Five years ago today I woke up and decided that Clare and I would get married. The Supreme Court had made its decision just six days before, and this was the first legal day we could actually do it. After 20 years together, I couldn’t fathom waiting one more second.
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I called the town office and asked the clerk if she would be willing to marry us, as she had done for several other friends. She got very awkward and finally said she just didn’t feel comfortable doing this. I appreciated her honesty. She still issued the license and wished us luck.
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Then I remembered a UU minister friend, and I reached out to her on Facebook of all places. She just happened to be home and free for an hour that afternoon and why yes of course she would love to marry us. That was that.
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I baked a cake and brought a bottle of champagne down to the farmhouse that generations of my family have loved, where my brother and his two sons happened to be staying. My niece was visiting us and got to be the official witness. We had no rings, so my nephews made us rings out of old bailing wire they found in the barn.
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At the designated hour, our minister friend arrived with a bouquet of flowers from her own garden. One nephew retrieved the family of mice from the dollhouse and lined them up on the porch railing so they could watch. The other nephew stayed in the living room and watched the ceremony through night-vision goggles from behind the couch. Because, nephews.
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Later my brother grilled steak and we stood in the yard watching the dragonflies. After dark, I popped open the champagne and served cake and we all wandered back out into the field, which was now filled with thousands of fireflies.
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Our ceremony lasted less than five minutes. I had no elegant dress, there was no church full of universally overjoyed friends and family. There were none of the trappings I used to dream about as a girl. (And believe me, I had some classy dreams for a while there.) Yet somehow, in the end, it was all absolutely perfect.
❤️