For Whom the (Wedding) Bell Tolls
By Yvonne Zipter

With Lawrence et al. v. Texas having set up various state laws—including those banning same-sex marriage—to fall like dominos, I figured it might be time to start thinking about tying the knot. Of course, mortgages, dogs, networks of friends and families, and joint purchases of all manner have already so knotted my gal and I together we are like an out-of-control macramé project. But most governmental offices and anyone with a skintight definition of morality are too dense to see commitment there. No, what matters, apparently, is an hour before a judge or religious dude—not the three days Kathy sat at my bedside in the hospital ten years ago or the fact that I've been asked to take part in her sister's wedding. Still, professing our love in front of those we most cherish and then eating cake seems like a lot more fun than sitting in a hospital, so I'm game!

The big important questions—like where do a Catholic girl and a fallen-away Protestant girl get married, what will we call each other once it's official ("wife," for instance, is off the table: neither of us has evolved enough, I guess, to reclaim that word), and where do we register (Galyan's Sporting Goods? Women and Children First Bookstore? Baker's Square?)—seem too overwhelming to tackle just yet. So I thought I'd start with something I know a thing or two about: writing. Specifically: the wedding announcement. Looking for a model for our potential announcement, I consulted the New York Times wedding section, which now also includes announcements of commitment ceremonies between same-sex couples.

I discovered that even without the same legal rights yet, queers are exactly the same as their hetero counterparts, at least when it comes to the Times' wedding announcements, which are really all pretty much about money: how much money they come from, how much money they're going to make, how much money they've spent, and so on. This is just not going to work for Kathy and me. For instance, consider each couple in the Times—all of whom are posed as though they are conjoined twins attached at the head—and tally up the alums of Vassar, Harvard, Pepperdine, and so on, then compare with Kathy and me: Northern Illinois University and University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. Yup: state-school girls. For every law or medical degree, for every MBA, compare, respectively, our English degree and MFA in fiction writing. Oh, yeah—we are due for some BIG money, honey! And finally, assessing whence they came, look at the long list of parents who are physicians, CEOs, scientists, or professors; for our part, we can throw into the pot a clerk typist, legal secretary, linotype machinist, and cook for the county jail. Kathy's dad did, I'll be honest, give up being a cop to become a stockbroker, but I'm not sure that's enough for us to squeak by. It ain't like we've got McJobs, but we sure ain't Vanderbilts or Rockefellers either.

I guess this listing of pedigree—much like for our former racing dogs—does tell you something about these folks (like they're probably not scraping mold off the cheddar before putting it on their burger), but I don't think what it tells you is anything that really matters. Not like that she has a bell-chime of a laugh, or that she is constantly breaking out in song, or how sweet she looks when lying eye to eye with the dog on the floor, or that she has a thatch of Opie hair at the back of her head when her hair's cut too short.

No doubt these wedding announcements have some sort of very telling legal/economic/historic reason for containing the information they do, which, though now outdated, is still observed. But basically, since what it all boils down to now is bragging, I figure why not brag about things that actually matter to us? So ours might start something like: Kathy Forde, who made a great pass along the boards in her last hockey game, will be married to Yvonne Zipter, who found just the right word for her most recent poem . . . .

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