/ A blogumn by Redheaded Stepchild I have these two friends. One – let’s call him Future Spouse A –is marrying his man this fall.  He’s a good friend who I perform with frequently, and he has got Organizational Skillz.  He and his fiancé were engaged within six months or so of their first date (my friends know what they want, y’all), and shortly thereafter Future Spouse A began planning the entire event. I’m talking taking out his wedding binder at dinner and showing us swatches of his colors.  I’m talking a brunch this weekend for the wedding party.  I’m talking booking space for his pre-wedding cabaret and sending out an email asking folks to think about what they’d like to perform.  Nine months out.  The wedding is in September. Okay?  He is Not Messing Around.  This day will be so planned, I suspect there will be detailed spreadsheets posted on every door. Future Spouse B is one of my nearest, dearest, and crunchiest.  She spent her youth living at a commune, that’s the super-level of hippiedom I’m describing.  She and her woman are getting married this summer, and while she is organized, too – she has booked a space and all – she is also very uncertain about yer typical wedding traditions.  When I asked her about her wedding shower (which I’ve learned is one of my jobs as Maid of Honor), her primary desire was to eliminate the gift-giving aspect of the whole thing. (Never mind that, hello, isn’t that one of points of getting married?)  She doesn’t want anything involving balloons or boxes of lingerie or penis veils.  No.  She just wants to drink tea and eat cucumber sandwiches.  And oh jeez she has to buy a dress at some point....

A blogumn by Redheaded Stepchild As previously noted, I am now a watcher of wedding shows. When Law & Order and Doctor Who aren’t on in our home, the TV is tuned to any one of the many shows on WEtv that is targeted to women who love weddings. Amazing Wedding Cakes, Bridezillas, My Fair Wedding – it’s all straight-up wedding porn designed to make you feel dirty and love it. Five years ago I would have run screaming with one glance at these shows, but now I find it interesting to see how other people navigate incorporating their own personalities into what is often a fairly standard-issue ceremony. Or rather … I like seeing IF people can incorporate themselves, and if so, how. And I’m trying to figure that out my own self. Apparently going to eight weddings in the last seven years wasn’t enough, so I’ve started trolling the web and going to sites like The Knot, which oh so desperately wants to be my one-stop vendor center, commiseration pool, and vanity mirror. It’s the online wedding Mall of America. I can figure out a budget, list wedding guests, find dresses, and get deals on photographers. I signed in to look at cakes today and it gave me a To Do list, ok? And do you know how many things were on my To Do list? ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-FOUR. I mean…on the one hand, thanks The Knot! As a total novice at this (unlike that manager on Say Yes to the Dress who seems to get married and engaged for a living), I appreciate your efforts to make planning a wedding easier. On the other hand: Aaaaahhhh, get away from me, you scary freak! Stop sending me postcards from businesses you want...

. A blogumn by Redheaded Stepchild I recently read an interview with hot lesbian host Rachel Maddow in which she said that she sometimes forgets that she and her partner were gay. I don’t. Maybe it’s easier to forget when you commute between the West Village and western Mass., two areas notoriously friendly to Teh Gayz.  Or maybe Maddow was just talking about how easy it is to feel normal and to forget that other folks don’t quite see you the same way.  That, in fact, some folks may find you repellant or unnatural or simply feel unease when you’re around, due to something as incidental as your sexuality. I can understand that.  Both BPD and I try to focus on the positive in our lives.  We have a happy, loving relationship that we’re both proud of, surrounded by friends we adore, and family members who are trying really hard to support us even when it’s ideologically difficult for them.  Why focus on the homophobes when we can focus on The Fabulous?  Why make ourselves miserable? Why focus on anti-gay laws when the election two weeks ago gave us the gift of Obamas in the White House?  Obama’s election was like a national holiday in our house.  We were so high in our Obama haze that both of us kept crying for days after he was elected.  We were overwhelmed.  We were thrilled.  “Hey,” we whispered to each other, “maybe our biracial lovechild can be president some day, too!” I didn’t want those anti-gay laws to trample on my joy, not when there was so much to be hopeful about. Then my bubble burst. It’s a strange thing to be ambivalently participating in an institution while folks around the country are fighting to keep...

