Sun 6 Jan 2013 In: Weddings and Civil Unions View at Wayback View at NDHA
Why did Bette and Tina have to make it look so easy? On our scarily lengthy to do list for the wedding my fiancée has written ‘choose first dance song,’ closely followed by ‘learn to dance’. While that’s pretty funny, it’s also true – we can’t dance together without looking like a couple of awkward teenagers. We can bust a move or two usually … but cannot seem to make it work dancing together! Do any other gay or lesbian couples have this problem? For a start, we fight about who leads. Then about who knows the right steps. Then it becomes a domestic and dancing is replaced by self-righteous huffing. A friend said ‘don’t worry, you really just have to cling on to each other and sway,’ which sounds good. Better than the highly dangerous Dirty Dancing re-enactment I saw at one reception. And then there is the problem of not actually having a first dance song. She loves bad pop and whiny rock and I love alternative stuff that nobody’s ever heard of. The middle ground seems to be classic, timeless love songs … any ideas appreciated here dear readers! (Just please don’t say James Blunt or I will cry, and not joyful tears). It’s only these types of issues we are stuck on. With less than two weeks to go (eek) all the major things are sorted. Yet we are up to our eyeballs in oceans of lists of minor but important things, many of which are just so much harder because we are lesbians. I mean, where do you get a cake topper which is two women? And where can you find a guest book that doesn’t have ‘bride and groom’ stamped grandly on every page? Some days you just feel different. Others you are made to feel different. Most notably (and ironically) was this week when we had to brave the wilds of Henderson footpaths to get from our car to the courthouse to pick up our civil union licence and some guys shouted “are youse lesbians?” out the car window. Well yes, yes we are – we are just off to get our civil union licence in fact. Now about you: are you a bunch of muppets driving around in a car pointing out the obvious? Ok, great. Bye now. Then there are the days when you wake up and the lists, and lists of lists, are far from your mind. You remember what it’s all about: saying “hell yes I do” to the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. So what if the napkins aren’t perfectly colour-matched or our cake topper is silly. It’s about celebrating our love, with the people we love the most, who will just giggle when we both try to lead and end up standing on each other’s feet. I can’t wait. Jacqui Stanford - 6th January 2013