Marital Blitz Monday-Weddings All Around!

Before I lose my happy buzz owing to some assholish move on the administration's part, I thought I'd share the details of what's got me up.

I just participated in two weddings in two weekends.  They were miles apart in geography and demography, but both proved what we've been saying around here all along-it's all good.

The first wedding was straight-up:  young Southern hetero educated urban middle class whitish couple going for prosperous married dinkdom.  It was beautiful, people were happy, the couple looked deeply in love, we all danced and made merry.  In other words, it was just the kind of wedding straight men dread going to, but get dragged to by their female counterparts regardless.

Don't get me wrong-I love weddings.  It's the classic woman in me.  I like to see people find each other and declare it to the world.  There's something life-affirming about a wedding, plus cake!  You just can't beat it.  Unless you're asked to be a bridesmaid, wearing what can only be described as a paisley pink and orange handkerchief well beyond the age at which such attire is considered suitable.  But that's a whole other diary.  Anyway, two more people to love and care for each other no matter what, and a roomful of close friends and family to watch them like a hawk to be sure they keep their committment.  It's a wonderful thing.  And spare me any angry posts of "I don't have to have a piece of paper to prove that I love my so-and-so."  Of couse you don't, but this is about the age-old promise of death do us part and you don't have to be a rich white Repub geezer to celebrate it.  Get your own diary and leave me to my happy wedding thoughts!

The second wedding was, well, what this diary is really about.  Those of us who can marry who we wish when we wish take the right so for granted that often we don't marry because the choice is always there if we change our minds.  Easy peasy.  Maybe that's why there's always a subtle element of drudgery to most weddings.  You've seen one, you've seen 'em all.  For thousands of years and billions of couples, it's the same.  Not too many surprises left, are there?

This was not the case for Couple Number Two.  For this wedding we flew from Texas to Massachusetts.  Typically, when I'm going to a wedding I want everyone to know it.  It's good news and I like to share what little of that there is these days.  But for this wedding I could only tell my open-minded friends.  I told no family members or the bride of the first wedding.  She would have taken it as an insult to her special day to know that we were headed for a gay couple's wedding the next weekend.  Isn't that sad?  Such a happy occasion for a couple, yet the source of such tight-lipped bitterness for so many others.

For Couple Number Two, there were no wedding directors or seating charts, no elaborate bouquets or 5-tier cake (damn!), no dress train or veil to worry about catching on things, no spats between dueling mothers or religious idealogies.  There was just pure unadulterated bliss.  I don't know if it was the open bar or the karaoke, but lordy, people were happier at this wedding than at any other I've ever been to.  There was a strong sense of watching history unfold, but more than that there was a sense of defiant joy.  "Don't try to tell US that this union is somehow less worthy of recognition than any other," everyone seemed to be thinking.

There were well over a hundred people at this wedding, some of whom like us, had traveled hundreds of miles to be there.  These were some the nicest people I've ever met, people who understood what was really important in life-that when you find someone who understands who you are and accepts that person without hesitation, you are truly blessed.

Everyone should be so lucky.