Category Archives: The 2013 Wedding

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My wedding is just 16 days away and the whole thing is becoming very real all of a sudden. Maybe some of you who have gotten married know what I am talking about? Over night, the wedding day goes from being this abstract event far in the future to something that is actually happening very soon. Thankfully, I am feeling more excited than stressed about all of it. One of the amazing things about this day is that so many of our friends have been involved in making it happen. Our friend Elizabeth Clayton is helping us coordinate the entire event. Anna Dorfman designed the invitations and website. Bonnie Tsang is photographing the day. Diana Fayt is painting rocks for the tables. My cousin Robin is helping us to plan the ceremony and will be officiating. My sister is doing the flowers. And last weekend, nine of my friends came over to help make the decorations (which Grace Bonney and Victoria Smith will use to decorate the event space). How lucky are we to have such talented and generous friends?

Yes, very. I pinch myself every day.

We have decided to go with a neon pink, grey and white color theme, but we’ll also be including some pale pinks, silvers, browns and golds in the decor as well.

{These small “poufs” — as we’ve come to call them — will go on the backs of chairs tied with grey ribbon. We made 102 of them!}

{My friend Lauren Smith was the master wreath maker. Photo by Lorena Siminovich}

{Toothpicks and stickers make the best cupcake toppers! Photo by Lisa Solomon}

{Can you spot Wilfredo? Photo by Rena Tom}

{Our dining room is currently filled with tissue paper goodies. Photo by Clay Walsh}

{Our recycle bin looked pretty when we were finished. Photo by Rena Tom}

Happy Thursday.

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I may be preaching to the choir here. But in case I’m not, in case I have any readers out there who are opposed to allowing gay people to marry, or even on the fence about it, I hope you’ll listen.

You all know I’m gay. If you don’t, you haven’t been reading very carefully here. Anyhow, you also know I’m a regular person with regular hopes and fears and dreams for my future. I write about those hopes and dreams and fears a lot on this blog. Some other things about me you may or may not know: I am 45 years old. I get up every day at 6:30 am and I work until 6:00. Some days I go back to work after dinner. I take a break on most days to swim laps at lunch. My partner’s name is Clay. We’ve been together for almost five years. She gets up at 6 am and works till 5. Sometimes she works after dinner too. I come from a family of five. My parents have been married for almost 50 years. I have an older brother and a younger sister. I am an aunt to three beautiful kids. We all love each other a lot. Before I became a full time artist, I worked in education. I taught elementary school for seven years and then worked for two different non profit organizations that served high poverty public schools. I have a dog and two cats. I love animals. I live in a small house with a big backyard. I shouldn’t eat gluten because it makes me feel terrible, but I love bread so I eat it anyway. Clay and I drive a 2006 Scion. I don’t keep up with the latest music. I spend too much time on Facebook. I want to travel the world. Every Sunday Clay and I plan our meals, make a list and go to the grocery store. That is generally my favorite activity of the week.

Being gay is all I’ve known since as long as I can remember, even when I dated guys in high school and college. Being gay is as regular to me as being straight is to other people. It’s not something I chose, but it’s also not something I would change. I wouldn’t change it because I cannot imagine anything else, or loving another gender. It’s not how I’m wired. I have memories of knowing I was gay as early as 13. I came out when I was 23. That 10 year period was tough. But now, most days, I don’t think about being gay. I just am.

In February of 2012, my partner Clay proposed to me. She took me away for the weekend to the wine country and asked me to marry her. She gave me a ring. It was amazing and romantic. I wrote about it here. We will be married June 1.

Sharing my regular life with Clay is the single greatest joy of my life. I want to be with her forever. I use the word “regular” here because I think it’s important. Gay people are just regular people. I know, news flash!!! Some gay people are exceptional or eccentric or weird, just like some straight people are. But mostly we are just regular. We are also, like the rest of humanity, mostly kind-hearted and well-intentioned. We work, take care of our families, and contribute to our communities. We have the same hopes and dreams and food allergies as everyone else.

DOMA matters because it discriminates against regular people. People like you. People like me. Not criminals, just regular people. The religious right will try to tell you we are not regular people. But we are. It’s a fact. If you knew more than 1 or 2 of us, you would know that already.

I am crossing my fingers tightly that the Supreme Court does the right thing. Not just for me, but for couples who have been waiting for 20 years to legally marry, for future gay children, for kids of gay couples, for kids in general, for all hopers and dreamers, for humanity.

On that note, I must go get my laundry out of the dryer.

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“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
―George Harrison

A year ago this weekend, my partner Clay proposed to me. Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for that long know I was taken completely by surprise. Those of you who are acquainted with me personally know that while I was overcome with joy, I also walked around in a state of disbelief for several weeks afterward.

Indeed, a year later, we are planning a wedding, one I thought I would never have for most of my life (hence the disbelief). And despite the fact that I am now 45 years old, I never really thought much about a wedding for most of my life — not what I wanted it to look like, or who I wanted to be there, or what rituals I might want to include, or what kind of food I would want to serve. I didn’t really think about much of any of it, because I really thought I would never get married.

But this June 1, its happening, right in Mill Valley, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. I bought a beautiful (and very simple) dress. And we’re having a suit made for Clay (and a neon pink bow tie). We have planned a menu with a lovely caterer and are beginning to choose some delicious wines. My talented friend Anna is designing our invitations. The amazing Bonnie will take the pictures. My cousin will officiate. Elizabeth is helping us with all the details. All manner of friends and family are helping in various ways. And Clay is a really generous partner and a naturally good planner — and has taken the lead on almost everything.