. A blogumn by Reheaded Stepchild I’m feeling nauseous today.  It could be an overabundance of alcohol on a system plagued by reflux, or it could be my stomach angrily venting about the cost of renting space for a wedding. My dream was to have an apartment big enough for one hundred people and have the ceremony there.  Say….oh, I don’t know…a brownstone.  We have friends who rent two floors of a brownstone with a little backyard in a crap neighborhood for an amount of money that is quite reasonable for New York City, but still more than BPD and I can afford.  I wanted a place like theirs.  Somewhere homey and comfy and ours.  I wanted to feel that we were inviting folks to our space to share a great day with us.  I was holding out for a magical change of fortunes: that somehow we’d start making much more money before our lease ran out and be able to get my dream wedding apartment. However, the gods of New York City simply shook their heads at me and laughed. So we began researching other locations.  And discovered: this wedding thing is a racket, y’all.  It seems like any place that might have had affordable rental fees is hitched to something outlandish.  Like the Prospect Park Picnic House, which you can rent for $4200, but you must use one particular catering company, and that catering company charges around $140 a head. Same with the Palm House at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.  If you don’t want to use their catering company, you can get married in the gardens themselves between 9 and 10 am.  That’s not going to happen with these night owls. The crowning, depressing glory of our (admittedly minimal) search thus far has...

. A blogumn by Redheaded Stepchild Recipe for a for a Queer Wedding (or Quedding, if you prefer): 1 part fabulous location 2 parts uninhibited liquor consumption 1 part food with which to mitigate effects of uninhibited liquor consumption 3 parts friends and family with which to consume said liquor 5 parts smart, funny, gorgeous girlfriend 2 parts cake! Not on the Menu: White dresses Bridal parties Any “giving away” by a parental unit Church A DJ who plays The Village People (though BPD would like you all to know that we will be including the Electric Slide) Random bouquets of flowers We’ve had many conversations about what kind of event we’d like to have: something in between the traditional wedding ceremony (complete with veils, fathers and anonymous halls), and toasting each other with beer at the local bar. Cause here’s the thing: I don’t like going to weddings.  I’m of the opinion that individual ceremonies are important to a very small group of people who know the folks getting hitched and everyone else is in it for the booze. I’m not terribly interested in hearing your favorite priest’s musings on gender, you know? Or participating in breathing exercises with your college acting teacher/officiant.  I don’t want to sit in an uncomfortable chair for 40 minutes and then eat crappy hors d’oeuvres while making stilted conversation with strangers, counting down until I can run home and watch the latest episode of Heroes. I mean, really.  What’s in it for ME, people?! Weddings are expensive, not just for the folks marrying, but for the folks who travel across state lines, buy presents and put on new shoes and fancy dresses.  I’ve forked out thousands of dollars going to weddings since I graduated from college and...

/ A blogumn by Redheaded Stepchild Hallo, Fierce and Nerdy community! I’m Redheaded Stepchild, a 30 year-old queer singer/actor living in Brooklyn.  The fabulous Ernessa invited me to blog here bi-weekly about the rigors and joys of planning a wedding/commitment ceremony, as I’ll be getting hitched to my ladylove, BabyPowerDyke (note: she’s not a baby; she’s a Power-Dyke-in-training) sometime in the fall of 2010.  (Cause we’re broke actor-types, y’all, and can’t get it together to throw the party that we want for a little bit.) Posts will range from wedding logistics to the hypnotic awfulness of Bridezillas to the concept of legal marriage versus emotional commitment.  I hope you’ll chime in with your own wedding/commitment ceremony/Big Ol’ Love Party stories and tell me what other wedding cake shows I need to be watching, because Amazing Wedding Cakes is now in my DVR.  Bizarre.  But true. Let’s start with the Brooklyn Municipal Building, shall we?  On Wednesday, the ladyfriend and I went to everyone’s favorite drab bureaucracy and got ourselves legally recognized. On our 4-year anniversary, no less.  BPD recently got a job that offers her health insurance (hallelujah!) and will offer me health insurance as soon as they get a copy of our domestic partnership certificate (double hallelujah!), so rather than waiting for our ceremony in 2010, we got our paperwork done in favor of healthcare for both of us (triple hallelujah!). We had been cautioned not to let the administrative hoo-ha interfere with the significance of the event, and boy do I owe that cautioner a beer.  Going down to City Hall to fill out paperwork is the least romantical thing I can imagine.  First we stood in line to get an application, then we stood in line to get the application processed,...