The Gay Wedding Experience

One of the main differences between gay weddings and straight weddings (at this time anyway) is straight couples do not have to have 2 weddings for their marriage to be legally recognized. The paperwork and the ceremony are one for straight couples – unless of course they decide to get married outside of the country and choose to get married at city hall before or after their destination wedding (because it’s a lot less paperwork that way). Still, it’s an option heterosexuals have because they are heterosexual.

For gay couples, if you want an actual marriage license you have to travel to a state that allows and performs gay marriage.   In the US that means you have to travel to Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, or Washington, D.C.. So, the question becomes which of your dates is your marriage? Is it the place where you will have your wedding ceremony or is it the day you are granted the license at your civil ceremony? Is it your big wedding? Do you celebrate both the following year on your anniversary? Do you have to treat both as actual wedding ceremonies? On top of this, add in the fact that you have chosen a destination wedding (in another country no less) and many of your friends and family are unable to attend the wedding. Do you invite them to come to the civil ceremony because they can’t make it to the wedding? WHAT do you do? There is no rule book for these things! Well….

Tom and I decided long ago that we wanted to be legally wed despite the fact that we have to travel outside of our home state to do so. We are lucky because NYC recognizes marriage from other states. That means that even though we are not able to legally wed in NYC, if we get married in CT for instance (which as you know we are planning to do on September 7) and live in NYC we are granted all of the same rights and benefits of legally married heterosexual couples. So we know we want to do it. And our past experiences becoming domestic partners in NY really help us to anticipate the way we may feel at the civil ceremony.

When Tom and I decided to become official domestic partners we thought we’d just go to the courthouse and complete a piece of paper and that would be that! We knew going in that we were not going to consider this new relationship upgrade to be our marriage however, when we walked out of the courthouse – we felt different! Therefore, we know that once we do the “paperwork” to be married in CT, we will feel married! That’s something to celebrate, no? Yes it is. But we also know that we do not want to make this civil ceremony our “wedding.” We are spending a lot of money on our wedding in Mexico and will consider October 17th to be our actually wedding day. A wedding is a celebration of a union anyway and does not necessarily have to be the actual day in which you get legally married. Right? So after we decided WHEN and WHERE we were going to have the civil ceremony, we moved on to our next big decisions…

WHAT do we do about September 7? WHO do we invite? Do we our friends and family to City Hall because they can’t come to the wedding? Do we invite no-one and go it alone like we did when we became domestic partners? Do we just invite the wedding party and if so – do we want those far away to have to worry about traveling into CT to join us? Our experience becoming domestic partners helped us to realize that we do not want to go it alone – we will want to celebrate. Having the wedding in PV makes us not want to invite our guests because we want the big wedding day to be in Mexico. So after a lot of thought we decided that we would invite the members of our wedding party who are in or near NYC to tag along. As you know, Vinnie is on a cruise ship, David is working it in Provinceton, and Cristie lives in NC. So Anne, Roseanne, and Christina will be accompanying Tom and I to City Hall on Tuesday, September 7th and it feels like the right decision. And even though it’s not our wedding, I still want to have my cake and eat it too… So I ordered my favorite cake in the world to have that day since I can’t get it in Mexico. That should be a fun treat! Here is another treat for our special day: When we announced our plans for the civil ceremony, I got an e-mail from my New Haven friend, photographer, and one of the founders of So You’re Engayged, Kelly Prizel who offered to photograph our civil ceremony. We are excited to have Kelly document our day. Thanks Kelly!

So there you have it. Now, you may be wondering HOW we will celebrate this in the future… Well, we have decided that we will be celebrating 2 dates: 1 with a simple dinner each year (Sept. 7) and 1 as our wedding anniversary (October 17). WHY? Because.

Brian
The Bridegroom