I found it so easy to judge other people’s ceremonies. Then, along came Thomas.
If you’re reading this, and I attended your wedding, I’d like to apologize for my behavior.
You probably didn’t notice, what with the bouquet tossing, the garter belt removing and the photo session in a flower-festooned gazebo. Don’t worry, it’s not like I made out with the best man (even if I wanted to).
Rather, I congratulated you. I selected a gift from your registry and sent it “with best wishes.” But … how do I put this politely? Beneath my proper facade, I hated your wedding and did not want to be there.
For most of my life, such invitations overwhelmed me with dread on arrival, much like the way I feel receiving a jury summons. The sight of so much curlicue font and overwrought wording — “Mr. and Mrs. So & So kindly request the honor” — made me want to shriek.
It was an inglorious free-fall from there.
Rehearsal? Holding me hostage so I can be told where to stand flabbergasts me.
Vows? Sappy words that make me want to plug my ears and run for the door.
Destination wedding? I prefer to save my vacation time for, well, my vacation.
Worst of all, weddings bring out bad behavior. Like the time a colleague got married and her new mother-in-law could not stop ranting about how the relationship wouldn’t last and her baby deserved better. By then, I was deep into my second martini.
I long believed the only thing worse than attending any such ritual would be being in my own. Which brings me to Thomas. Forgive my not so humble bragging, but the man is perfect husband material: Kind, creative, kooky, a fantastic cook who learned from his elegant Italian and Lithuanian parents, as opposed to mimicking recipes from a TV segment the way some amateur (ahem, me) might do.
We met the old-fashioned way, at a trashy gay bar. It was on a September night in Manhattan in 1996, and friends had dragged us both there. Among the first words we said to each other was how little we enjoyed such places.
So we left.
Wandering the city, we learned the basics about one another. Thomas was starting out as a theater director while assisting a famous playwright. I’d just finished graduate school and was hoping to sell my first novel. When it came to dating, I was terribly skittish, which he discovered at the end of the evening when suggesting we have dinner the following week.
My response: “It has to be tomorrow, or I’ll chicken out. Also, I need a picture, because when I meet someone I like, I can never remember their face after. It’ll make me nervous.”
“Let me find a photo,” Thomas said, helpfully.
“I’ll just take this framed group photo off your wall,” I replied.
Later, Thomas told me he woke in the morning and wondered if I was a weirdo. I am a weirdo, thank you very much. But this weirdo showed up the next night for our date and returned his picture. I never needed help remembering his face again.
For a long time, I qualified big steps in our relationship by tossing out the caveat, “If we’re still dating in a week/month/year….”
I got away with such bunkum until 2008, when Proposition 8 was overturned. On television, exultant gay couples rushed to marry. While I felt happy for them and believed we deserved equal rights, marriage — never mind the dreaded W word — remained in my “no thanks” category.
It might’ve stayed there except, in the midst of a discussion about getting a dog, I hauled out, “If we’re still dating — ”
Thomas cut me short. “We aren’t just dating. Someday … I’d like to be … I mean … will you … marry me?”
I said yes … to getting a dog. That other topic? I promised to think about it.
As any therapist would advise, I looked to my childhood to determine if my disdain for weddings was commingled with my trepidation about marriage. Growing up, I spent too much time comforting my mother as she wept about the parade of women my father was seeing.
Easy to blame that history, though Thomas and I shared a harmonious life. So why did I dodge the topic for another decade?
Partly because of circumstances that pushed marriage from the forefront of our minds. In that time, our apartment burned down. We bounced from hotel rooms to people’s spare bedrooms, until, regrettably, living apart for a stretch. Saddest of all, my father died in a motorcycle wreck.
When Thomas and I finally moved back into our rebuilt apartment, the pandemic arrived. We packed our car with the idea of leaving town for a few weeks. That was two years ago.
Through it all, I felt no more clearheaded on the prospect of marriage, though one thing I never doubted: if I was going to marry anyone, it would be Thomas.
Maybe it was all that history, so many happy times, so many sad times, too. Whatever the reason, when he asked in the spring of 2021, I simply said yes.
My preferred choice of venue: town hall, with a guest list capped at zero. When we rolled into the county clerk’s office, jockeying for space with men filling out fishing applications, it proved too impersonal a setting even for me. The woman behind the counter slid a number in our direction, saying, “Call the town justice. She’ll come to your house.”
On Sept. 14, 2021, 25 years from the date we met, a judge stood with us and a few loved ones in our backyard and we were married. Afterward, I surprised myself once more by saying I didn’t think I’d ever hate a wedding again.
My scorn, I realized, had come from the fact that for so long, I was expected to witness these momentous occasions but was not allowed to be married, too. And when same-sex couples were finally granted the right, I had the opposite reaction of all those who rushed to do it, thinking, “You know what you can do with your sacred institution.” Frankly, it hardened my heart to it all.
And so, my apology: I’m sorry if on your special day, I was only going through the motions. What I’m trying to say: I was working out some stuff.
As for our nuptials, it wouldn’t be a wedding without bad behavior, right? While we croaked out our heartfelt vows, our dog trotted onto the lawn and, in a scene-stealing performance, did her business. Twice. What could we do but laugh?
After all, weddings bring out the worst in people — dogs too, apparently. Also, as I’ve learned, they bring out the best. The happy tears! The toasts! Most especially, the gathering together in the name of love, which after what we’ve all been through in recent years, feels more meaningful than ever.
So, if you’re reading this and planning your special day, send an invitation my way — the more curlicue font the better. My husband and I would be honored to attend.
John Searles’s new novel, Her Last Affair, is out this month from MarinerBooks/HarperCollins. Follow him on Instagram @johnsearles and Twitter @searlesbooks and Facebook.
