Kiss my odd ass August 21, 2008

I’m reading my myYahoo! page this morning, and I run across this, listed under “Odd News”:

Now on the Hallmark aisle: Gay marriage cards

By SARAH SKIDMORE, AP Business Writer Sarah Skidmore, Ap Business Writer – Thu Aug 21, 7:11 am ET

AP – Actress Portia de Rossi, left, and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres arrive at the 19th Annual GLAAD Media …

PORTLAND, Ore. – Most states don’t recognize gay marriage — but now Hallmark does.

The nation’s largest greeting card company is rolling out same-sex wedding cards — featuring two tuxedos, overlapping hearts or intertwined flowers, with best wishes inside. “Two hearts. One promise,” one says.

Hallmark added the cards after California joined Massachusetts as the only U.S. states with legal gay marriage. A handful of other states have recognized same-sex civil unions.

The language inside the cards is neutral, with no mention of wedding or marriage, making them also suitable for a commitment ceremony. Hallmark says the move is a response to consumer demand, not any political pressure.

Rest of the story here.

What the hell is so odd about this? Hallmark has recognized a market it’s neglected forever, and it’s now filling it. Personally, as someone who recently tried to find something remotely meaningful among the miles of talking and singing garbage that passes for greeting cards, I find this a refreshing change. Further, the people on the other side of the aisle have made this into a political issue. For those of us whom this affects, and further, for those of us who would actually be buying these cards, this is a matter of personal utility, not of politics.

This is the result of politicizing relationships: We become “odd news” and suspects of political tomfoolery when a simple business decision is made. It’s also a sign of the success of right wing talk radio, as gay folk are always out to “advance the gay agenda,” which has a nice political ring to it that sounds great bellowing from the bowels of some didactic blowhard, but in actual practice simply means trying to live and move through society like the human beings we are.

Fitful sleep August 12, 2008

Sleeping in a bed by myself has become comfortable but uncomfortable.

The first night away from Jade permanently, I felt myself relishing in the scads of room in our full-size bed. I miss her, of course, but part of me enjoyed having a bed to myself. And the three cats, of course, who haven’t really figured out that they don’t have to share the bed with two humans, so they can in fact take up much more space.

But then I slept fitfully, constantly waking up, struggling to get comfortable in what should’ve been a roomy bed.

For years — well, pretty much since Jade and I moved in together — we’ve talked about buying a queen-size bed. But it’s never happened.

Money. That’s the biggest factor. In the midwest, a queen-size bed would’ve cost three-quarters to half as much as it does here.

Weirdness. We’ve gone shopping for beds, seriously, a couple different times, and there’s always the weirdness of having a salesperson asking you who is shopping for the bed. As if in California you just take along a female friend for the joy of shopping for a bed. Yes, we’re just friends. Yes. But we both stretch out on the bed at the same time.

Not knowing where we’d be living, or moving the bed to. A king-size bed would be fantastic. Unbelievably fantastic. We take every opportunity to sleep in king beds at hotels. I’m very tall, but I can stretch along the short side of the bed and still not run out of room. That’s a bed! But we figured we’d buy a queen-size bed because Jade has always bought comforters and sheets in queen. We even bought our latest comforter in queen because we thought we’d eventually end up with a bigger bed.

Repurposing invitations March 22, 2008

We like to save money. And blow it on other things. We had a general idea of how expensive ordering invitations would be. And we really don’t have a lot of people coming.

We wanted to design our invitations anyway. Anything we could do is probably more creative than 75% of the invitations out there. Or that’s what we told ourselves.

But we don’t know the first thing about getting things printed in a print shop. If we had our stuff professionally printed, we needed to figure out where. We needed to figure out what dimensions we were talking about, what kind of paper. We needed the right size envelopes.

The task became more unpleasant the later it became.

Until we discovered invitation kits at Target. You can buy invitations, response cards and their corresponding envelopes all in the same package. We didn’t have to worry about designing an invitation we had printed ourselves to fit a standard-sized envelope. It was all color-coordinated and done.

The hardest part was making sure we could get everything to print within a simple, raised decorative border. It required a lot of trial and error. And the kit contained 50 invites, so we had plenty of extras to burn in our printer.

Or so we thought.

We didn’t know if we wanted to do programs, but eventually agreed that it would be nice to offer some sort of general outline of what was going on, as well as acknowledge all the people helping us.

• Problem 1: We had a copy of what the minister is going to say, but we don’t have one right now. And I only vaguely remember what order everything is supposed to be in. Are we going to bluff our way through the programs? Probably. Which reminds me: I really need to locate and print out my vows, because I didn’t memorize them, and won’t have time. Without Jade seeing them.

