Now, here I am, "getting committed." In my opinion, many brides are deserving of the other version of "getting committed." They lose their minds, dwell on details, completely forget what the focus of the whole wedding is about, and generally go completely the hell overboard. Bridezillas even have their own TV show now. Based on a fear of this whole fiasco, I have successfully avoided having a ceremony of any kind until my 39th year. Then, Lisa put "get committed" on my bucket list and now I either have to have a ceremony of some kind with her, or go to the state mental hospital-I have yet to determine which one she meant. Either way, I get to cross it off the list. :)
Once the decision to get hitched was made, we had to decide on all the particulars. When? What? How? These are things I had avoided thinking about for most of my life. In our situation, none of the traditional stuff applies. I mean, when do we do this-how do we set a date?
"Well, your brother is getting married next year, and my nephew this summer, and I think you have several cousins getting married soon....can we slide ours in somewhere? Maybe the fall?"
What do we do? What kind of wedding do we want? Traditional?
"I'm not wearing a tux," Lisa said. "And I'm not wearing a dress either."
I asked, "What are you going to do? Get married naked?"
"HOW ABOUT A STAR WARS WEDDING!!!??? I could grow my hair out and be Princess Leia." She was so excited about that one.
"Only if you agree to march into Darth Vader's theme music," I bargained.
There will be no Star Wars wedding.
We both come from fairly conservative families and backgrounds. We wanted to make sure we didn't demean of or sully the idea of traditional man/woman marriage while still having a fun and valid commitment ceremony. Lisa and I just aren't traditional "you wear the tux, and I'll wear the dress" kind of people. Our modes of dress are based on the day, the event, if it's a good hair day, the angle of the sun, and sometimes the phase of the moon. We reside in that amorphorous, hard-to-pin-down gender space that keeps us happily away from defined roles and labels. There is no wedding cake topper for that. It was also very important to us to keep the ceremony light, fun and totally comfortable for our guests. What's more fun than a costume party? A costume wedding!! That single decision made all the other decisions fall easily into place. Okay, I'm lying, but it did make the invitations and the decorations pretty easy.
Nothing prepared me for how much crap goes into wedding planning. Good Lord! No wonder happy brides turn into scary versions of the devil in white lace. There's too much stress in worrying about who you might offend if you don't invite them, and who it would offend if you do invite them. So we went with the "Screw it! We are inviting who we want" school of thought. Then we had to figure out if we wanted people IN the ceremony. Luckily, Lisa only has one brother, and I only have one sister, that made it kind of easy. No harm, no foul, and neither of my brothers is going to be hurt that they don't get to be a matron of honor. :)
Next we had to split up the work. I'm doing the flowers, the decorations, lining up the official, lining up the costumes, lining up photography, and putting the music on the ipod. Lisa is in charge of the venue, the food (including a spectacular cake), the invitations, the registry (at Target-pronounced Tar-Jay), me, and anything else that comes up. I have blueprints, spreadsheets and maps. She has a Rainman-like mind. We make a good team.
Lisa did an amazing job designing the e-vite and the paper invitations that went out to family and certain friends. She had the added task of putting a "coming out" letter in each of her invitations. This took courage and I'm so impressed with her. It's one thing to announce you are getting hitched...entirely another to tell your Catholic family you are getting hitched to that "friend" that always comes along to things. As the RSVP's come in, all but one or two family members have been fabulously supportive of her. It's wonderful to see and has been great for Lisa.
So, at T-minus 12 days and counting, the costumes are done (I'm sworn to secrecy and have been threatened with scalping if I tell anyone about them), the hall is rented, the cake is ordered, the decorations are 75% complete, the RSVP's are coming in, the food is planned, the family is ready, we're hitting right on the budget, and the flowers are in the works. Best of all, my blood pressure is normal. I'll probably forget something. A few things might not go according to plan, but I don't really care. Because the end result is all that matters to me-that I'm finally committed to the Cleaning Fairy, and that everyone had a great time at the committing.
