I have always thought vow renewals are stupid.
It seems like so many times when people do them the next thing you hear is that they’re getting a divorce. In my mind the only people who think they need to renew their vows are those that feel like it will fix what is falling apart. Which of course never works. Now I know this isn’t 100% true and that it’s a cynical point of view, but oh well. You should know me well enough by now to know that I make up for my lack of foxes with a field of cynical.
So it probably sounds completely insane for me to say that my husband and I had a vow renewal a few weekends ago, on November 23rd (just 3 days after our official anniversary 20 year wedding anniversary.)
There was a method to this madness, though (aside from just straight up madness) – so stick with me.
Any of you who have followed this blog before now, or follow me on Twitter (@TangentGirrl in case you don’t yet!) know that my husband is genderfluid. It has been a lifelong journey for him to get to this point of knowing who he is and being able to openly express himself in all aspects of his life. It was just a little over a year ago that the latter came to be, and at that same time we were thinking about how we wanted to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary this year.
The initial thoughts all centered around trip somewhere. But then after a particularly deep conversation together about his life as an out genderfluid person, I had this thought. The people who got married 20 years ago are not the same people we are today, pretty much literally. He was beyond repressed back in those days and had no ability to come to our marriage as who he really was. So suddenly a vow renewal wasn’t about trying to save a failing marriage or just as an excuse to have a party. It was about giving him the opportunity to experience that commitment to our lives as the person he truly is. So I put forth the idea and we decided to move forward.
We didn’t want a lavish affair but I did want to make sure that it at least gave some opportunity to have a taste of what he would have experienced as a genderfluid person at our wedding all those years ago had he been able to. You know, the white dress, the vows, being surrounded by friends and family. So we spent the year planning a brunch with a little ceremony at the beginning. We bought our dresses – the same dress but his in white and mine in black (to mimic the tuxedo aspect and not steal his white dress-thunder.) We made invitations, I handmade a “cake topper,” and I made our tulle & feather fascinators. I did our flower arrangement in autumnal colors with a very subtle rainbow theme. We wrote our own vows and a close friend wrote and administered the little ceremony that we had.
And it was perfect. Leading up to it there were a couple things that we worried might put a bit of a grey cloud over the event, but when the day came none of that mattered. About 50 of those closest to us and have truly and actively and openly supported Dave through this journey, were there with us to celebrate. And everything turned out just like we wanted; the food was amazing, the ceremony was short but incredibly sweet and very meaningful, and by turns funny too. The event venue was beautiful and he was beyond beautiful.
The ceremony:
And our vows:
You may “awwwwww” now. 🙂
All that said, this is a Tangent Girl story so you know it couldn’t be the Disney fairytale version of a day, right? There had to be craziness. And our craziness took the form of a bookend on the beginning and the end of our day.
We arrived at the venue early because we were nervous about being late as our photographer was coming before the actual party to take pictures. I also needed to bring in all of the things that we had made like the cake topper and bouquets and so on. There were some folks working outside the restaurant as we were taking things out of the car who stopped us in food and odd and admired our dresses and the flowers and what not **up close** (this is relevant.) Then the same up close admiration happened with the staff from the venue who were overseeing our event.
So we got everything set up and sat down to wait for the photographer. At one point, I’m not even sure why I look down at my dress. As you can see from this photo, there is a mesh overlay on top of a black top.
So I look down and realize that the DRESS TOP is actually bunched up at my waist and it’s my black strapless bra showing through. I don’t know if this says more about my bra or the stunningly poor powers of observation of those around me, but either way we laughed so hard I gave myself a stitch in the side.
Then at the end of the party it was just Dave and I and my son, mom, stepdad, sister, dad, stepmom and 2 brothers left at the venue chit chatting. My stepmom had brought us a gift and wanted to see us open it. So we did (and it was awesome but you probably wouldn’t get it if you weren’t from Pittsburgh). Then all of a sudden my mom yells, “Fire!” and I turn around to see that the tissue paper got too close to one of the candles and is ON FIRE on the table full of other wonderfully flammable items. Dave runs over and grabs it and throws it on the floor, and without even thinking starts trying to stomp on it to put it out. And in most circumstances this would make perfect sense except seeing this tall guy in a white dress looking like he’s stomping around at a hillbilly hoedown was hilarity personified. And when his shoe basically caught on fire because a piece of the flaming tissue paper stuck to the soft sole of his pretty little red heels, well that was just the icing on the cake.
Obviously no one was hurt and the worse that happened was there was some burn tissue paper bits that needed to be cleaned up. And since this was the case all of us were LAUGHING OUR ASSES OFF. Like trouble breathing laughing. And it got even better when I stopped one of the ladies from the venue and apologized for the little mess and she was, nonchalant as you please, like “yes no problem, I saw” and then proceed to perfectly mimic Dave’s little hoedown dance while laughing. WE ALL DIED.
So the point is – it was an amazing day and it represented our life together well. I’m lucky as hell to have Dave in my life and like I said in my vows I am looking to every years of our life to come, flaming shoes and all.
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