In order to cope with the multitude of decisions, I find myself saying things like, “Okay, sure, that sounds good,” or “That sounds about right,” even when I am not sure at all. Except, of course, when it comes to things like chair covers, about which I become Bridezilla, and practically throw a fit because the only ones available are shiny polyester satin (and there will be no shiny polyester at my wedding).

All in all, however, things are going very smoothly, and I have to remind myself that while the date of the big party is coming quickly, we still have more than 100 days to get everything ready and that there is still plenty of time to do things like make bunting and name cards and figure out how we will cover the chairs.

And, best of all, I’m getting increasingly excited about the big day, as bewildering and overwhelming as the planning feels most of the time. And as family and friends from far away make plans to travel here, and as we choose the music to which we’ll walk down the aisle, and as I think about all the things I want to say to Clay in the vows to her that I write, I am positive this day will be the perfect way to celebrate our love and commitment.

And then all my nightmares about chair covers fade into the distance. At least for now.

Happy Friday.

{Christmas, 2011}

Today is my partner Clay’s birthday. I don’t really expect you to care much about that. But I will take this as an opportunity to tell you a story about my life if you happen to be interested.

I am 44 years old, about to turn 45 in the early part of 2013. I did not find a relationship that made me feel good and loved and happy until I was 40 years old. I was in many relationships before that, all with good people. But in each of those, something or another was very wrong, and in each of them I ended up, sooner or later, feeling awful.

Maybe it was bad luck, or maybe it was just that I didn’t know who I was yet or what I wanted in my life.

So in 2004 I ended my last unhappy relationship and decided that I was going to stop dating entirely until I figured out who I was and what I wanted. It was that year that I started sewing and painting and drawing prolifically. I still worked full time, and so this happened mostly after I got home from my job at the end of the day and all day on the weekends. I started sharing my work on the internet, and I made friends with other creative people. After awhile I stopped feeling lonely and started feeling genuinely happy. In fact, so happy that I’d forgotten about dating entirely.

Fast forward four years to 2008. The year before, I had left my job to make art for a living and open a store with my friend Rena. Life was good. I was living my dream. It is really true (maybe some of you have experienced this) that when you are single and also happy, it can feel like the perfect life. Why would you want to bring anyone else into it who might mess it all up? But I also knew deep down I wanted to be in a relationship again, and this time I needed it to be different.

So I made a list of all the qualities that I wanted to find in a partner and I tried to envision what a happy relationship might look like. I didn’t hold back from listing everything that seemed important, everything that had previously been missing for me. And then I waited.

I’m not going to say how Clay and I met, but I didn’t have to wait long. In a way, I’d been waiting for four years, but really it had only been a couple of months since I made the list. The moral of this story isn’t that Clay has, oh, 99% of the qualities I had on my list. The moral of the story is that I was finally completely ready for magic to happen, and then POOF, it happened.

This coming summer Clay and I are getting married. While gay marriage is not legal in California (yet), we’re having a wedding and a big old party to celebrate our life together (you can read about Clay’s proposal to me here). Whenever I have the opportunity to celebrate my relationship with Clay, I take it. And today, her birthday, is one of those days. Clay made possible for me what I never thought possible: that I could be wholly loved, wholly appreciated, wholly myself. She has an enormously kind heart. She is brimming with love, not just for me, but for everyone in her life. I love her so much, and I feel so incredibly lucky to have her by my side every single day.

So worth the wait.

As most of you know, I am getting married next June. June 1, 2013, to be exact. I’ve known since the moment I became engaged that I would not wear a traditional white wedding dress. I’ve changed my mind a bunch of times in the last six months about color and style and whether I’d have it made or buy it from a store. The other day I actually found the dress I think I am going to buy. I WISH it was the one pictured above, because this Julien David dress might be the most awesome dress I have ever laid my eyes on. I discovered it in last month’s issue of Paper Magazine, and I nearly fell over. But then I looked at the price tag ($3,650.) and said, oh wait, NO.

But, a girl can dream, right? And the one I did find and plan to purchase is a much less fancy version of this dress at a much better price. So, as we say, it’s all good.

I’ll just be staring at this one for a little bit longer.

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How do I begin this post? There are so many places I could start this story. I could start with how I spent most of my life thinking I would never get married, because I would never meet someone who would possibly love me enough to want to spend the rest of her life with me. Or how it would never be possible for me to get married even if I did, because a “real” marriage wasn’t ever going to be legal for gay people. Or how for years I didn’t even allow myself to daydream about a wedding or a life of marriage to someone I loved because that (for a myriad of reasons) was a complete waste of time.

Or, more simply, I could begin this story with how I had not a clue that my girlfriend Clay was going to propose to me this past weekend, because she is an incredibly brilliant (and sneaky) planner. And how I broke down sobbing the minute she pulled the ring out of her pocket and handed it to me because everything I spent so many years thinking would never happen is now happening.

I came out when I was 23 years old, the year after I graduated from college. All told, I’ve been living as an out lesbian for 21 years. It took 17 years of those years for me to meet the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, and who wants to spend the rest of her life with me.

And here I am at age 44, with a beautiful ring on my finger making plans already for a 2013 wedding that might actually be recognized as legal in California by the time we exchange vows if the timing is right.

To me, this is everything. It is the sky and the moon and stars. It is my {secret} wildest dream.

I love you, Clay Walsh. Thank you for making my dreams come true.

I am so excited to spend the rest of my life with you.