wedding

i must say, it's hard work being an unmarried family in the united states of america.

first, you lack an appropriate vocabulary to describe your relationship. "this is cailin, my .... ". girlfriend . . . starts to sound a bit silly when you have a child. mother of my daughter . . . kind of a mouthful. domestic partner . . . . accurate, but sounds a bit too "politically correct". partner . . . for some reason my brain always inserts "life" in front of partner, and then i want to vomit.

second, since you lack official legal standing as a family you wind up buried in a mound of paperwork trying to prove your relationship to each other. it's a complicated tangle . . . at one point we wound up writing wills, just so we could all have healthcare!

yesterday, john accepted a new job that starts tomorrow, and that new job does not offer health care for opposite-sex domestic partners. we finally decided that enough was enough and it was time to stop procrastinating. so, we rounded up ava and shannon and headed down to city hall.

honestly, i'm not sure there are many nicer spots for a very small wedding (we had 1 pint-sized "guest" and one guest / witness / photographer, but the maximum is 6). we were married in the rotunda, at the top of a sweeping staircase. oddly, john took a very beautiful photo of this spot, some years ago.

as a true little toddler, ava, in general, is not incredibly excited about new environments. and the towering ceiling and marble everything of city hall were definitely quite different for her. she kept it together pretty well for the first hour or so we were there (first we had to get a license, etc, etc) but then fully lost control about halfway through the ceremony. as we did not have rings, the officiant suggested that we exchange kisses instead, and ava was determined that daddy would not kiss mommy at the appointed moment.

she cheered up once it was over though, and tried to "hand in" our completed marriage certificate to the nice lady, like a good little student.

more pics