Since I’m still hovering in limbo about the dress (though leaning preeeetty heavily toward the ivory gown *gasp* against all possible predictions) and my wedding planning has stalled out for the last month or so, I figure this is a good time to catch you all up on how I got to this point. Last winter, as we waited for California to rule on the validity of Proposition 8, Chris and I started discussing alternate options for the wedding. We’d had a tentative date set for August 2009, but between the passage of Prop 8, our pending move back to Dallas, and the lousy economy (along with our suffering bank accounts), we decided to postpone the wedding for another year.
With the additional time (and, hopefully, additional saved money) to rethink our original plans, we started to analyze what we were really looking for in a wedding location. I knew my two musts were ‘beach’ and ‘intimate’. I also really wanted it to be outdoors, although I was semi-willing to compromise on that. But ‘intimate/beach’ leaves a pretty wide geographic swath of possibilities. We also wanted to pick a place that would double as our honeymoon, or at least be geographically near wherever we decided to go. Chris’s honeymoon must was castles. And then there was that question about legality and what, exactly, it meant to/for/about us…
Originally Chris pushed very hard for Jamaica, but I was (and still adamantly am) very opposed to the idea of having our wedding in such a proudly homophobic country. The community/resort she was interested in, where our friends were married a few years ago, is very gay-friendly, but I did not want to be responsible for bringing such a significant amount of tourism dollars into what is arguably one of the most homophobic countries in the world, particularly not for my wedding. (Although, admittedly, it would be a very fun political ‘f*ck you’.)
We started researching our options for ‘legal’* marriage (Canada, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, and Spain are the only countries which legally perform same-sex marriages; in the States, marriages are performed in CT, VT, IA and MA, with NH joining in January, and D.C. possibly following suit.) All these countries except Canada, however, have a residency requirement which we couldn’t meet, and Canada didn’t meet our honeymoon criteria. **Editors note- Connecticut does not have a residency requirement. Vermont does require a license you must apply for, but no residency requirement.
What we did discover during all of this was that: 1) it was less important to us that our marriage be ‘official’ than it was important that we have our ceremony somewhere that was supportive of lgbt rights in general; 2) we definitely wanted to honeymoon somewhere that was gay-friendly. As much as I wanted to take Chris up on her offer to honeymoon at the Green Magic Treehouse Resort and travel around Kerala and South India, we eventually decided that the restrictions it would entail (no touching in public, potentially having to lie about our relationship) weren’t our idea of honeymoon
And then one brilliant day Chris came home from running sound for the fabulous Miss Coco Peru, whose new show involved a lot of Miss Coco bragging about her sexy Spanish husband.
“You know,” Chris mused, “Spain has beaches.”
My ears perked up.
“And…. Spain has castles.”
My eyebrows raised.
“And Spain has progressive lgbt rights protections!” she finished proudly.
At which I calmly leapt off the couch, squealing and dancing in circles, screaming:”Omg omg omg we’re getting married in SPAIN!!!!”
Now all that was left to do was find a castle on the beach… hmmm, and perhaps a fairy godmother?
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*And what the hell does ‘legal’ mean anyway? Check back, this is the topic of my next post.
Massachusetts no longer has a residency requirement.
Actually, none of those four states have residency requirements, and (at least so far) New Hampshire isn’t planning on creating one. It’s all the countries, except Canada, which do…
How cool that you found a place that satisfies all your wishes! I’m sure it’ll be unforgettable for everyone involved.
The only “residency requirement” Massachusetts now has is a three-day waiting period to get the marriage license. And even that can be waived easily, by application to any court in Massachusetts.
This is not to say that Spain is a bad idea, but there are more options than you think. Indeed, with DC now likely to implement same-sex marriage in the near future, you may find you can make it legal during a stopover on the way to or from Spain.
[...] now that our location had been chosen, I had a pretty daunting task before me: find a castle on a beach in Spain which we could afford to [...]