DMiller writes, ... I married my wife yesterday. I was a little too wrapped up in the event to write and post a diary about it on the day that I did it.
We "eloped." In other words, all our friends had been pressuring us to have a big wedding and instead we took our son out of school, went to the county courthouse and got married. Just the three of us. We expect we'll have a big party afterwards and invite the swim team and the neighborhood and the rest of our friends, but this was really nice just to have our little family for this ceremony.
To provide a little background, I met my wife in my sophomore year of college. I was 19. She was 21 and a senior. We dated for a couple of weeks and our roommates found out (we lived in the dorms) and threw us out. Therefore, we became roommates. It was a little traumatic, but it worked fine for us and the rest is history. That was 27 years ago last March.
You'd think that after twenty-seven years, a civil union in Vermont and a domestic partnership in California, not to mention untold contractual and legal procedings, (all attempting to provide one another the most legal protection we could) getting an actual honest to god California wedding license and wedding certificate really wouldn't make that much of a difference.
It really did make a difference, we didn't think it would beforehand, because we'd felt married for years and years, but the ceremony was amazingly meaningful to us.
The weight of the legal proceedings made a difference. Hearing the vows and saying the vows made a difference. There's something about the traditional wedding vows in our culture that does make a difference and we both felt it.
We wrote our own vows in our civil union ceremony and they meant a lot to both of us. We went with the state's ceremony in for our marriage at courthouse and, with certain tweaks, it was a traditional marriage ceremony .... "In sickness and in health till death do you part."
Our 13 year old son wept. We had no idea that it would affect him so much. Later he explained that his friends' parents are all getting divorced. It meant a lot that we still loved one another enough to want to get married after all these years.
It's made a difference to our friends and family. We've been flooded with telephone calls and emails congratulating us on our marriage. Our house looks like a florist shop. Our neighbors have stopped by to make sure that everything is okay because of the regular flower deliveries and are delighted by the news. They've all asked for invitations to the reception, whenever it happens.
Our family and friends are a little annoyed that we didn't invite them to our wedding, but we're not really sorry and they'll understand once they think about it. Our son never would have been comfortable enough to cry if he'd had an audience and this clearly meant so much to him.
My wife (gotta get used to saying that instead of partner) worries that the fundies will take away our marriage certificate somehow and I try to reassure her that the only way she's gonna get rid of me now is to divorce me.
It's hard for people to understand loving and living with someone and having your relationship and your family always subject to question and/or ridicule. Being able to get married, legally, helps overcome that. Now we have legal standing for our relationship, just like everyone else.
It makes a difference.
This was posted at DMIller's Daily Kos Diary last fall. Go there to see the congratulations!
Do YOU have a story? put it in the comments and I'll post it for you!
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