Manolo for the Brides

Two days ago the California Supreme Court ruled that people have a ‘fundamental right to marry’ and that gender restrictions violate the equal protection guarantee in the state constitution.

While the war for marriage equality has been going on for some time, this particular battle began in 2004 when Mayor Gavin Newsome announced that gay marriage would be legal in San Francisco, regardless of the law in the rest of the state. Gay and lesbian couples flocked to the city, got married, and were then told their marriages were invalid because of a law passed in 2000 declaring “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California.” After that law was passed by voters, California developed one of the strongest domestic partnership laws in the country…but that still isn’t the same as marriage.

When I heard the news of this ruling, what struck me was how the wording sounded familiar to me in content. I heard a distant echo of Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka which struck down racially segregated public schools in 1954. The argument then was that ’separate but equal’ as a policy may always be separate, but was almost never equal.

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Recently, I watched an episode of the WE TV series Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?, that blandly unconsidered look into the world of wedding planning. This episode, however, was more interesting than most. It was a look back at several couples featured on the show with updates about their lives and marriages. The first couple profiled had had a bad first year of marriage. In fact, they’d been on the verge of divorce around the eight month mark.

How can any couple hit the skids that hard that fast? Well, listening to the bride was like hearing a recipe for disaster in the making.

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A now seemingly defunct user-contributed creative writing site called Not Attending asked people to decline a wedding invitation from Kate and Haje. There were no rules…writers could say “thanks, but no thanks” as politely or rudely as they pleased. Here’s one of my favorites:

Most support of the loss of dear Kate in the Haje-machine from us. To be unlifed is very hard when young, especially for the old. Who are left.

The project ended in February of 2007, but just for fun I created a login and a saved post–which you can still do–to see if the site’s admins ever monitor activity on the site.

Now on to item deux! In the legalese chapter of iDo, I briefly mention Montana’s unique double-proxy wedding law, a subject explored in more depth in a recent NY Times piece by Dan Barry. In that state, neither the bride nor the groom need be present at a civil wedding provided at least one of them is a Montana resident or on active duty in the military.

It seems the law had been on Montana’s books for at least several decades, perhaps to accommodate soldiers during World War II…The cost to the real bride and groom: $900, $50 apiece to the proxies, $100 to the judge, $150 to the lawyer (and witness); $53 for court fees; $14 for two certified copies of the marriage certificate; and the rest to a Pennsylvania couple who run a business facilitating proxy marriages.

As they say on the site, proxy marriages are their specialty.

And onto item trois: Long ago, a certain Ellie brought LifeGem to my attention. You may remember them as the company that would create a manufactured gemstone from the ashes of a deceased loved one. Now the company can whip you up a stone using only a thickish lock of hair, which means that you can wear a bit of your intended if you’re so inclined.

Finally, for the men in the audience, I’m happy to share the newly revamped Groom Groove video section. According to Groom Groove promoter Aubree, there’s all sorts of new content scattered throughout the site. Here’s a taste:

I deleted a very nasty comment earlier today — luckily it was caught in the spam trap and not out there for all the world to see. The comment wasn’t about me. Rather, it was about one of the happy couples whose story and picture I put up on the blog days, months, or years ago. It made me feel cynical and sad, and when I feel cynical and sad I usually spend a little time looking for something that will made me feel good in equal measure. Balance, and all that.

What I found was an old essay by Herbert Stein, published in 1997 in Slate. Entitled ‘Watching the couples go by,’ it really touched my heart, so I thought I’d share some of it here.

I am concentrating on the married couples. How do I know that those men and women walking two-by-two up to the Kennedy Center are married to each other? Well, 75 percent of all men between the ages of 30 and 75 are married, so if you see a man in that age group walking with a woman to the Kennedy Center—which is not exactly Club Med—it’s a good bet that the two are married, and almost certainly to each other.

I look particularly at the women in those couples. They are not glamorous. There are no Marlene Dietrichs, Marilyn Monroes, or Vivien Leighs among them. (It is a sign of my age that I can’t think of the name of a single living glamorous movie actress.) Some of them are pretty, but many would be considered plain. Since they are on their way to the Kennedy Center, presumably to attend a play, an opera, or a concert, one may assume that they are somewhat above average in cultural literacy. But in other respects one must assume that they are, like most people, average.

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Before you can start making serious plans for your wedding, there’s one thing it’s smart to do: decide on the other person who will stand at the altar with you. The trouble is sometimes it’s hard to tell whether you’re thinking about settling down, or just about settling. Are you reacting to your heart, or someone else’s expectations? Some people, sadly, don’t figure it out until the wedding is over.

