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Reality TV feeds on drama, controversy, and trouble, and will go to great exploitative lengths to get it. For Jon and Jeff, this intrusive “dramatic engineering” (with five camera teams filming every day for nearly the whole month leading up to their big day) at times interfered with the personal importance their cherished wedding and its preparations had for them. As Jon explained in a recent interview with The Houston Voice, “It really took away from the moments we had for ourselves... I realized the reality of reality TV, and how everything is so staged and put together and such.”

Noting the brighter side of reality TV's double-edge sword, Jon went on to acknowledge in the same interview, “The great thing was we were able to have our wedding on film, and break a lot of stereotypes for viewers, and show them we're just people, and we love.”

And that brings up a great point. What the two sets of betrothed lovers on Party Party accomplished exemplifies what is poignant about gays being included among ordinary people in reality type TV shows. Gays are ordinary people.

Party Party could have chosen a big city, culturally elite, fab/camp type queer wedding of stereotypically ostentatious proportions, featuring an all-cosmopolitan, slave-to-fashion, buff gay twink guest list. Yet this would have only served to culturally and socially alienate us (more than we already are) from reality TV's main audience of U.S. heartlanders.

The show's producer's wisely selected suburban, “everyman” type gay couples who bravely chose to wed in their own, conservative red-state hometowns, amid their own local gay and straight friends and relatives. Fiancée Steve is a local sports radio host;
Jeff works in building construction. Culturally speaking, the two engaged gay couples are way more Roseanne and Dan than Will and Grace.

Frankly, as Bravo's hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy demonstrates, it's refreshing to see gays interacting on all levels with straights in simple, everyday, real settings.

Of the various discrimination/homophobia issues and obstacles that arose for the gay couples during their matrimonial preparations, including a catering venue that refused to host them and relatives that refused to attend, none were strong enough to derail the ultimately winning ceremonial proceedings and reception dinners.

It is immediately evident to anyone watching how much these four gay fiancées share a common bond of all with all who put their hard earned time, energy, love and money into the planning of something as special as a wedding.

It's hard to imagine regular straight folks not feeling at least some shared understanding for all the typical trials and tribulations these gay guys couples went through in making their weddings happen. One comes away from the episode with a basic yet profound sense of how people are all the same.

The most touching and memorable gay wedding scenes were the unscripted moments caught in-passing: The shot of children in attendance who are clearly ok with a same-sex kiss at the altar, the grandma who cried during the marriage ceremony, the hetero relatives who, however uncomfortable, awkwardly manage to offer the gay newlyweds their smiles, support, hugs and even wedding toasts.

Twenty one-year-old newlywed Jon was disowned by his mother and father years before when they first learned he was gay. During filming one can see how much Jon wishes that at least his mother might still show up for his wedding. Yet she refuses to attend. We never see her. The scene with Jon being hugged and consoled by his supportive grandmother, as they both weep with inconsolable grief because of his mother's (her daughter's) forsaking him on this, his most important day, will stay with me forever and has me all choked up even as I type this.

And I thought I never cried at weddings.

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