Wendy & Darin

Wedding graduate! Wedding graduate! It feels like it’s been too long. I’m thrilled to get to share Wendy’s story with you guys. She says a million smart wonderful things, but I want to sign my name on the line really big for a few of them… like the fact that wedding guests really only want a full fledged invitation to celebrate with you two (which also means they want you relaxed and present and letting go… so they can celebrate WITH you, not AT you). They will, of course, gossip a little afterwards, but that’s within the wedding guest bill of rights. Mostly though, they’ll just want to cry and grin and cry and grin some more and then eat cake and grin. And also: I want to echo the fact that you will be overwhelmed with just how much everyone cares, and then there will be a few people you never expected who will maybe not care as much as they should. That’s NORMAL. It’s not you, it’s them. So just grin your head off with everyone else. And with that, I give you Wendy. You’re going to love her.
Let me preface this with some pertinent background: in an effort to be together all the time as soon as possible (and to avoid having a big fuss made over us), we decided to push through the paperwork as soon as the engagement cook-out was done, and got legally hitched on 09.09.09. Although I had bought a fancy dress (impulse buy at a boutique in Atlanta while visiting my best friend), we had no idea if and when we could fund a ceremony and reception to our liking. Since Darin and I had only dated a few months when we got engaged, our sets of parents weren’t really expecting to fund a wedding (not only that, but I was laid off the day after we got engaged). Thankfully, a few checks rolled in (and I got another job) and we started to piece together a plan.
Throughout the course of planning a wedding, the most important thing I learned was that Darin was, and was always going to be, someone looking out for my best interest and happiness. We only dated a few months before deciding to get married; my father, not knowing Darin very well, said only that he wished for me someone who would think about me first upon waking, someone who placed my wellbeing at the top of the list.
As we made decisions for our wedding that fit our budget (tiny), our look (Depression Era, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, with milk glass!), and our beliefs, I saw that he not only fits all of my criteria,* but is the ideal partner according to my father’s words of wisdom, as well.
What I learned about getting married is something Meg mentioned in a post shortly after our ceremony, that we would be adults in the eyes of our community. Every once in awhile, we look at one another and cheer that we were allowed to do this: get married, have a house, live together, etc. Part of that is having (publicly) made the decision to start a family together,** and committing to caring for one another for life. Being responsible for and to one another- being adults- allows us to enjoy married life.

Wedding Dropout: Joy From Pain

I know this is a site about weddings and marriage. But I don’t always think about it exactly that way anymore. I think about it as this place that all these amazing women gather to share stories. Because we tell a lot of stories related to weddings and marraige and life relationships, the stories tend to be emotional (and pretty…) but that’s not the whole point. After I published Sara’s mind-blowingly brave story of calling off her wedding, I heard from lots of you. Turns out lots of you have called off previous weddings, or never thought you would call off your wedding ever… until suddenly you needed to. But most recently I heard from a blogger who goes by Ms. Loaf. Loaf was a pretty serious commenter on APW a year or so ago, and I assumed she’d gotten married and gotten quiet. So when I saw and email from her with the subject “Wedding Dropout,” the bottom sort of fell out of my stomach.

But by the time I’d finished reading her post, I felt my heart again. Really felt it. Because her story is such a sweet story of redemption. It, for me, is a reminder of how all those really sh*tty painful things we’ve all been through get us… closer, I think. Closer to where we need to be, or what we need to figure out. Or that’s what her post did for me. (and you can read lots more of Loaf over at More of This & Less of That.)

I am a wedding drop out. June 20 was supposed to be my one-year wedding anniversary.

For two years, I kept a blog documenting my relationship and road to the altar called Tales of a Female Husband. We were planning a legal wedding in Ontario, with many wedding elves helping us out, including Emily, a good friend of mine from college who would be our photographer. I loved wedding blogging, finding a community of offbeat bride bloggers and, especially, lesbian bride bloggers, since there was not a lot of support from my family, and my friends were all far away, scattered around the country. Not only was I excited for my wedding to make a public commitment and affirmation of my love for my partner, but I couldn’t wait to see all my friends.

Unfortunately, the relationship ended about as badly as I could imagine four months before the big day. Emily had just gotten engaged, and I couldn’t bear to trash my lovingly collected wedding paraphernalia, so I tearfully packed up a box full of wedding books and magazines and the Paloma’s Nest ring bowl we intended to use for the ring warming. My heart was utterly broken, and I didn’t think I would ever be able to think about a wedding, much less attend one without crying.

In a way, I was right.

A few months after my would-be wedding day, I got a letter from Emily asking me to officiate her wedding. The date? June 19.

I said yes immediately, knowing what an honor my friend had bestowed on me, and eager to be a part of such a special day. So many friends shied away from me, refusing to hear my opinion or ask my advice on wedding planning, seeming to think I was cursed. Emily never made me feel that way, something which went a long way toward helping me heal. The hardest thing for me about not getting married (aside, of course, from the broken heart) was that I felt embarrassed. Here I had put all my hopes and dreams, all my planning, all my dress fittings and accessories and wedding invites and engagement pictures on the internet for all to see, and then I never followed through. It was so unlike me, the perpetual planner, the girl who never gives up! I was so embarrassed that I quit blogging. Being part of a community and then, suddenly, no longer belonging there felt like a one-two punch of breakup and abandonment. My initial solution was to withdraw completely from anything and everything wedding. It just hurt too much. But now I know that just because my relationship ended and I never made it to the altar doesn’t mean I’m not still capable of contributing to weddinghood and marriage. Read More…