Traditionally, marriage is a kind of performance with a required uniform. Brides wear white. Grooms wear their best suits. But what if your gender identity doesn’t fall neatly in line with these molds? The answer isn't simple for many gender-nonconforming people, but some game changers in the wedding industry are trying to expand — and improve — the options on the table.

Let me first delve into my own experience, which served as the catalyst for this piece: I am standing in the changing booth of a bridal salon in Manhattan, the kind of place that women probably travel many miles to in order to try on the latest in matrimonial fashion. After my then-boyfriend-now-fiancé proposed, I spent weeks searching the Internet for masculine bridal outfits. There was only one I found that was made for retail, and I’m about to try it on. I hold out the runway-model-sized white silk trousers I am about to squeeze myself into. I open the waist of the pants, hold them out in front of me, and look down as I raise my foot. And there it is: a dried pool of red on the crotch. I hesitate and wonder whether I should wear the desecrated white silk. It’s a bad omen, I tell myself.

Just over a decade earlier, I had cried when my own period started. A late bloomer, I had hoped that I had somehow avoided femaleness of my body. Up until that point, I thought of myself as something “in between,” neither male nor female. But my period had brought me crashing down to what felt like the reality of my own biology — I did not know about the gender spectrum then. My mind returns back to the present moment. I force one leg after the other into the pants.

Watch Rain Dove talk about what gender means to them: