You luck out and find a person where you both agree that you really believe that you're capable of taking care of each other, like...no matter what. Like in the most earnest no-questions-asked kind of way. The literal embodiment of "ride or die".
Side note: the "state-recognized companionship model" is, in my opinion, too narrow. In the vast majority of places, it's limited to two people of opposite assigned sexes at birth. In places where the model can/does include more people, it skews towards polygyny. So, yeah, I don't agree with that part. I personally think it should be any number of consenting adults who say, "Hey, it's just more efficient to live collectively and be able to take care of each other as a group–officially and in a sexually agnostic way." Anyway, I digress. Real people don't talk like that. Suffice it to say: pronatalism is a helluva drug.
That's not to say that the two concepts can't coexist together. It's more like on top of that model, i.e. optionally, you can distribute some bonus points across a spectrum of other attributes. Like: love, physical/sexual attraction, romantic fee-fees, etc. For me, there's an understanding that these attributes are somewhat transient. I wake up in the morning, look over and think, "I love this attractive man." And then later that same day, after I'm asked for the umpteenth time where an object is located and I describe exactly where it is (from a completely different room) and said object is right in front of his face... I'm just saying that I'm glad there's a more substantial bond between me and Duncan than what I feel at any given time. People change, bodies change, attraction changes... sometimes someone just needs to move things around to see what's actually in the fridge or not. It's all bonus points that you're constantly redistributing and that's okay.
The "Wedding" Itself
I've added the quotation marks, because it wasn't really a wedding. It was like paperwork in front of people at a civil registry (maybe like 15-20 minutes max) and a dinner with close friends and family. The bureaucracy part of it all was a pain in the ass, because...bureaucracy.
Roughly:
- We had to go to the civil registry office to do the initial filing and find out what paperwork needed to be submitted
- I had to go to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin for a day (for five minutes) to sign an affidavit swearing that I'd never been married, nor was I currently serving in the U.S. military.
- The affidavit needed to be submitted to the Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court) to get an exemption for the actual German form that I needed.
- Duncan needed a similar form (minus the military stuff) from the Spanish Embassy.
- I also had to go to the Spanish Embassy to swear that Duncan and I were not directly or collaterally related to one another.
After we got the exemption from the court, I got a letter that said I could call up the civil registry office of my choosing and reserve a date.
Now, there was a brief consideration to just skip all of this and do this all in a place that required far fewer hoops: across the border to Denmark or Gibraltar (John and Yoko style and because it's closer to Duncan's family). At the end of the day, we just couldn't be bothered with all of those extra logistics and chose the closest (and, probably, ugliest) civil registry in Hamburg.
Good ol' Standesamt Hamburg-Nord.
If you're looking to get hitched on a weddingly-convenient day (like, say, a weekend). Then you're looking at maybe a long wait. Depending on how popular of a location, maybe even a year or two. BUT if you don't give a fuck and a random Monday in December will work for you. You are golden.
The Guest List Math
As a person without parents, I feel fortunate to have found someone with an abundance of good parents. I lost a mom and I gained two really amazing mothers-in-law (Duncan's mom and stepmom) and also just the most fascinating dad this side of the Mississippi. But really, if it hadn't been for Duncan's mom, I would have done the whole thing a bit differently (but more about that later).
Duncan's mom (we call her Mama Prime) is wonderful, strong, ambitious, and inspiring. And stubborn. A formidable woman. Who really loves and lives for her kids. We have a lot in common, especially that we like to get our way and we are kind of relentless about it. Two Taurean ladies just out here living our lives.
She was convinced that we would go off and get married and not tell her about it. So I made her a promise that as soon as I knew the date, I would let her know. And I did.
And then... she invited her boo. And Duncan's brother. And his brother's boo. And his brother's boo's three-year-old daughter. And Duncan's sister. And his sister's then-boo/divorce attorney. And his sister's five-year-old son (who was an absolute handful at the time). Later, I even found out that she wasn't very happy that we hadn't invited Duncan's dad and stepmom, which wasn't meant as a slight (and they did not take it as such). I just didn't want that many people there.
Suddenly, I had to think about who I was going to invite from my side of the family. As a reminder, I have seven siblings. Most of them are married. There's something like 20 nieces and nephews. That wasn't happening. But I had to invite some family. So I chose my godmother aunt and her husband, my replacement-mom aunt, and one sister (Pickles).
The rest of the guest list was more satisfying. Close friends, the folks who were also there for me and us in these formative years of our lives away from our biological families. And White Mike (a +1 not even worth a footnote).
(Probably) The Worst Part
It actually only hit me 10-15 minutes before our civil registry appointment that my parents weren't there. Of course, I knew they wouldn't be. It was just really the magnitude of it kind of hit me all at once and at a really inconvenient time in a full face of makeup and fake lashes and shit. It was a really intense wave of sadness and zero time to process it in front of the all people who were there. But that's just how it be sometimes.
The Wedding Whisperer
During registry ceremony itself, we had the world's quietest civil servant. A soft spoken guy, practically whispering the whole time, and I'm pretty sure nobody in the room who wasn't sitting right at our table could hear a word he said.
We'd also gotten a Spanish-German interpreter for Duncan, since his German wasn't great for legal stuff, but she was sitting right next to him translating directly into his ear. So the Spanish speakers in the room heard nothing (but wouldn't have been able to understand it anyway) and the Germans, unless they had superhuman hearing, probably couldn't hear this guy either.
To wrap things up, he asked if we would like for him to read a poem, Shakespeare or Goethe. We picked Shakespeare. He read it. Which was a nice gesture, but again... no one could hear you, dude.
The Good Part
Okay so here's the thing. The part of the day I thought was great, was a part where nobody else was present.
Between signing the papers at the registry office and everyone meeting up at the restaurant, there was a gap and the guests split up. I took a cab over to the restaurant alone. It was a spot Duncan and I used to go to for brunch a lot. Normally, they were closed on Mondays, but they offered to open up for us for a private gathering since we were regulars (also for money).
I arrived a little early and the staff was still getting things ready. "Happy" by Pharrell Williams was playing. It wasn't quite like a first dance moment or, you know, that kind of typical wedding thing, but it felt like this signifier that I had done the right thing at the right time. And I felt really good, really emotional, and was still kind of processing everything. It's crazy to think that was one of the best parts of the whole evening.
The food was great. I wish I had kind of introduced my family around to some more of my friends, but my brain was really over-extended by that point. I actually ended up leaving by myself at the end of the night. I took a taxi to the hotel we were staying, while Duncan wrapped things up. I don't know if that's weird or not.
So why bother getting married, then?
Talking about all of this with Duncan, he pointed out that a lot of people don't actually like their wedding day. The wedding industry is wild and ridiculously expensive. All in all (including paperwork fees and such, like flying out my sister and aunt), we probably "only" spent a couple thousand. Definitely not tens of thousands. A few years ago, we went to a wedding in Hawaii for a good friend/former boss of mine. They got married in a nature reserve where films like Jurassic Park and Jumanji were filmed. AND they did have a bouncy house. No lie. It was dope.
 |
| I don't even know if I had ever told her about MY bouncy house thing. Behold! Glorious. I was glad I got to be there. |
Beforehand, she was like, "We'll catch up, we'll hang out and do all the stuff." And I was like, "No we won't. You're gonna be completely preoccupied the whole day, and that's okay, that's just how it is." And that's what happened. It was still very cool. But I get why a lot of people feel like it's all this build up and then kind of a womp, womp at the end. It's not foreshadowing the rest of your life. It's just, you know, one day.
So getting back to it... why get married? For us, it was very practical and pragmatic. When Duncan had his accident, it was hard to deal with logistically without some kind of formal relationship. When I tell people that story, I often hear, "But that kind of thing doesn't happen in Germany." But it did. To me. And it suuuuuuucked. So hard. I never want something like that to happen again without something in place. I want to take care of him. If something happens to me, I want him to be the someone who takes care of me. It's this formal companionship model, which is unsexy as hell, but that's what I want.
Getting to this decision? There's two parts...two sides of the same coin? One, is this person a good human? Two, is this person a good human to me, specifically? Here's the pop quiz to figure it out: Say you're in the shower and you slip and break both of your arms and crack your head open. You're bleeding, buck naked...ass up in the air, butthole exposed. Are they going to be a good person and help you without making a big deal out of it? And also, are they going to be a good person for you... like would you mind if this person found you in that state... can you move forward with them having seen you at your literal most physically vulnerable. Can we look each other in the eye after that?
That's a visceral physical version, obviously exaggerated. But there's also like...your emotional butthole being exposed. Can they deal with that? Can they be there for you with the really hard stuff and take it in stride (or at the very least not actively contribute to making hard stuff harder? How do they handle an overwhelming shit avalanche?) Those answers matter a lot more to me than whether or not they look good with their clothes off.
If I got to do it over again
Easy. I'd keep the civil registry part small. Me, Duncan, our two witnesses. Five or six more people, tops. Just the real Gs. Chosen fam only.
Then, I'd actually spend the budget on a real party. What we had wasn't really a party. It was a chill dinner where everyone kind of sat in their own groups at different tables. My family and his family did mix and chop it up a bit, but mostly it was separate. I'm talking splurge a little, get a DJ, a dance floor. Some kind of movement. So it definitely wouldn't be a on Monday, which is just a weird ass day anyway to have a wedding.
Maybe for our ten year, or fifteen year anniversary, I'll finally get to throw the party the way I actually want it. Who knows?
Married Life
The wedding itself didn't change our day-to-day. I didn't change my name, didn't change my tax status, nothing really changed in the last eight years. Ok, we both started new jobs, so we don't work at the same office anymore, but they're in the same part of town, so we still travel together when we go to our respective offices. And honestly working from home is better anyway, because I can go squeeze his butt or tell him about some stupid thing that just happened at work, whenever, for no reason.
We haven't even made it through the worst life could throw at us. Honestly, there's probably big stuff coming given the state of the world. He's gonna have to deal with aging parents, which, granted, having dead parents, I don't have to deal with (silver lining, I guess). But we've had some dry runs. Health emergencies, a global pandemic, and my own struggles with depression and anxiety. The latter of which doesn't always make me a very nice person and, worse, not very nice to myself. So I can be difficult to deal with. But he keeps me grounded, and he takes it with grace and chill. So far, so good.
We're growing together. Changing together. Just looking out for one another and I think that's the most important part.
And, yeah, that's the time I got married.
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