Sarah Declouette was crushed late last year to learn that her mom had decided not to attend her wedding to her girlfriend of two years, Lori Avitia.
“I’ve been openly gay since I was 15, so it really hurt to find out she didn’t want to share this happy moment in my life,” said Declouette, 35, of Ventura, Calif.
In the raw emotion of that moment, Declouette recorded her thoughts in a video, which she posted on TikTok.
“My fiancée has like 100 people in her family that are going to be there — her dad and her mom and her stepmom — and like on my side, I’m not going to have anybody,” she said tearfully in the video.
The video attracted nearly 2 million views, and more than 55,000 people left comments of encouragement and support.
Daniel Blevins, founder of the support group Stand in Pride, saw the video and right away decided to offer himself up as a stand-in parent at the wedding.
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“I was really touched by her video, and Sarah and I quickly built a strong connection online and over the phone,” said Blevins, 46. “I knew that I wanted to be there for her on her wedding day.”
So Blevins, a gay father of two from Tennessee, flew into Ventura this week to stand in for Declouette’s parents at her wedding Saturday.
“For every unsupportive person, there are hundreds of others with a lot of love to give,” Blevins said.
Back in 2021, after seeing people post stories similar to Declouette’s on social media, Blevins offered on TikTok to be a stand-in parent for anyone who lived near him and was in need at their LGBTQ+ wedding. If he couldn’t make it, he said, he had a network of friends who might be able to.
He said he was inspired to post his video after he learned about Free Mom Hugs, a group started in 2019 by Sara Cunningham, an Oklahoma City woman who had offered to be a stand-in mom at gay nuptials.
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Right after he posted, he was flooded with messages from strangers who also offered to be stand-in parents at gay weddings in their area.
“I had such a good response that I knew this was something that was needed,” said Blevins, adding that it didn’t work out logistically for him to immediately attend weddings as a stand-in parent, but that he was able to connect hundreds of other people who could make it work. “People kept telling me that they wanted to do the same thing,” he said.
Blevins said he felt relieved that his message resonated with hundreds of people who had raised their hands to help. He decided that if he couldn’t attend all of the weddings himself, the next best thing was to help other people go.
“I work full time and live in Tennessee, and most of the invitations came from out of town,” said Blevins, a hair salon owner from Knoxville. “So I decided to come up with a way to connect people around the country.”
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He formalized his effort and started Stand in Pride, through which LGBTQ+ people can find someone in their area who would like to be a stand-in parent for them, including during milestones such as graduations and weddings.
Stand in Pride now has volunteers across the country who help to run five Facebook regional support groups in the United States, and there are more than 100,000 membersworldwide from 70 countries, he said. Blevins estimates his groups have connected thousands of people who have volunteered to be role models and stand-in parents since he started the initiative two years ago.
Declouette said that having Blevins fill in at her wedding, which she planned for Pride Month, will be both important and meaningful.
“I’m so happy to finally meet him — I’m going to treat him just like he’s my dad,” she said. “It’s nice to know that someone like Dan has my back. Having his support will make all the difference.”
For Blevins, Saturday will be just his second experience as a stand-in parent.
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He said he also literally danced down the aisle with Kesha Serna at her wedding to Bernadette Serna last summer after he learned that Kesha’s father had died and her mother wouldn’t be coming to the ceremony.
“Kesha sent me a message on social media, and when I found out she lived only two hours away, I told her, ‘I’ll be there,’” he said.
“When you reach out to a stranger on the internet, you have no idea what you’re stepping into, but I had the sense that Daniel really cared and wanted to be there for me,” said Kesha, 37.
“What Daniel is doing is so important — he’s reaching out to people who have nobody there for them and he’s inspiring thousands of people to step up,” she added. “He’s showing everyone that this is about loving your neighbor and being there for your neighbor.”
About 45 percent of LGBTQ+ young people considered suicide in the past year, according to a 2022 survey from the Trevor Project, an organization that provides help and support to LGBTQ+ youth.
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“It’s devastating — I personally have known people who have taken their own lives,” Kesha said. “I was lucky to connect with Daniel. There are people out there with nobody.”
Rob Brown, a father of four from the Nashville area, is among those who decided to become a stand-in parent after hearing about Blevins’s cause.
Brown posted an introduction on the Stand in Pride Southeast Facebook page and offered to fill in as a dad to anyone who needed one for any reason, he said.
“I have a little catchphrase that I’ve used for years: ‘I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you are, I don’t care why you are. I just care that you are,’” said Brown, a 48-year-old warehouse worker.
“I’ve done free dad hugs at multiple Pride parades over the years, so this seemed like something I could do,” he added. “It’s incredibly sad to me that so many people in the queer community don’t have familial support.”
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Landon Forrest lives 25 miles away in Nashville, and said he quickly responded to Brown’s Facebook offer when he saw it in 2022. Forrest, 37, said he began the process of transitioning from female to male in January 2020.
“I’ve really missed having a positive father figure to look up to,” he said, noting that his biological father died seven years ago and wasn’t involved in his life when he was growing up.
When Forrest recently had abdominal surgery, Brown was the one who took him to the hospital and picked him up, he said.
“We’ve since gone to dinner and movies, and we’ve spent time just hanging out and talking,” Forrest said. “It’s been such a great help to talk to him about the aspects of being male and having him there as a role model. It means everything.”
Blevins said he finds hope in stories about successful bonds between people who were once strangers.
“Some people want somebody there for their weddings or college graduations, while others are just looking for a friend,” he said. “One connection at a time, it’s great to know that so many people are willing to stand up in pride and be there for one another.”
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