A tale of my two weddings

Happy Pride Month! 

It takes guts to be out and proud. I have first-hand experience. 

But my first, first-hand experience? Being in a heterosexual marriage for seventeen years. 

And let me tell you, life’s easy when you’re heteronormal.

When we got engaged, I shouted the news out to everyone! Any random stranger on the street knew.

It was fun planning the wedding, putting our engagement news in the paper, and it was easy calling the Catholic Church to reserve our date. 

Fast forward, and I’ll spare the details…the marriage ended.

Fast forward again…I was ready to start dating and wasn’t sure if I was looking for a man or a woman. 

Gender reveal — it was a woman! The love of my life :) 

When Candace and I got engaged in early 2015, we were elated! But the overall experience was meh.

First, same sex marriage wasn’t even legal.

I was selective about who I told. Were they safe to tell? If I wasn’t sure, I’d stay quiet. I stayed quiet a lot.

Sharing the announcement in the paper? I didn’t even try out of fear of being rejected, shamed, or hassled. 

And good thing we didn’t want to be married in a church because that would have been difficult or impossible. We even asked a liberal judge to marry us and were turned down.

We started exploring a destination wedding in an accepting state. And it was around this time that I got pissed. 

So many workarounds and roadblocks. Planning our wedding was supposed to be fun, not drudgery.

And here’s the kicker — I was the same woman I once was (well, not true, I was 10x more badass and evolved than I was in my first marriage ;) but I suddenly went from having rights to being stripped of them.

What a mind f*&%.

So we decided to put the wedding on hold and impatiently wait for the Supreme Court’s decision.

June 26, 2015, was a wonderfully historic day. We could legally marry in TN! The Supreme Court gave back my rights. 

I was thankful, but also — what an eye-roll.

My two wedding experiences taught me so much, namely.

- When I had rights, I took them for granted.

- Life is smoother when you fit in.

- Life is livelier when you have to work to overcome inequities. 

It’s called Pride Month because it takes guts and self-pride to live free and authentic, regardless of other people's opinions and brules (bullshit rules). 

And no matter how you identify, I hope you're living free and authentic. 

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