Our Gay Wedding
Mel, me, the bouquet, Mel’s Dad
and Katherine McIntyre, our officiant
are in front of us
On August 30, 2013 we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. This is obviously a big deal for us. We never had a honeymoon, so we went to Europe for a month this summer. Also, we decided to take our kids. We figure we have about 5 more years before they’re teenagers, and we didn’t want to leave them behind.
I find that even though our 10th anniversary has passed, I am not quite done with it yet. For whatever reason, this 10 year anniversary date had lots of meaning for me. Maybe more than any other date. I am not a person that remembers all the important dates. I remember birthdays for my family and my anniversary. I don’t connect to death dates although I know other people do and try to be aware of those days. My mother connects with those days and she is the family archivist. I am reassured that she has all that information even though I don’t always want to know it.
Anyway, I wanted to post a few pictures from our wedding and I wanted to tell you a little bit about it. We got married right after same-sex marriage became legal in 2003. We had been in Canada about a year. We knew we wanted to get married. We had even talked about me establishing residency in Belgium by living there for 6 months so we could marry there. Marriage was an extremely important value for us and if there was a way to marry, we were going to do it.
My brother visited in June, right after it was legal in Ontario, and we would have done a small intimate wedding while he was here, but since I had a foreign divorce (we were shocked to find that the USA divorce needed a written legal opinion from a Canadian lawyer), we had to submit the necessary paper work and wait. That led to planning a wedding later in the summer and then we figured we might as well invite a bunch of people and have a party.
The bunch of people part was somewhat complicated by the fact that we had only been in Ontario for about a year at that point. We had made lots of acquaintances and some friends but we didn’t actually know yet who our friends were going to be, so we invited everyone. I think they were tickled to be invited to one of the first same-sex weddings, so everyone came. We had 125 people including one journalist at our wedding.
We didn’t know the journalist. When we decided to get married, we looked around for an officiant. Someone we knew recommended a guy who did weddings. He was a gay guy and an Anglican priest. We met with him, booked him, and then went on about our business.
A friend asked if we would be open to being in the Hamilton society column. I was surprised anyone would want us in the society column, but we said sure. They mentioned that an Anglican priest was going to marry us. Then things got crazy.
A different Anglican priest got suspended for officiating at a same-sex marriage. We were asked by the religion writer at the Hamilton Spectator to comment; we did. When they found out an Anglican priest was officiating at our wedding, they threatened to show up at our wedding with cameras. Our officiant got scared and backed out of performing our ceremony three days before the wedding. He seemed annoyed that we had talked to the press. Apparently it was one thing to conduct our wedding but he wasn’t expecting us to actually be OUT about the whole thing.
We went to our very own church–the Unitarian Church and asked for an officiant. We had gone the other route naively when we found out our minister was going to be out-of-town. We were very grateful to Kath McIntyre for performing our ceremony on such short notice.
The press showing up at our wedding was still a very real possibility and we didn’t really want any more drama so we invited the reporter who was threatening to show up. We figured she would behave better as a guest than if she was standing outside the fence as paparazzi. She came to our wedding but we never actually talked to her. She is in the big group picture we took right after the ceremony with all the guests. We know who she is because she is the one person at our wedding that neither of us recognize. She behaved well and left before the reception. I have always wondered if she felt rather silly crashing our wedding once she got there. We were just 2 people in love having a wedding.
Anyway, the wedding was lovely. We had over 30 kids who participated in the wedding. My daughter was 10 years old and she was our flower girl. She told me it was every girl’s dream to be a flower girl in a wedding, and we figured we could make a whole group of 10 year old’s dreams come true. We invited every child who came to the wedding to be in it–boys and girls. Each child brought a flower with them to the wedding (we heard there was a florist in Westdale who was coordinating the flowers the kids purchased–making sure there weren’t too many of the same one). As the wedding began they walked downstairs and onto the porch shortest to tallest and each child handed Mel a flower. These flowers became my bouquet. Sela came down last scattering rose petals. Then all the kids sat down in front on some material so they didn’t have to all sit in chairs. This was so fun! I get tears in my eyes as I write about it because it has so much meaning for me. It was so awesome to have all those kids standing up for our gay marriage!
Our parents were there, too. As long time Presbyterians, they had struggled with my relationship with Mel so it meant a lot to have them come. My dad read the same verses from Corinthians he had read at my brother’s wedding:
…11When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Mel’s Mom read a Navajo blessing:
God of Dawn! Your white blessings spread! Make this house happy. Guard the doorway from evil. Make this house happy. May peace around this family dwell; make this house happy!
Our florist friend Debbie asked us about flowers a couple of weeks before the wedding. I hadn’t actually thought of flower arrangements. She gathered Queen Anne’s Lace from our street and made the most interesting stunning flower arrangements I have ever seen. They were so amazing. She also took the epic flower bouquet the kids created and arranged it so it looked perfect. People couldn’t believe the kid’s flowers went together so well. They didn’t. Debbie worked her magic.
Our friend Jennifer came from Boston and sang at our wedding. Our friend Leanne played music and realized we needed a sound system and rented one as our wedding present.
Mel’s dad and uncle Mike came from Oregon to stand up with Mel. My sister-in-law and a long time friend and client, Haylie stood up with me. Mel’s 87-year-old grandmother came and was there in the 2nd row. Our friend Janet drove us away in her PT Cruiser. Our friends Kathy Murphy and Judy Shedden took thousands of photos for us. They were awesome. Our friends Wilf and Shirla helped organize the children and tried to keep the boys from sword fighting with the flowers. We hired my friend Catherine to cater the event and she did an amazing job on a budget.
I wore a wedding dress I rented from a costume shop for $99. We were loved and we were thrifty and it was one of the best days of my life. We stood on the front porch of our house and we set up chairs in our front yard. As we stood there, we looked out at our friends and family with the escarpment behind them. There have been so many times since then I have sat on those steps and looked out and remembered all those people sitting there wishing us well. For me it was a blessing of sorts that has lasted these last 10 years.
As I write this, my home state New Mexico is just starting to allow same-sex weddings. I believe having my family and Mel’s family come together to bless our marriage is an important part of our successful marriage. The memories of all that love feels so great when think about this beautiful day.
The Crucible Bookii is my story as it continues to unfold and how I see the world from my perch on the edge of the Crucible…because falling in love changed everything. To read more of our story, may I suggest Valentine’s Day: I Love You
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