A new friend encouraged me last night to begin my blogging adventure by sharing what it's like to be a gay man in San Diego, CA trying to plan my October wedding. I've been at it for what, 3 weeks now? Talk about an emotional roller-coaster already!
The whole idea of marriage is a bit new for me. I never really thought about it, because it was never an option until the end of May. Jae and I have been domestic partners (marriage-light) for years now. Since we've had the commitment for awhile, what's the big deal about getting married? Now, I'm a pretty practical guy, so I was like, let's go to the courthouse, get the license, and have a justice of the peace perform a quiet ceremony with just the two of us. About $100, and poof! we'd have all the legal protections of marriage.
Jae, on the other hand, is more of a romantic. He wants a "real" ceremony... no fancy Bridezilla kind of thing, but something classy with our family and friends. I can see his point, but our families and many of our friends are scattered across the country, so logistics get a little more complex trying to coordinate the big event.
Our first challenge was picking a date. We wanted to get married before the upcoming vote in November, in case CA's voters choose to write discrimination into the state constitution and rescind the rights of its gay and lesbian citizens to marry.
We first chose November 1 to give us as much planning time as possible. We called the various members of our families, except for Jae's mom, who was on a 2 week vacation. Everything looked good, and we start making plans. You see this coming, right? Yep, Jae's mom gets back, and we find out that she's going to be out of the country. Back to square one. It's cool, though. We were pretty quickly able to set the new date for October 4. Woo-hoo! 1 step down, a million more details to go. :-)
So far, we haven't mapped out the actually wedding ceremony. We're both very spiritual but not religious, so it's not going to be a typical, traditional format. More than anything, we want it to be a celebration with our family and friends. Hmmmm...
The biggest disappointment so far is that neither my dad nor Jae's dad are coming. My dad's Southern Baptist, and Jae's dad is Mormon. Neither thinks gay marriage is right according to their religious beliefs. Who knew Baptists and Mormon had so much in common? Actually, I understand their discomfort with the whole idea and respect their right to their beliefs, though I don't agree with their decision. I'm sad that they won't be there to celebrate with us, but I guess it's better that they not bring that kind of negative energy to the party.
So, the cool thing is that we're having the ceremony and reception up at the Grand Pacific Palisades resort where we own a timeshare. We have a whole block of 1 and 2 bedroom condos so that our guests can have a little mini-vacation and have fun hanging out together - and not have to drive anywhere after the reception. We going to get in so much trouble. haha
