Reverend Julie of Creative Ceremony was lucky enough to officiate and marry a couple in DC yesterday- the first day gay couples could legally be married.
I love it when Mother Nature cooperates. I officiate a lot of outdoor weddings. Probably 90% of the couples I marry want outdoor wedding ceremonies. It can be the middle of August, 95 degrees, and 100% humidity, in the full sun, and we’re out there sweating through a ceremony I’m shortening on the fly so that Grandma doesn’t pass out. Or it can be a blustery 45 degree evening in November, with unwarned guests freezing their tushes off in evening clothes as they sit through 20 minutes of pre-ceremony music and, yet again, a ceremony getting shorter by the minute. Couples love to plan outdoor weddings – no matter the season. But they sometimes forget that Mother Nature is also on their guest list.
Well today, Mother Nature didn’t just cooperate, she was positively beaming. After the worst winter on record in Washington, D.C., with piles of snow still dotting the landscape, it was in the upper 50s, with blue skies, and sunshine as Eva, Shana, and I gathered at their community garden plot. Today was the first day that same sex couples could legally marry in the District and it felt like Mother Nature, in a sweeping dramatic gesture, placed a sunny stamp of approval on this historic day.
With my BFF and colleague Tara along as our photographer, and a very hearty rosemary bush as our witness, Eva and Shana, who already had a fabulous wedding in St. Croix with their nearest and dearest in attendance, quietly renewed their marriage vows to one another and watched me sign the Marriage License issued to them by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Marriage Bureau. They’ve been married for a year and a half now. But today, the State (or non-state as Eva correctly reminded me) recognized their marriage as legal. I’ve never felt so privileged to sign a marriage license. And I’m so happy it was Eva and Shana whose license I got to sign this day. Pardon me for a moment while I gush about them.
At their first wedding, on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Eva and Shana had a beach side ceremony with a reception catered by a local sustainable farm. Additionally, as a way to give back and say thank you for all the hospitality that St. Croix had shown them, they and many of their guests went out and worked on the farm the day after the wedding. Is that not the coolest thing ever? So for this their “second” wedding, they decided to have an intimate, quiet affair just for the two of them. Their garden plot is a place they come to year after year to tend the soil, grow a few vegetables, and give back to this city. And today, their garden plot was witness to the city offering a little something back to them.
Carol Hanisch once wrote that “the personal is political.” She was right. But today, in a brilliantly sunny patch of garden, on a quiet street in Northwest D.C., the political was quietly and beautifully personal. Congratulations Eva and Shana. We all celebrate with you this day.
- Julie