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I’m the first one to say that marriage isn’t always about ZOMG PASSION. First kisses, those are about passion. Romantic weddings? Passion-o-rama. Post break-up youknowwhatsie? Whoa Nelly! But marriage…marriage is occasionally antipassion, a substance that has a lot in common with antimatter. But, hey, there’s gotta be some passion, because that little spark that makes you feel all googlywoogly in your stomach when you look at your mate should never die out completely.

Unless, that is, you are one Lori Gottlieb, a woman who has apparently made a career out of airing her complexities (read: issues) in the public eye. In a recent article entitled Marry Him! she asserts that every single woman everywhere, no matter how satisfied, no matter how independent, wants a man, any man, as in “oh please for the love of God send a man so I can get married because there is no greater fulfillment for a woman!”

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.

To Gottlieb, marriage and by extension men (there’s no mention of what lesbians want) are nothing more than a means to an end. If you want security and a permanent live-in partner, then you need to start looking past his lack of wit, his lack of culture, and his lack of personality so you can start looking at what he does have, namely a pulse and a job.

I’m actually pro-settling to a certain extent. One line in the article, “I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category” really resonated with me. I happen to believe that there are tons of great guys who fall into the doesn’t-have-cool-hair-laughs-at-inappropriate-times-a-little-pudgy-can’t-dance-worth-a-damn category.

The point, however, is not that you settle for these rare and wonderful creatures. Rather, it’s that you give them a chance, find out that in addition to playing a mean game of WoW they’re secret sex machines, and then thank the Lord that some other lucky lady didn’t snap them up first. You don’t say, oh, ho hum, I’m just shy of forty so I better snare the first set of XY chromosomes who happens along so I don’t turn into a lonely old hag.

Unless, like I said, you’re Lori Gottlieb, in which case you’re probably going to spend your life sighing over romantic comedies while a husband who bores the crap out of you is off puttering around his workshop. Or not. As a friend of mine put it, “What, exactly, is she bringing to the table? Naked desperation and a ton of to-be-delegated responsibility? I, for one, am SHOCKED she hasn’t found a guy willing to “settle” for that.”

Heh.

Picture this: Your wedding, as they say, is in the bag. You’ve got your dress… maybe the elegant Casablanca number that C* linked to in the comments of Saturday’s post. Your gals adore the bridesmaid dresses they helped you pick out and have long since placed their orders. Favors? They’re all taken care of. The ceremony site? Reserved. The reception venue? Ditto.

From an outsider’s perspective, nothing should be interfering with your pre-matrimonial bliss, and yet there’s a definite snag in the fabric of your happiness. Second thoughts have reared their ugly heads. More than a moment’s doubt, these thoughts have been messing with your mind, making you question your commitment to your impending, um, commitment. And I don’t mean second thoughts about the dress, the cake, the photog, or the rings.

I’m talking about cold feet to the nth degree — full on “Oh my god am I making the right decision about this man and this marriage” jitters.

It’s more common than you might think. Many if not most brides (and grooms) experience at least one OHCRAPOHCRAPOHCRAP moment wherein they wonder if the secret of permanent happiness truly does lie in the land of the single gal (or guy). Ramen-fueled nights spent posting on Match.com aside, there’s plenty to love about going solo. You can come and go as you please without having to answer to anyone. Your post-tax, post-bill, post-necessities income is yours and yours alone. And you can change your mind a million times without your indecision impacting anyone but you.

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Every now and again, a story comes along that really exemplifies what a good marriage is. The December 20th edition of the Yellow Springs News Online brings us one of these tales in their profile of Ed and Nancy Vernot. Ed and Nancy have not let a little thing like her incapacitating stroke and subsequent move to a nursing home stop them having a marriage many would envy.

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Susan Piver, author of The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say “I Do” (a reeeeaaaaally great book), write up an abbreviated list of questions that engaged couples ought to discuss before tying the knot. Some highlights:

Question 2: Who is responsible for keeping our house and yard cared for and organized? Are we different in our needs for cleanliness and organization?

Question 3: How much money do we earn together? Now? In one year? In five years? Ten? Who is responsible for which portion? Now? In one year? Five? Ten?

Question 6: How much time will each of us spend at work, and during what hours? Do we begin work early? Will we prefer to work into the evening?

Question 7: If one of us doesn’t want to work, under what circumstances, if any, would that be okay?

Question 8: How ambitious are you? Are we comfortable with the other’s level of ambition?

Before I got hitched, I made sure to ask The Beard whether he wanted kids and how many he might like to have because I’ve known too many couples for whom the possibility of children became a point of contention. Luckily, we were on the same page. What questions did you absolutely need to ask before agreeing to to commit to your partner?