When planning our wedding at Onteora Mountain House, our guiding intention was to center and celebrate Black queer love while honoring the village that sustains us. During our ceremony, we had our loved ones recite Community Vows, explicitly promising to be our sources and resources of memory, storytelling, archive, and mythmaking.
For us, the audio guestbook wasn't just a fun add-on; it was the literal manifestation of those vows. Our wedding was vibrant and alive, and there is something profoundly special about having a vinyl record that brings our community's voices back within arm's reach. Distinct from cards or written words, there is something so tangible about hearing the exact cadence and joy of our people sending love. It allows us to fill our home with their presence, even years later.
Because we had the physical vintage phone at the venue and also sent out a WhatsApp blast with the call-in number, our guests who were there in person, as well as those who couldn't make it, were able to leave messages while they were still fully steeped in the energy and spirit of the weekend. A wedding goes by in a blur, and there is only so much time to be fully present with every single guest. The audio guestbook became a way for us to capture deeper exchanges and angles we would have otherwise missed.
The messages ranged from incredibly deep and reflective to completely hilarious. Some guests who called the morning after the wedding specifically qualified that their voices were raspy and apologized because they had partied so hard and had so much fun. Another special layer was added by one of our dearest friends, who gave a speech sharing the exact moment they knew we were destined to be together. They prompted the rest of the guests to think about their own moment they knew, and so many people ended up leaving those specific memories on the recordings for us to find.
We cherished this living archive so much that when it came time to press the vinyl, we used PhD-level methodological tagging to create the track order and a custom collage of our wedding photos and small touches for the vinyl cover art. We built a spreadsheet analyzing and coding every single voicemail by length, speaker, and emotional category – using tags like "Grounded/Felt Foundational Shift," "Narration of the Moment," "Wishes for our Relationship," and "Funny/Silly" – to perfectly curate the emotional rollercoaster of Side A and Side B.
Jessica & Amani Ariel-Wamala
