Confession: I’m trying to plan my gay wedding and I’m failing miserably.
Well, it’s a vow renewal, actually. Once upon a time, my wife and I got married as husband and wife. And then, 18 years later, I found out she was never my husband, but was actually a really beautiful lady on the inside this whole time.
Almost 2 years later, we are living openly as wife and wife (very openly, actually). And as it turns out, she’s a beautiful lady on the outside, too. I’m a lucky girl. I want to marry that all over again. Our 20th anniversary seems like the perfect opportunity.
So here I am, planning a wedding. A gay wedding, though. Not your regular straight people wedding. There’s a difference. I’m not quite sure what that difference is, but since people are always trying to make weddings like ours illegal, I figure they have to be different – perhaps even better.
Maybe that’s why people want to ban them: our weddings are just too fabulous and they make straight people look bad, leaving hetero brides crying off their falsies under their veils. “Did you see Samira Wiley's wedding dress? OHMAHGAWD I CAN’T!”
That’s a lot of pressure, you know, as someone who’s planning a lesbian ceremony and is not Samira Wiley. We have to rise above – on a tight budget. I’m already breathing heavily into a paper bag at the thought.
So far, we have the following things figured out:
- We’re doing this locally (we live in lovely Ottawa, Canada), in our friends’ backyard in the country, on August 19th. This backdrop seems just rustic enough for two chicks who dig chicks to get married in.
- No, we are not wearing cowboy hats. Or boots. Or vests. Especially the vest part.
- No, we are not taking any wedding photos on the hood of a Subaru.
- We are, however, both wearing dresses. Not wedding dresses, but nice sundresses. Despite a love for blazers and Converse shoes, I am not going full Ellen on this one. We’re both far too femme for one of us to rock a suit.
I call this photo "Straight Up Femme". Get it? Because straight and...
Yeah. It was funnier in my head.
- Instead of gifts, we’ve asked our guests to bring food. A potluck. Lesbians love potlucks! I’m not sure why. I think it has something to do with not wanting to do dishes because feminism, or maybe to see how many people will bring different types of designer hummus to a party.
- We’ve asked our eldest son to officiate, our youngest son to carry our rings, and our daughter to be our DJ. Our adorable toddler niece will be our flower girl in her rainbow dress.
- I want some twinkly lights. White ones. They're a part of this, somehow.
And that’s all we have so far. I feel grossly underprepared. Between the kids and the writing and the public speaking and the educating and the everything else, I haven’t had time to fully take the bull by the horns. (Despite that metaphor, I’m serious about us not going western-themed for this, ok?)
I thought I was getting somewhere late last week when I emailed a local event place about renting a tent, tables and chairs. “Email us!” the link said, invitingly, and asked for several details to be included so they could “best serve” me. I included all the details, including the day, time, number of people, type of event, and exactly what I’m looking to get a quote on.
They wrote back yesterday saying, “Thanks for your email, Amanda. Please feel free to give our office a call to discuss your event further.” No quote. No idea of availability. Not even a phone call to my cell number, which I provided, but an invitation to call them.
“WHY DO YOU HAVE AN EMAIL CONTACT OPTION THEN?” I yelled all bridezilla-like at my computer screen out of frustration and also maybe because it’s my lady time and the kids ate all the Easter chocolate.
So, this is how it’s going to be, is it? Me, being the worst event planner on the planet, trying to organize things and yelling a lot? Zoe, offering to help her control freak wife, while said wife says, “No, it’s okay, honey, I can handle it. You have a busy job,” while my heart palpates and I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into? Oh, boy.
Or girl. Bridezilla girl. Feel free to helicopter over some chocolate and food drop it into my raging dino-mouth.
It’s going to be a good day, right? Please tell me it’s going to be a good day.
And that’s it not about twinkly lights. And that it will all come together because gay people have magical fairies who invisibly work alongside them and make gay weddings extra great to further the agenda along. And that there will, indeed, be several kinds of designer hummus on a beautifully-decorated table on August 19th.
And that it can all be extraordinary on a small budget I haven’t quite figured out yet.
Because we've decided to prioritize. We’re having a small, inexpensive ceremony so we can take our kids on a two-week adventure in Western Canada (no, people, without vests. Stop asking.)
Two of our children have never been on a plane and one of them is twenty. Before we know it, he’ll be moving out. We want to give them one last, wonderful memory before our household of five becomes a household of four. We're hoping to fly into Alberta, tour through the Rockies, and head out to the West Coast to play in the Pacific Ocean. A family honeymoon to remember.
Oh, and we haven’t planned that out yet, either. Pass the paper bag.
I guess, in the end, I need to focus on what matters.
Flowers, obviously. Cute bouquets are everything.
Oh, and the celebration of our love and family or whatever. I guess that’s the real focus.
When I look at it that way, we could all sit in rickety lawn chairs outside in the rain, while Zoe and I say “I do,” and follow that up with a late night of Cards Against Humanity and too many bottles of wine and it would still be a wonderful day.
Because she is wonderful. My Zoe. My love. She finally gets to be herself on her special day. I get to marry the real her, my wife, in front of the people who love us most. That’s what really matters.
On August 19th, 2017, we will be celebrating 20 years of marriage and our glorious lesbiosity, with hipster hummus dishes and twinkly lights to guide us down the aisle.
And it will be perfect, no matter how it happens.
(But if the fairies want to help out with some of that magical glitter dust and maybe a lottery win, I won’t say no.)