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Redheaded Stepchild: Waiting In Line For Love
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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, then we went back to the original line to get the certificate but whoops just kidding, we had to wait for a notary because the usual notary was out sick today. All told, it took about two hours.
We were the only same-gendered couple in the joint, which felt odd. While I loved the cross-section of heterosexual Brooklyn on display — the black Muslim couple, the Spanish-speaking couple with a translator, the smiling, excited youngish couple – I could have done without small children running about and hitting one another.
It was an unpleasant two hours. And yet, despite the fighting children, bored citizens and testy workers, in that ugly, impersonal place, I felt…moved. Unexpectedly. The love of my life was next to me, and we were being counted. It’s not marriage, true. And ideologically, I tend to be anti-state involvement, but in practice, it felt important. It felt powerful. I can see my love in the hospital now. We are noted as a unit, as a team, by our local government (not our federal government, but screw them).
Bureaucracy is gross, but our love makes our lives better. If standing in line for two hours is what I need to do to for Bureaucracy to recognize us, so be it.
You’re probably not thinking about this yet, but I found the cake topper to be especially difficult. There are interracial cake toppers, but often the black woman has a perm — big no-no for natural chycks like your gf and me. So even though there’s ton of custom toppers out there, you may have to go custom-custom. Just a little warning, so that you don’t wait until the last minute, like I did, and have to go with some cute (but vague) statue.
Also, money-wise, California has a TON of wedding package deals right now. So if you were willing to take a little trippy-trip, might be worth looking into a Golden State wedding.
OOO I LOVE “Amazing Wedding Cakes” and my fiance is addicted to “Bridezillas”. It is hard to look away from the TV when it is on.
If you want to see the “other” side of the cake design business, one of my favorite blogs is cakewrecks.blogspot.com. TOO much fun!
OOO I LOVE “Amazing Wedding Cakes” and my fiance is addicted to “Bridezillas”. It is hard to look away from the TV when it is on.
If you want to see the “other” side of the cake design business, one of my favorite blogs is cakewrecks.blogspot.com. TOO much fun!
That cake wrecks blog is AWFUL, Janice… so of course I’m blogging about it on Monday. Thanks for the link.
Janice, I am LOVING that cakewrecks site. Thanks for that. And I’m thrilled to find another enfianced couple is addicted to the television I am!
Ernessa, oh my god, I hadn’t even thought about toppers. Add another item to the list!
Janice, I am LOVING that cakewrecks site. Thanks for that. And I’m thrilled to find another enfianced couple is addicted to the television I am!
Ernessa, oh my god, I hadn’t even thought about toppers. Add another item to the list!
We are dorks, we had customized cake toppers made of us as Simpson characters. You will get to see it in its full glory on Saturday, Ernessa:)
We are dorks, we had customized cake toppers made of us as Simpson characters. You will get to see it in its full glory on Saturday, Ernessa:)
Janice, that’s the kind of dorkdom we like here at Fierce and Nerdy, and I will definitely take pictures to share with the Fierce and Nerdy community.