You May Now Kiss the Bride
I’ve always thought there was something extra romantic about a civil wedding ceremony. I love the utter f-u to the Martha Stewart and Conde Nast-induced stress over the stuff you had never heard of before planning a wedding (fondant, georgette, bustle, e.g.) I love the quick in-and-out, nobody gets hurt simplicity. And I especially love that it breaks a wedding down to its most crucial element: making your commitment official. Legal. Lifelong.
(Of course, I love a party, so my own wedding was the rager of a lifetime, with, yes, some of the above b.s., and no, not in a courthouse. No georgette, though — no white dress, even. But many tears of joy and excitement.)
Since the gay marriage ban was lifted in mid-June, conveniently in time for the summer wedding season, gay and lesbian couples in California have been rushing city halls for their turn at the altar – before the ban is potentially reinstated in November, when Proposition 8 returns to the ballot. There’s a tick-tock hysteria about it, which is fun for some couples, but a nightmare for others – particularly those with one commitment-phobic partner running out of excuses not to clip his/her wings.
And by God, there were wings a-clippin’ last Thursday at 3:05p, when I arrived at the Beverly Hills Courthouse to witness the civil ceremony of our friends Bonnie and Kim. Gay couples – and some straight – lined up 2×2 like Noah’s Arc before the flood.
What does one wear to a lesbian wedding, at 3 o’clock on a weekday afternoon? You dress up, I figured. A guest should honor the occasion and the couple, while trying not to upstage them (which is hard not to do, when the bride arrives in her very best cargo pants and a cleanly pressed shirt.) I chose a bright tweed skirt and an orange blouse. Daytime, but not too businessy, and not too frilly. Our friend Eduardo, dressed in a fabulous linen suit, was immediately mistaken for 1/2 of a betrothed couple. His penalty for dressing up, I suppose. Oh, well. Everyone was feelin’ the love at the Courthouse.
You’d think that my romanticization of courthouse ceremonies would mean that I had attended one or two — and not just seen them on TV. But I hadn’t, and my expectations were low: a long line, a teller window, grabbing a nice old lady nearby as a witness. I was so excited for Bonnie and Kim to have this kinship with the rest of us married folk — to finally feel normal and regular in a world which often made them feel like outcasts — that suddenly I realized that the cool, f-u part of a straight couple choosing a civil ceremony might seem like a cheap, second-rate option when it was your only one. I worried that they would miss out on (ok, the less important, but nonetheless wonderful) parts of a wedding that make it special, like…flowers. So, I brought the brides two hand-tied wedding bouquets, dressed in my Thursday afternoon finest, and hoped for the best.
I was right about the long line and the teller window, where Bonnie and Kim waited for a good half hour with their carefully filled-out paperwork, nervous that they wouldn’t reach the front before their 3:30p call time. Meanwhile, we, the entourage of 10 friends and relatives, sat on adjacent benches comparing the digital and video cameras we brought to record the occasion, wondering why none of the other couples in line had dressed-up friends, too, and if we would miss the big moment in question while we sat cluelessly nearby.
But it turns out that the good people of the California court system (or of the Beverly Hills version, anyway) have a lot of respect for the vestiges of wedding tradition. Bonnie and Kim – and all the other 2×2 couples – were afforded a real live ceremony, which would prove much more special than I would have ever thought:
At the appointed time, we were instructed to follow a smiling, statuesque, robed woman (“Gospel singer or judge?” someone wondered aloud) into a small room appointed with folding chairs facing a podium adorned by a (fake, but lovely) white floral altar. The door closed – laminated “Please Do Not Disturb: Wedding in Progress” keeping the riff-raff out – and a 5-minute-long, wonderful ceremony ensued. The robed goddess, Judge Nancy, turned out to be an orator of grace and warmth, laying the significance and the promise of marriage onto Bonnie and Kim like a warm blanket. She asked them to acknowledge that marriage is “not entered into lightly,” and that it is “about lifetime partnership.” And then, by the power vested in Nancy by the State of California, she pronounced them “Bonnie and Kim, spouses for life.”
And just like a million other California civil ceremonies before this one, and many more to come, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
K + B = hitched!
