Wedding planning is strange and wonderful, and the ways that people react to weddings are strange and wonderful. The way that people react to gay weddings can be really different. Even people who would swear up and down that they aren't homophobic and swear up and down that they believe in equality. They can be the people who think that gay marriage is quaint or something that should be done in the store window of the Bay at Christmas, by perfectly dressed mannequins, or at Wonderland in a booth, with a painted face.
Fair enough. But what is equality if it isn't really equal. If straight marriage is celebrated with tradition and gay marriage is celebrated with binoculars and a telephoto lens, what does that mean? Can you be a spectacle and also just yourself, in love and celebration.
The reason this all comes up for me is that there is another person biologically close to me that is also getting married. Doing it traditionally, with both sexes represented. And in my biological pool, there are key people who are reacting really differently to each scenario.
And it really surprises me. I don't know why - maybe because Twinkie and I are just so grateful and happy and can't believe our luck - we can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to come and eat a meal and toast our happiness. Celebrate.
I am working to be okay with that. ALL the people who love us and are friends and family - whether blood family or chosen, support us and want to celebrate, or pretend to :). Yet there are some who claim to support and yet refuse to acknowledge.
Maybe it is different because it means so much to me now, for my second wedding, and there are some close blood relatives who really would prefer not to discuss it. So, in reaction to that, I must say, I get gayer. Yes, gayer - the last time this happened was two days ago. When one of our beautiful supporters lauded us and celebrated us, a close relative poohh-poohed the celebration and said, there are a lot of things happening next year. I felt like I had been slapped, so I got gayer and gave Twinkie a big smooch. In front of a lot of people who could donate a kidney to me. At a dinner table. At someone else's birthday party. And in front of a ton of people who will be going to both weddings next year - ours and the real one.
Twinkie and I are so incredibly blessed with beautiful friends and family and chosen family - when these things happen it just makes you realize and be even more grateful for the world we have fought to live in and the freedom we have to marry - even if the climate in which to marry isn't yet perfect, we are all carving out the traditions.
I used to tell people that if I ever considered marrying again, I would do it in full drag style, with drag queens as bride's maids and just really pull all the stereotypes. So I guess I grew away from that. Such a journey, this wedding year.
Each day and revelation and coming out as an engaged lesbian brings up people's thoughts and views and prejudices and also inexperience for the most part. In fairness, many of the people who are coming to our shindig have never been to a gay wedding, and in our spirit of living openly, we chose to make sure to have as many as we could invite to expand people's ideas of normal - not that Twinkie and I fall into the category of normal :), but hopefully our wedding will expand others' views.
Maybe Twinkie and I WILL get married in the store window at the Bay :) - it would be air conditioned and there would be room for all the guests!
Will put that to our wedding saviour C.O. for his perusal.
Yours in gay matrimony
Cupcake
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