Gary and I have been together for more than 8 years now. For around the last 5 we've talked about and planned our wedding. What church it would be at, where we'd have the reception, who would take the photographs (we've narrowed it down to Jerry Ghionis or Jasmine Star - we just need to win the lottery to afford them). We've planned the outfits, the first dance song. Basically, we have planned EVERYTHING.
We realised that the wedding we want will be expensive, it will be big and white, and have all the fancy trimmings. BEcause, that's the kind of wedding that we want. We want a day of total, utter and all encompassing luxury. So, we knew that we would have to wait. Wait until I'd finally got a "real job" (as opposed to scrabbling around part-time as a PhD student). Wait until we had paid off more bills, got money in the bank for Cassius's future. So, we planned, but our intention was always to wait.
When I proposed to Gary on leap day (2012) it wasn't like an out-of-the-blue thing. It was essentially a plot on my behalf to either get a pretty ring or a pretty dress. When he said yes, and gave me a pretty ring I was overjoyed. Immediately people began asking the question "So, when's the wedding?" Our stock response was, "in a few years", "when Claire's finished uni", "when we can afford the wedding we want". And we were happy with this.
Then, around Christmas time some things happened. Things that really made us evaluate what was important. We had been talking for a few months about me publishing under my to-be married name, so there was no disconnect in my research publications. We kept talking about the fact that we needed to make wills, since otherwise our house would not be guarunteed to one of us if the other died. For me, the other pressing issue was that Cassius would be able to stay with Gary should "the worst" happen. We'd talked around these things, we'd looked at compromises and how we could patch-work these things until we got married.
Then stuff happened (personal stuff that I'm not going to share) and brought into sharp focus just how important it was for us to REALLY, OFFICIALLY be a family. Gary and I sat in the kitchen together, talking about all of the things that we needed to do. All of the practical and pragmatic reasons for us to get married. The only thing negating this was our desire to have our dream wedding day.
Then Gary said "lets separate them. We can get married now, and have the wedding later". This is why I know he's the man for me, how I know that we are meant to be together, because this suggestion made perfect sense! It solved all of our "legal" issues, and provided us with the security we needed. And still allowed us to have our perfect day.
When we made this decision, it was important to us that our getting married now, was in no way considered to be our "wedding". We want all of our friends and family to share in our wedding day, like they would any other "real" wedding. We didn't want the wedding day to be seen as some sort of secondary event, because it most certainly wont be!
So, we agreed to have only a few people at the marriage ceremony, the most important being our Grandmothers. We wanted to go to the register office, sign the papers and be "married". So that's what we've done.
We don't want a big fuss now, as far as we are concerned this was just a legal thing. Yes, we're delighted to be Mr and Mrs. But we still want our wedding day. And we are going to expect all of those who are invited to it, to treat it as the "real" wedding that it truly will be. We are really looking forward to sharing that day with you and we hope that you will understand our decision.
Essentially, we got married, but we haven't had the wedding yet. When we do, we'll want all of you there.
xxx
