LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Student CAMP: Wedded Bliss |
by Kristen Minor |
I have of late taken to calling August "that month with the weddings." There are two that I am involved withone is a marriage in which I am the maid of honor (a misnomer if there ever was one) and the other is the commitment ceremony of a lesbian couple that has turned into the gay social event of the season. The weddings are happening two weeks apart, and since three of the four people involved are members of my fraternity there is a significant amount of overlap in population. Preparations for both have been entertaining, frustrating, and joyful to various degrees, and I have to say that the sharp contrast between the two ceremonies has made me spend an awful lot of time thinking about this thing we call marriage.
The weddingthe legal one, that isis largely textbook, as near as I can tell. I spend my time with the bride-to-be discussing invitations, what color the dresses should be, and flower arrangements. It is to be outdoors; I have already been warned of the idiosyncrasies of every relative on both sides who is to be attending, down to the third cousin with a facial tic. I have never really been involved in a wedding. As a kid I was the requisite flower girl or junior bridesmaid for assorted cousins, but the intricacies of the ceremony are rather lost on an eight year old. I had no idea the whole mess was so damned complicatedthere are times when I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of details, and I'm just the one standing next to the people making a lifetime commitment. There might be something to be said for happily living in sin. And then there is the other wedding. One of the girls involved is a co-worker of mine; I see her almost every day. These days she will talk for hours about the complications of the ceremony, but her and her lover's complications are significantly different. To quote, "how the hell do two girls get married, anyway?" We don't exactly have generations of traditions to fall back on in this regard. For starters, those of us on the sidelines aren't even entirely sure what to call it. Are they getting married? Well, no, not in the legal sense, and it feels wrong to me to call it a marriage ceremony when calling it such seems to underscore that it quite spectacularly is not one. It's not a civil union eitherdespite the fact that the ceremony is taking place in Vermont, they aren't going to do a civil union. There's not much point to it when you aren't going to be living in Vermont, and if any state does decide to come to its senses complications might ensue. For the moment we are content to say that Katie and Lisa are getting committed, but somehow that doesn't convey the seriousness of the occasion. Some details have been a slap in the face. One of the families is, to put it mildly, not at all pleased that their daughter is marrying another woman, and, with a few exceptions is boycotting the wedding. My friend sayswith a note of sadness that shouldn't have to be therethat she hopes her mother will come around eventually. Having your mother feel that you are marrying the antichrist is a bit of an undercut to happiness. They're also having to fill out a staggering amount of legal paperwork that heterosexual couples don't have to do. It's largely because of this bit that most of us aren't calling it a marriageit seems like marrying folks don't have to spend near as much time defending their right to exist. There are all kinds of small things that have come up as well. They made their own gift registryonline ones require one of the couple to be called a husband, the other, a wife. Are both in dresses? Who gets a bachelor party? When it's two women and it's all based on a man and a woman, should you ditch everything and start over? It's a bit complicated. In discussing the wedding with one of my friends, I took to wondering at the purpose of weddings in general for folks like us. Why not just the people in question, perhaps a ring exchanged and some words said? In the end a life together is a private thing, after all. I realized later that the point of it all is that it's publicif acts are meaningless unless witnessed, then it is perhaps a good thing to invite all of your friends over to see and then dance the funky chicken. I have to say that my friends are giving me hopethat such a thing as two women falling in love happens, and that sometimes the women involved are strong enough to stand together and let the world witness. I look forward to seeing it. Kristen Minor, a member of the class of 2004 at Dartmouth College, is spending her summer doing a cross-linguistic survey of the phenomenon of quantifier float, which is exactly as interesting as it sounds. She's not planning on getting married anytime soon, much to the relief of her parents. E-mail Kristen@youth-guard.org. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 13, No. 9, July 11, 2003 |