Reflections on our wedding - August 18, 1996

Yesterday was our 14th wedding anniversary. (And the first we've ever spent apart - Alen is at the Bird Fair in Rutland Water, England.)

A few thoughts about our wedding - in 1996 a gay wedding wasn't nearly as common as today. It was actually just starting to be at all fashionable. We did find a gay wedding consultant - they helped us with the invitations. We had a wonderful (Reform) rabbi, who was nothing but supportive through the whole process. I think it helped our guests that he was a man with a beard - he looks like a rabbi and that gave a sense of "normalcy" to the proceedings.

Alen wore a tux and I wore a wedding gown - something I had always wanted to do. The tux store lady encouraged Alen to wear tails - a cutaway which fit over her hips as a jacket would not have done.

My gown was altered by a lady who was very into weddings. On our fourth visit in which I had not exactly told her what kind of wedding it was she said to me, "Gail, I know."

We didn't tell people at my congregation. I had been told that either you invite the whole congregation or no one, so we opted for no one. This was largely because of Alen's work with a youth organization in a state that did not yet have a non-discrimination law. I told my congregation president a couple of months before that we were doing this privately. As I recall, he was concerned what others in the congregation might think.

Our lack of openness meant that on the day before our wedding Alen had to go to work. There was some big event and she had no excuse to get out of it. At the time I thought I'd never get over it - today it just seems like a piece of evidence about how not out we were compared to now.

We went back to work wearing wedding rings. Alen's very straight boss asked her if her ring meant something and then said something like, "Congratulations, Gail is a lovely girl."

What we didn't anticipate was how our families took us much more seriously after the wedding. Neither of them had been particularly enthusiastic and we dealt with quite a bit of negativity on the way to the chuppah. But somehow the ceremony gave us more legitimacy in their eyes. At least that's how it seems.

I'll never forget the toast Alen's brother made at the wedding - he said that this kind of thing was completely not done in Trinidad, but that he saw how much love and acceptance we had around us and that he hoped that in future, we would have more, also in Trinidad. And I feel that this really has come to pass in the 14 years since then.

Our friend Debbie and Shoshana sang a wonderful song which ended: "Here's a toast to Hannah who today is undercover. May she soon be blessed with a sister or a brother." Hannah, our dog from those years, passed away without getting to meet Gabi and Sasha. But Debbie and Shoshana's blessing has also come true.

Mazal tov to Mindy and Alan, who share our wedding anniversary and just celebrated 8 years, to my parents, who are celebrating 52 years of marriage today, and to Sara Rivka and Gideon who are getting married tomorrow.