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Till then, till then
This afternoon Rob and I went to Somerville City Hall and applied for our marriage license.
It is a bureaucratic procedure; it felt curiously like a ritual. We each had to fill out one side of the application with our full names, current occupations and places of residence, and birth information. Black ink only. We were asked to raise our hands and swear that we knew of no impediments to our marriage, which turned out to mean that we are neither married to anyone else nor related to one another. (Incest laws in Massachusetts are indifferent to cousinship, but a whole array of in-laws and step-relations are right out.) The clerk complimented our engagement rings. Neither of us are changing our names. We turned to one another afterward, breathlessly grinning: this is real. This is something we're doing. It is going to happen. It is what we want.
Licenses are customarily issued three days after applying, but thanks to the holiday we'll be picking ours up on Monday. The state of our ketubah is slightly more uncertain, but if necessary it will become part of the reception in March rather than the wedding ceremony next week.
In other news, wedding ceremony next week. Very small, family-only, the blowout of inviting everyone on the planet we know to be saved for the reception, after our lives calm down in the spring. We are marrying much more in the style of my grandparents (who eloped) than my parents (who were married in my grandparents' living room by the justice of the peace who lived downstairs, but still had a best man and a maid of honor) or my brother and his wife (who won the fight with her mother about not getting married in a Catholic church, but still ended up with most of the accoutrements of the modern American wedding: bachelor party, wedding party, registry, guest list, rehearsal dinner, headaches. Lovely Halloween-themed cake, though). It has still been strange and stressful at points; especially with the late move, this has wound up being very much the Autumn of Major Life Changes. We seem to be surviving.
I think we are doing more than that.
It is a bureaucratic procedure; it felt curiously like a ritual. We each had to fill out one side of the application with our full names, current occupations and places of residence, and birth information. Black ink only. We were asked to raise our hands and swear that we knew of no impediments to our marriage, which turned out to mean that we are neither married to anyone else nor related to one another. (Incest laws in Massachusetts are indifferent to cousinship, but a whole array of in-laws and step-relations are right out.) The clerk complimented our engagement rings. Neither of us are changing our names. We turned to one another afterward, breathlessly grinning: this is real. This is something we're doing. It is going to happen. It is what we want.
Licenses are customarily issued three days after applying, but thanks to the holiday we'll be picking ours up on Monday. The state of our ketubah is slightly more uncertain, but if necessary it will become part of the reception in March rather than the wedding ceremony next week.
In other news, wedding ceremony next week. Very small, family-only, the blowout of inviting everyone on the planet we know to be saved for the reception, after our lives calm down in the spring. We are marrying much more in the style of my grandparents (who eloped) than my parents (who were married in my grandparents' living room by the justice of the peace who lived downstairs, but still had a best man and a maid of honor) or my brother and his wife (who won the fight with her mother about not getting married in a Catholic church, but still ended up with most of the accoutrements of the modern American wedding: bachelor party, wedding party, registry, guest list, rehearsal dinner, headaches. Lovely Halloween-themed cake, though). It has still been strange and stressful at points; especially with the late move, this has wound up being very much the Autumn of Major Life Changes. We seem to be surviving.
I think we are doing more than that.
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