Dance lessons

[stephfromMIT]

Scout-I appreciate those recommendations. Even though I'm a butch lesbian, I'm also very traditional. I've always dreamed of finding that person to grow old with, love honor, cherish. KWIM? I'm grateful I found her when I was 15 years old. From your post, you sound surprised I'm so traditional.

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by stephfromMIT

Scout-I appreciate those recommendations. Even though I'm a butch lesbian, I'm also very traditional. I've always dreamed of finding that person to grow old with, love honor, cherish. KWIM? I'm grateful I found her when I was 15 years old. From your post, you sound surprised I'm so traditional.

Dear Stephanie,

No I’m not surprised at your wedding plan choices.

You’ve made me start thinking though, about whether gay or lesbian or butch-femme or poly (why not?), or other LGBT weddings will have an impact on straight weddings, and/or the other way around.

Before legalized gay marriage, there was the Commitment Ceremony, which was and remains to be, I think, pretty inventive; almost as if rejecting the traditional wedding option, from which gays and lesbians have been excluded.

I’m not saying one kind of wedding is better than any other, I’m saying this is an interesting time to watch what happens with weddings, in our various gay and lesbian communities.

So far, the media has shown us two brides in white dresses or a butch-femme bride and groom. You could sort of say this first wave of LGBT weddings has a reactionary tone to it, that subsequent gay and lesbian weddings won’t have. Or not.

I’ve been to three straight weddings in the last few years, and I’m attending another one, this October.

My nephew, who has no religious affiliation (he was never baptized, never taken to church, and one Christmas revealed that he thought Mary was Jesus’s girlfriend), married a Jewish woman and they chose to include in their ceremony two symbolic aspects of a Jewish wedding—the chuppah, which he made as a bonding activity with his best and oldest buds, and the stomping of the glass; which both he and the bride did, because they like what it represents (some say), about their union never being undone, just as broken glass can never be whole again.

The ceremony was conducted by their friend who is a non-denominational minister, and there was no mention of god—though there was much talk of love. The ceremony was held at the top of a hill, on a ranch in San Luis Obispo, where they all went to college.

My other nephew is getting married this fall in an historic house in Kentucky, and it will not be a religious event, either. He and his fiancé are extremely creative, unorthodox people, and I’m really curious to see what they come up with.

One of my best girlfriends was married a couple years ago, in an old church in Rhode Island, and that was a traditional Catholic ceremony, very god-focused. It was also very fairy-tale-like (I’m saying this because of her big puffy dress, the towering church spires, the church bells, the little children strewing rose petals—almost dreamlike, it was so pretty), and centered on talk of love. The groom’s voice broke as he declared his vows, and the dance party afterwards was phenomenal.

One wedding I didn’t attend but was told about was that of an acquaintance of mine, a woman who is Jewish and white, and whose fiancé is black, Christian and from the South. They chose, she said, as part of their ceremony, the jumping of the broom, which of course, is part of African slave culture in the United States.

All these choices came from the bride’s and groom’s experience, their cultural identity and conscious departure from or embracing of that identity. All are variations on a template that involves making a public declaration of commitment in a special place. All have elements that are unique to the people getting married.

So I’m wondering where your choices are coming from, that’s all. And again, no, your choices don’t surprise me. Weddings are such a new frontier, and such an old one, and nothing about them surprises me.

[stephfromMIT]

My choices, I guess, come from seeing the weddings around me, and my belief that the only difference between those weddings and mine is the lack of a groom in mine.