A Queer Phoenix Brewery Wedding at Roses by the Stairs

Alex (she/her) and Kazra (she/her) knew they wanted their wedding to feel like a really good night out with their favourite people. Good beer, tacos, plenty of dancing and absolutely no need for anything too formal.

So Roses by the Stairs Brewing in Phoenix, Arizona, made a lot of sense. It was already one of their favourite local spots, and it gave them the relaxed setting they wanted for a day filled with brewery portraits, their signature dip pics, a twenty minute ceremony and more than a few deeply personal moments.

They even gave the whole thing a name: “The Bows Tie the Knot.” Here’s how it all came together.

How did your story begin?

We met in grad school at Northern Arizona University. Kazra was studying for her specialist degree in School Psychology, while I was working toward my PhD in Counseling and School Psychology. We had a number of overlapping classes and shared a mentor, who eventually became one of the officiants at our wedding.

Grad school is challenging. It takes time, money, emotional and cognitive energy, patience and a lot of persistence. When you find someone who understands that, supports you, sees your strengths and helps you grow, you keep that person close. Kazra and I offered that kind of support to each other, and that is really where our friendship began.

The summer before Kazra started her internship, we went on a two week road trip visiting friends and family. Somewhere between the long drives, camping in California and spending time with our people, we started developing feelings for each other.

We fell in love, spent our first year together in Phoenix, moved to Chicago so I could finish my training, and eventually bought a home together in Utah, where I am from and where we live now.

Where did “The Bows Tie the Knot” come from?

One of our best friends gave us the nickname “The Bows,” short for lezbos. It was funny, it suited us perfectly and we loved it. Now all of our friends call us that, which is how our wedding became “The Bows Tie the Knot.”

Dip pictures are also a big part of our story. Kazra and I took one at our first Pride together in Los Angeles, and after that we committed to making it our signature photo. Now we always do dips.

Unfortunately, “dip pic” can sound a lot like something completely different when you say it out loud, so asking someone to take one has caused plenty of laughs over the years.

A Phoenix Brewery Wedding at Roses by the Stairs – photo 1

A Phoenix Brewery Wedding at Roses by the Stairs – photo 2

What did you want the wedding to feel like?

It can be hard to describe our vibe without actually meeting us, but we both like to have fun with life. We value humour, authenticity and quality time, and we knew a really formal wedding would not feel like us.

When we talked about what mattered most for the wedding, we kept coming back to three things:

We wanted our guests to have fun with us.

We wanted good beer.

We wanted to dance.

With those three things guiding us, a brewery wedding made a lot of sense. We wanted to kick back, laugh until we cried and be ourselves for the whole celebration. We are surrounded by friends who value those things too and who love us for who we are, so that was the kind of day we wanted to create.

Why did you choose Roses by the Stairs Brewing in Phoenix?

The venue was probably the hardest thing for us to choose. We wanted somewhere unique, somewhere within our budget and, ideally, somewhere that already meant something to us.

Roses by the Stairs Brewing opened while Kazra and I were living in Phoenix together. We both love beer. My last name even has “beer” in it. Dornbier is pronounced Dorn beer.

One of our favourite things to do on a weekend or after a long day at work is visit a local dog friendly brewery, have a beer and play card games. Roses quickly became one of those places for us.

We later moved to Chicago so I could complete my doctoral training, and naturally we visited plenty of breweries there too. One we really enjoyed was Phase Three Brewing.

Around the same time we were trying to lock in a wedding venue, Phase Three and Roses by the Stairs announced they were doing a collaboration beer, and it was available in Illinois. We practically sprinted over to try it.

It was a great beer, and to us it felt like a sign. We sealed the deal with Roses soon after.

We were a little nervous because ours was the first wedding they had hosted, but the owner went above and beyond. He listened to our ideas, brought ideas of his own and helped make everything work.

For the centrepieces, we collected beer cans from some of our favourite microbreweries. We saved the collaboration cans too, so seeing them at the wedding was a fun reminder of how we ended up choosing the venue.

