want our wedding to be filled with people who share the same values as we do, showing everyone that transgender people can be just as successful, happy and supported as anyone else - a narrative which we feel is really underrepresented in the mainstream media.

Unlike some, our journey to feeling completely ‘wedding ready’ did involve a lot of physical changes, but rather than striving to be different, the changes we’ve gone through were in fact all about us trying to navigate feeling more like ourselves than ever before.

Being our authentic selves, physically, emotionally, and mentally and standing hand in hand at the end of the altar surrounded by our nearest and dearest, means absolutely everything to us.

It’s what everyone wants – and transgender people are no different in this respect. 

1. Feeling at Home Within Ourselves

Despite the fact that we’re both 27 years old, it’s only been in the last two years that either of us have started to really feel at home within ourselves. 

As trans people, this is always a process, and for us, it started after we began medically transitioning, which means having surgical procedures, and sometimes undergoing hormone replacement therapy. This all helps in changing our appearance so our exterior aligns with who we have always been on the inside. 

We are about to wear the most important clothes we will ever wear, so it was important for us to do this in the bodies we love. 

2. Being Financially Stable

For both of us, transitioning has been a lengthy (and expensive!) process, but as we said before, this was vital to feeling at home within ourselves. We are under no illusion about how incredibly lucky we are that we have the financial resources to fund our medical transitions.

The unfortunate reality is, if we didn’t have the financial capability to be treated privately, the process would have been much longer. If we were forced to wait on the NHS waitlist for surgeries or hormone replacement therapy, neither of us would have even been seen by a consultant yet. 

The waitlists are in excess of five years at the moment, so both Cameron and I wouldn’t feel anywhere near as comfortable as we do right now in the leadup to our special day.

Because of this, we would either have to delay getting married for years and years, or legally wed in bodies that do not feel authentic to who we are as individuals.

We have been really lucky to have been able to transition at the speed we have, but not everyone has the finances to make that possible - a reality that cisgender people often don't realise. 

3. Being Representative of Our Community

When planning our wedding, we really wanted to make sure that our day reflects who we are and what we’re about, and a way for us to really feel like we were both representing and supporting our community was to seek out queer wedding vendors.

Supporting queer and trans-owned businesses at our wedding was a big priority for us, and this included our celebrant, wedding photographer and DJ. Not only will this make us and our friends and family feel more comfortable on the day, but we also think it’s important to line the pockets of our community as well. 

We also feel like it’s important to have our LGBTQ+ support systems around us on the day. We want to show that trans people are happy, confident and human - just like our cisgender counterparts.

This has and will always be a priority for us, but especially in today’s political climate with regards to the rights of transgender people, we want to ensure our wedding feels like a complete celebration of transness and queerness.

But this isn’t to be confused with being anti-tradition - quite the opposite actually. We want to celebrate and represent our community whilst still keeping much of the day fairly traditional. 

And it’s *because* of this that we’re able to showcase that trans people are just as worthy of love, respect, support and an incredibly fabulous wedding day as the next person. 

4. Being Surrounded by the Right People

For queer and trans people, your chosen family is vitally important to you. It’s a sad truth, but a truth all the same, that a lot of members of the LGBTQ+ community lose friends and family members after coming out as queer or trans.

Unfortunately this happened to both of us, so the people who stayed and supported us under all circumstances became our chosen family. They are the people we know we can rely on for love, respect and support us through the highs and lows. 

The best thing about our wedding day is that we get to spend the entire time surrounded by these people. The people who love us unconditionally, both blood relatives and chosen ones. 

From siblings and best friends, to supportive family members who have been there through it all, being surrounded by the people who have propped us up when we needed it the most is something that was non-negotiable for us. 

The people coming to our wedding want nothing other than to see us happy - and we really can’t ask for more than that. 

Despite the fact that we have undergone many procedures and treatments to alter our physical appearance, when it comes to surrounding ourselves with the right people, we’ve been ‘wedding ready’ for quite some time now. 

Our Journey to Being Nearlyweds

Cameron and I met through a private clinic that specialises in transgender healthcare. After meeting, we followed each other on Instagram and became good friends. We were actually friends for around two years before meeting up for a ‘mate date’ in Manchester back in May 2021.

Neither of us ever expected there to be any chemistry or vibe - we’d always just been friends, but there was an instant spark when we met. We ended up chatting for hours and hours over cups of tea and slices of cake. 

Our relationship and bond went from strength to strength after that, and we got engaged in September 2022 whilst on a little getaway together. We went to a special spot in Wales, a place we both absolutely adore. 

One morning during the trip, we were both sitting on the balcony overlooking fields of sheep. It was just starting to rain and was so peaceful - all you could hear was the rain falling through the trees. 

We were only a few sips into our cups of tea (Cameron loves a cup of tea!) when Cameron got down on one knee, with the ring box in one hand and our dog by his side. It was so simple, so us and just so perfect. 

Our Advice to You

See, that’s the thing with Cameron and I, we’ve always done things exactly how we want to, and neither of us would change a thing about our journey to this point. 

But it would be naive of us to think that everyone has this same level of self-assurance, so here’s our advice to you. If you’re struggling to feel ‘wedding ready’, here’s a few tips from us. 

• Invite who you want to invite. Don’t fall into the trap of being people pleasers and focus on who has supported and celebrated you as a couple throughout your relationship. 
• Don’t let comparison rid you of joy. As trans people, we can often compare our transitions to others, when in reality we are all different and our bodies transition in different ways. And that goes for cis people, too. We all look different and that should be celebrated, not resented.
• Focus on how you want to look and feel on your day, and if there are things that would make you feel more comfortable, don’t be afraid to change them. I’m in the process of removing tattoos on my arms that I had gotten pre-transition and that’s something I’ve had to consider when choosing my dream wedding dress. 

We're #AlreadyWeddingReady, and So Are You

Though both of us have gone through huge transitions both physically and emotionally to get to where we are now, the changes we made were so we could feel as much ‘ourselves’ as possible.

If you feel like your most authentic self, then please know that you are absolutely already wedding ready. 

So, that’s what being wedding ready means to us, but what does being ‘wedding ready’ mean to you?

We'd love to know! Share your story using #AlreadyWeddingReady, download the #AlreadyWeddingReady badge and help spread the word (and the love!) as far as we can. 

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Eden & Cameron x

Want to read more inspirational stories from people who are #AlreadyWedding Ready? 

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Eden and Cameron's Recommended Charities:

• Gendered Intelligence
• Mermaids
• Not a Phase