More here: http://articles.philly.com/2011-08-18/n ... y-marriage...Apparently, Donna (the store owner, ed. note) was stunned to learn, after reviewing your customer-information sheet, that you're a lesbian. On the paperwork, you'd crossed out the word "groom" and written "partner" instead, and then inserted your fiancée's name.
"She said she wouldn't work with me because I'm gay," you (the would-be customer) recalled. "She also said that I came from a nice Jewish family, and that it was a shame I was gay. She said, 'There's right, and there's wrong. And this is wrong.' "
She also said - and you have the voicemail to prove it - that what you were planning was "illegal" and that "we do not participate in any illegal actions."
"I was devastated," you told me. "I was crying. I called her a bigot; I told her, 'I am a happy person and you are a miserable person.' Then she hung up on me."
You admit to using some choice words when you called her back. But trust me, whatever you said was probably poetry compared with what I believe most decent people would've spewed at her on your behalf.
You know what's strange? When I called Donna yesterday to get her side of the story, she both confirmed your version of events and accused you of "stirring up drama." She said that your writing the word "partner" was basically a provocation, evidence of a need "to show that she's different."
"They get that way," she told me.
By "they," she meant women who were fed up with men because "men can be difficult," and so now they "experiment" with female relationships because they're tired of having men boss them around.
She told me about a friend whose wife left him for another woman. And about a young family member who was molested by a same-sex adult male. And about a gay man who once plunged a knife into a chair in the restaurant where she worked. And - she finally lost me here - something about the Navy SEALs.
"It's a lot of drama," she said.
She also found you "aggressive," didn't appreciate your cursing and thought I should speak with your father before writing this column, as she "sensed" his disappointment in your decision to marry a woman...
My first thought reading that was "Who in their right mind refuses a $800+ sale because of THAT - especially in a world where word gets around as fast as it does today?" Then I read a report by another journalist who had tried to get a followup interview from the store owner, and sort of succeeded:
More here: http://westdeptford.patch.com/articles/ ... bian-bride...Saber’s account of what happened is less cohesive.
Her explanation is filled with tangential references to the death of Navy Seals shot down in Afghanistan, the deaths of seven local youth killed on the same day in two recent highway accidents, her perception that her pet rabbit is saddened by those highway deaths and several oblique religious homilies.
At one point, Saber, a member of a Reformed Jewish congregation who began an interview by saying she “likes the Bible, I like religion” and also said she ecumenically attends Christmas Eve services, asked a reporter if he knows the Catholic bishop in the region, suggesting some sort of ritual should be performed to drive out the evil she senses led to those highway deaths.
Asked to articulate how her references to religion and tragic highway deaths relate to the dress incident, Saber falters, unable to explain.
An employee who works part-time in the shop is at a loss to interpret Saber’s non sequitur responses, saying she’d never heard Saber discuss religion until the last few days. The employee attributes it to stress.
Standing in the front of the bridal store, Saber says she first noticed the crossed out title of groom and written in term partner while “talking out loud” with Genter.
But precisely what she said after that is unclear: Saber said Genter called her a “bigot” repeatedly and said somehow she found herself at the end of the conversation when Genter hung up standing at the back of the store.
“That’s all I remember. I defended myself. She put me on the defensive. All she had to do was be a decent human being and call back and say I’m not getting married in New Jersey,” Saber said.
. And then when they come back, they can 
But seeing the dress makes me happy every time - it was a part of making the wedding look and feel like us.
