Lindsay Miller talks about the mostly-traditional preparations for her and her partner’s upcoming wedding. While it may not be legally binding, she says, it’s important to celebrate with loved ones who will hold the couple accountable for maintaining a successful partnership.
The venue is set, the invitations are ordered, and I finally found the right shoes. I’m just a few months away from the pretty-princess wedding that every little girl dreams about, with visions of centerpieces and tuxedo strawberries dancing in my head, and the fact that the person I’m marrying turned out to be a woman has done little to derail the unstoppable It’s My Special Day Train.
When my sweetheart proposed to me, it didn’t come as a surprise—I hate everything about the movie trope of the out-of-nowhere proposal, which is the romantic equivalent of hiding behind the door and then popping out and going “boo.” Our proposal was the culmination of weeks of discussion about what we wanted out of life and whether we could be happy together in the long term and, since it was becoming increasingly clear that we were inextricably entangled in each other’s futures, what we were going to do about that.
For a straight couple—not every straight couple, but many and perhaps even most—this would be the time to start picking out color schemes. “I want to spend my life with you” means “let’s throw a big party and get all our distant relatives drunk on well vodka.” That’s what we, as a society, expect. That’s what thousands of romantic comedies and jewelry commercials have taught us is the natural order of things. The everlasting love and the festivities and the legalities are all tied up with one another and can’t be untangled—you sign the paper, you throw the shindig, you live happily ever after.
If you’re queer, however, and especially if you live in one of our beautiful and scenic states where queers are second-glass citizens without marriage rights, it’s not quite that simple. There will be no legal paperwork that says we promise to be together forever and also I am now financially responsible for all of my partner’s student loan debt. (Pro tip: If your bachelor’s degree is in “Performance Studies,” do not pay more than $50 for it.) So the question becomes: Is a wedding the celebration of making a lifelong commitment, or is it the celebration of that piece of paper?
The answer seems obvious—until you consider the fact that people become seriously crazed with rage if they find out that a straight couple’s Fancy White Dress Party does not coincide with the date on their marriage license. I know two couples who held weddings a year or more after they were legally married, and one other who had a wedding three years ago and are still single on paper. In all three cases, the discrepancy was a matter of utmost secrecy discussed only among close friends, because if anyone else found out, they would feel lied to. Betrayed. Deceived, with malice aforethought, into sending a wedding present on the wrong day—most bitter and unforgivable subterfuge!
We may, in our detached and cynical era of post-romanticism, decry the marriage license as “nothing but a piece of paper,” but even straight couples who have the luxury of taking it for granted know that it is much more than that. So when we decided to say the hell with it and have a big, gay, totally-not-sanctioned-by-the-State-of-Colorado ceremony anyway—our outlaw wedding, as we like to call it—we had to really think about the reasons why. We had to think about what marriage would mean to us as a couple, what we wanted to promise, and what we wanted to celebrate. In some ways, we had to build our wedding from the ground up.
Marriage has come so far from its roots as a process by which men could ensure the legitimacy of their offspring. We all know it’s based on an antiquated power structure in which the woman was expected to be subservient to the man emotionally, sexually, and economically, but it’s evolved into something much different in the modern world. I don’t mean to suggest that the husband-as-ruler model has died out completely—not in a world where Michele Bachmann was recently considered a viable candidate for President—but it might be fair to say that it’s losing its hold. These days, more and more of us are approaching marriage as a partnership between equals, an arrangement that provides love and stability and someone who will remind you to buy more toothpaste. And weddings, which began as as the formalized ritual by which men transferred possession of a woman’s virginity, have been transformed too. The wedding ceremony, for years that stalwart bastion of unflinching heterosexual conservatism, has become, for us and many others, a starting point for creating the kind of marriage we want.
When we opted to have a wedding, we knew it might be a controversial decision. We knew that people would ask us, “Is that even legal?” Well, it’s not against the law to throw a party, but it will not be a legally binding contract, no. Why spend all the money on a big, fancy ceremony, then?
We went back and forth about this question for a little while. We both knew we weren’t satisfied with simply shaking hands and promising to spend our lives together. We wanted a wedding, but why? What we ended up with, after a great deal of the treasured lesbian tradition known as “processing,” was this: A wedding is the culturally recognized signifier that a relationship is committed, truly in it for the long haul. It’s how you level up as a couple. It’s a way of letting our friends and relatives know that we take our love just as seriously as any straight couple does, and we expect them to respect it just as much. But if it were just that—an empty symbol, a way of saying “we really really mean it, you guys”—it wouldn’t be worth all the money, not to mention the time and energy, we’re putting into it.
Underneath all the ritual and hyper-gendered role-play of the wedding script, there is a truly meaningful concept: that when we stand up in front of everyone we care about in the world and make a promise, we are asking to be held accountable for it. We’re sharing that promise with our friends and families, and asking them to help us honor it, even when it’s difficult. The crucial reason to have a wedding ceremony, for us, is that gesture: reaching out to our community, saying “please keep us honest, please keep us strong.” The rest of it—the clothes, the catering, the iTunes playlist—is all just frosting.
“Which of you is the bride?” my grandma asks, and we both laugh. There isn’t a good answer to that question—it assumes a dynamic that just doesn’t exist in our relationship. My partner is butch and I’m femme, but that’s not really relevant. She won’t be playing the part of the groom. My father won’t be giving me away. We already share everything that we can, legally, share—there will be no “coming together” on our wedding day. We won’t be joined, because we’re already joined; we’ll arrive together and walk down the aisle hand in hand. No one will take possession of anyone; no one will promise to obey. Our wedding will be informed by the traditions of our families and our culture, but only in the ways we choose.
We want our marriage to be a partnership between loving, supportive equals, and we want our wedding to be the same thing but with fancier clothes. When I think about it that way, it strikes me as awfully similar to every other wedding I’ve been to in my life. Honestly, the most radical thing we’re doing at our gay wedding is having crème brulee instead of cake. We’re just going to make a promise to each other and ask for some help sticking with it—the same as millions of other couples. It’s almost hard to remember what gender has to do with it to begin with.
Lindsay Miller won the Denver Citywide Spelling Bee in seventh grade, kicking off an illustrious life of being a total word nerd. She studied creative writing at the University of Arizona, is a Founding Mama of the Tucson Poetry Slam, traveled the country with Doc Luben as the Smaller Shark Poetry Tour, and has never really mastered the art of the indoor voice. She is now an MFA Writing & Poetics student at Naropa University. She also writes the advice column “Ask A Queer Chick” for The Hairpin, in case you need someone to tell you how to live your life.
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