Think of the children!

[muckefuck]

There's a scene near the end of The wedding banquet (a comedy about a partnered gay man who enters a sham marriage to please his family) where the beard pleads with the odd man out to stay in the relationship "for the sake of the baby". It got a good laugh in theatres because, at the time (1993), the idea of children being raised in non-traditional families was pretty new to most people, who never imagined hearing such a hackneyed phrase in such a situation.

Of all the reasons I thought of (most of which I rejected) for having some kind of public commitment ceremony to mark our legal marriage, I never once considered doing it "for the children". But when I floated the idea of having some sort of reception next year (perhaps coinciding with our one-year anniversary) to my sister on the phone to her last night, this was the justification she shared with me.

AWI is reportedly old enough now to begin cluing into murmurings about same-sex marriage among his peers, and my sister wants to make sure he's got strong reinforcement of her stance on it from the home. Apparently, the notion that "Uncle monshu and Uncle Da" could get married was something of a revelation to him, and so she thinks that marking the occasion in some way would make it "more real" to him and his sibs.

I hadn't really been thinking in terms of a family-friendly affair, but what the hell. Of course, given that they've been brought up on a steady diet of Catholic church weddings, I'm stumped what exactly would fit the bill. I mean, no way in hell are we standing up for this; you're not even going to get the Old Man in a tie. I'm thinking maybe a donut cake with two grooms on top and we're golden.

Comments

[tortipede.livejournal.com]

As a straight couple who'd decided we didn't want to get married, but also didn't want to miss out on the party/reception/public-and-family-celebration aspect of the whole thing, we just booked a whole restaurant for lunch. It was in the process of regaining its Michelin star that it had lost after a change of chef, and they discussed all the menu options with us at length, and the decorations, and the drinks, and made a very good job of serving about 40 covers as nearly simultaneously as was possible.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The whole reason we got married was to save money!

[tortipede.livejournal.com]

Well, given that the average wedding in the UK now costs nearly a year's average household net income (approximately $30k vs approx $33k), one could argue that we did it on the cheap... but only in relative terms: in absolute terms it cost a big wadge of money that we didn't have. I think I'll shut up now...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

All the same, congrats on pulling off a real old-fashioned wedding just like the ones I read about in 19th century novels!