How did you approach the ceremony?

Kazra made a hard rule pretty early in the planning process. The ceremony could not be longer than thirty minutes.

Her goal was for us to spend as much time as possible with everyone who had come to celebrate with us, so a quick ceremony made sense.

We wrote our own love letters to each other and read them before exchanging our rings and vows. We wrote our vows together and used the letters as our individual opportunity to say what we wanted to say to each other.

Our officiants were close friends who had known us since we met. They talked about our story and shared some of their own love story and marriage advice.

The ceremony ended up being around twenty minutes, which gave us plenty of time to take photos, grab a drink, talk, eat and enjoy the rest of the night.

What did the wedding day look like?

Our wedding day was really a wedding weekend.

We rented a huge Airbnb in Scottsdale for our wedding party of sixteen, so we got to spend several days celebrating with some of our closest people.

The morning started with a 5K for me and a couple of others, while Kazra enjoyed some quiet time and coffee with her best friend.

We all got ready at the Airbnb. Kazra and I did our first look, then we had another first look with our families and wedding party. We had told everyone in the wedding party to choose an outfit in our wedding colours that they felt good in, so we got to see what everyone had chosen for the first time and they got to see our outfits too.

Once we arrived at Roses by the Stairs Brewing, we did most of our wedding party photos before the ceremony. That meant everyone had some downtime to enjoy snacks and beer while they waited.

After the ceremony, we finished our photos while guests grabbed drinks, played games and used the specially made cards we had placed at every table.

One of the most important moments of the day was the toast to Kazra’s dad, who had died about two years earlier. Her dad loved a party. He loved being around people, talking, sharing stories and enjoying everyone’s company. He also loved Miller Lite.

So we bought a bunch of Miller Lite, had our beer boys pass them around, and Kazra shared her dad’s toast with everyone: “Cheers to good food, good friends, and shitty beer.”

After that, food was served, we spent time with our guests, did our first dance to open the dance floor and spent the rest of the night celebrating.

What were some of your favourite moments?

There were a lot.

The toast to Kazra’s dad was one of the most important moments for us. Kazra uses a pretty morbid sense of humour to cope, so she also dressed the brewery skeleton in wedding attire and gave it a “father of the bride” sign.

We loved dancing at the end of the night with our favourite people, taking photos inside the brewery equipment and cooler, and spending time with our wedding party after the ceremony during group photos.

There was also a blimp in Phoenix at the time. We learned there are only a handful of blimps in circulation, so of course we had to get a photo with it.

And then there was the clipping of the wings.

What is the clipping of the wings?

When a Dornbier gets married, it is tradition for the uncles of the Dornbier to “clip the wings,” which are the sides of the bow tie. It symbolises that they have found their mate and will not fly away.

I come from a very large family and had eight Dornbier uncles to choose from. Ope and Dennis were the chosen uncles, and they made sure I would stay grounded with Kazra for the rest of our very long, very fabulous life together.

How did you choose the vendors who brought the day together?

We found Andrea from Andrea Michelle Photography through a referral from Sara. We loved her immediately and felt like she would help us capture what we had in mind.

She was easy to talk to, made us feel comfortable and was really communicative throughout the process. Andrea also brought her own ideas, which we appreciated and which resulted in some amazing photos.

For food, we knew we wanted tacos. They fit the brewery, beer and Arizona feel of the wedding, they were easy to eat and, I mean, we are lesbians. We love tacos.

Tacos Calafia came recommended by a close family friend. We looked at a couple of other places, but everyone kept telling us how good Tacos Calafia was, so it made the decision pretty easy. They were right.

Kazra has known Sara from Crafted Content Company for years, and Sara offered her services to us. I did not know much about content creation or really understand the purpose of it because we do not post on social media very often, but I cannot tell you how happy I am that she was part of our day.

I constantly rewatch the content Sara created. It is such a gift to be able to relive the wedding through all those little joyful moments.

Honestly, all of our vendors went above and beyond. It felt like they were having just as much fun as we were.