So I have been dealing with something since Thursday that I wasn’t sure I wanted to blog about but realized I really had to because I was blogging about the planning of it. Natalie and I are still going to City Hall to get married. But without our family. It comes down to my family drama and people not understanding how important this was to us. Not understanding, even after dozens of explainations, of the significance of legally getting married. A little toxic homophobia mixed in to the batch of people who will never see their actions as such.
So instead of just having Nat’s family to the day which would just bum me out that my own family can’t get it together, we decided that it would be an intimate affair. Just Natalie and I getting dressed in her Prom dress, the dress she wore only a few weeks into our relationship to our senior prom, and me the dress I never got to wear because of stain issues. I’m doing our hair and makeup myself. We are eating the brunch food we ordered and could not cancel ourselves(oh my God, the amount of gluten free doughnuts is going to make me so happy and fat). I got the bridal headband I discovered right before ordering the Greek headband and love it so much more than I thought.
Lara Swanson, co-founder of So You’re EnGAYged, photographer, and my awesome friend, is coming up tonight. We are going to eat yummy Mexican food and have margaritas. She’ll sleep in our still-under-construction new house and we’ll wake up to take pictures at LightHouse Point Park. Then we’ll go to city hall and actually get legally married.
I’m actually nervous! I don’t really know why. Perhaps it’s the finality of it. The state is involved. I will have a legally binding contract with Natalie. I want to cry in happiness. Mostly because of the idea that our children will be legally protected. We can build a family, a community in our New Haven, CT house. I feel safer knowing that our marriage is in some Courthouse records for my children’s children to discover in their genealogy research. I have been doing a lot of genealogy research about my family and the big things, birth, marriage, death, are our everlasting records for generations to hold and see and learn about us. And now I can finally have that marriage certificate.
I never thought of it that way–that the marriage certificate will be there forever. And I love the way you envision your children and your children’s children. At some point my father and I were talking and he said that his parents weren’t his real family now–his children were. It isn’t entirely true (they’ll always be his family, just like he’ll always be mine) but there is a certain truth to it–even if your parents can’t be there for you when you need them to be, you can always be there for your children, and build your own family with Natalie.
Isn’t it so sad that families can’t always come around? I’m working on mine now, but I hope that (if necessary) I’ll have the courage to rid myself of the drama for our wedding day, too. Congratulations on putting your needs and your partner’s needs above other people’s desires. I wish you both a long and happy life together!