(no subject)

[pantryslut]

There is something truly cognitively dissonant about working on an article for Girlfriends' annual wedding issue during Protection of Marriage Week. It's just wrong on so many levels.

Comments

[kiya]

I don't know; I'd be inclined to say that it's deeply and profoundly right. Protecting marriage for real -- all sorts of real marriages.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

If it were anyone else writing it (and there are other writers out there working on their articles for this issue), there would certainly be a delicious irony to it, at the very least.

But my relationship with both weddings and marriage as institutions is so...complicated, that to top it off with that particular juxtaposition is making my head hurt.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Say more?

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll disentangle this a little...

I've been legally married for ten years now.

We eloped. (Eloping is fun! I recommend it to everyone. It felt like running away from home and joining the pirates. If you can't get legally married, grab a friend to officiate and have a secret ceremony somewhere. Giggle a lot. Or at least grin big.)

I had a wedding ceremony in which I married a girl many years ago now, before I got hitched in the eyes of the state, after my girlfriend of the time found a wedding dress that fit her at the Salvation Army. It was very low-budget and DIY, and took place on our back porch. At one point we were going to form a student organization so that we could solicit funding from MSU for it.

We broke up within three months.

I've never, ever understood what all the fuss is over weddings in particular, and I hate going to them as a rule as well (there have been some lovely exceptions). It offends my frugal sensibilities. A lot of the fun of my girl/girl wedding was seeing just how cheaply we could pull it off, because we were poor, poor, poor. I think that we did it on a budget of $200, maybe less. Most of that went to food for the reception. We borrowed or improvised or got donations for everything else. But in general, I've thought that such things were a big waste of time and money better-spent on other, more rewarding frivolities like trips abroad or books or good food or sex toys or donations to good causes, I dunno. Something other than a dress worn once, please.

I am inclined toward the position that we should be working to get the state out of our relationships, rather than inviting them in to mediate further. I would like to see the legal benefits that marriage confers open to all sorts of partnerships, romantic and non-. And single people, too. I got married so that my partner and I could share assets and benefits, and it was a calculated risk. It would be better if people didn't need to pool their resources like that -- and it would also be better if more people had the choice if they wanted to anyway.