• Problem 2: We tried to find program kits but they are sold in quantities we do not need. And then I found a program kit that looked exactly like the stuff we used for our invitations. And we still have quite a few left over. The problem? Do we have enough left over for programs? Well, we’re going to try it.

• Problem 3: The leftovers are one-sided, because they are going to be repurposed invites. So we have to fit whatever we want to fit on one side. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that we would even need more space until I saw the program kits, and how many of them are designed to be folded, two-sided deals.

• Problem 4: We probably would like to design our programs so that they echo the design of our invites, but now we don’t have extras to burn. And part of the problem was getting everything lined up properly. Much trial and error. The good news is that we can use the template we built. The bad news is that it just may not be worth it. Plus, if we add lots of fanciness, we leave even less room for the actual information on the program. Designers: Love images more than words.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also point out that when we found invite kits at Target, we were ecstatic. Our search was over.

But Jade is a shopper. It takes her months, sometimes years, to decide on a momentous purchase. It requires lots of research, window-shopping and hair pulling. And I’m the impatient one. If I like something, and want it, I buy it. This probably explains the difference in our savings account balances.

Jade wanted to shop around. And being new to the invite kit game, I told her look, this is a great price, we really need to get working on these invites, and where else is going to have these anyway?

All aflutter February 29, 2008

We’re coming into the home stretch on this ceremony thing.

And now we get to worry about the little fun details.

Oh be still, my HGTV-lovin’ heart.

You may ask, are there actually fun details in planning a wedding? Really? Isn’t it all heartache and pain? I would reply, “Yes, young grasshopper, there is a lot of pain. But then you finally get to the superfluous details, and that’s where the fun begins.”

Consider:

Not fun

• Finding a florist not grossed out by you
• Finding out the reception of your (modest) dreams still requires the budget of your dreams
• Stressing out over what to feed people
• Stressing out because it might be possible you’ll be naked (or even nekkid) because everything in our sizes is fugly
• Realizing you have, even for a small ceremony, about 10 people — 10 different people — staffing this thing. Ten people?? I’m used to doing most things by myself, or with the help of Lizzie or one trusty friend. 10 people bumps this thing into the realm of logistics and planning. Stress!
• First figuring out the budget
• Getting invitations finalized and mailed on in time (It was fun designing them. Printing them, however, wasn’t nearly so fun.)

So now, it’s the fun part.

Decorating the house for the reception.

We can buy stuff! Silly plates. Garlands of flowers. Lights for outside. Bubbles. I have an entry brewing on our cake topper, so stay tuned for that.

Pretty things.

Shiny…

*Jade smiles.*

Smorgasboard February 18, 2008

Though we may bitch or make fun of ourselves for being caught off guard when we shouldn’t be by questions that don’t faze the “normal” person, I think that’s the absolute best thing about this whole experience.

That it’s “not normal.”

Exhale with me. Say it again. Doesn’t that feel great? Like… like taking 100 of your closest friends and having them flip a big, fat collective bird at polite society.

Fuck polite society. They’re not paying for this thing.

OK, I guess I should clarify before I get too sanctimonious. Or rather, I should acknowledge that I realize that by the very virtue of deciding to hold a ceremony, we are falling in lockstep with societal norms.

But the devil’s in the details. And for us, it’s been fun actually dissecting, picking, choosing. It’s like a big old smorgasboard out there, and there’s not much that we feel we absolutely, positively have to put on our plates.

Well, fun, sort of. Though I’ve been employed at various weddings before, I guess I had no idea the amount of moving parts associated with one. That’s why I can’t completely pooh-pooh tradition. Tradition sometimes is a handy crib sheet when the choices become too baffling.

But anyhow, different. Weird. Crazy lezzies, too practical for their own good, somewhat winging it. Let me count the ways. I’ll start with…

No. 1

Spend hundreds on a dress… Fuck it. This suit is nice.

Everything is complicated February 17, 2008

Everything is complicated when you have two brides. Have you tried trying to buy a cake topper? There are all sorts of interchangeable versions; black bride, white bride, but they must correspond with the groom, outstretched arms to his open embrace.

Have we mentioned that we’re an interracial lesbian couple?

We don’t expect everything to look like us, but it would be nice.

We have found a couple of versions where an interchangeable bride is dressed in a white suit — but no black girl version. Of course not.

Everything, in fact, is heterocentric. Assumptions are made when you shop for anything. Simple little favors. Cards.

One bright ray we’ve recently found comes in the form of Target’s wedding registry, Club Wedd.

(As an aside to the two friends who read this and remember we said we didn’t want gifts, this is *still* true. But we have other friends threatening us with bodily harm and tacky gifts if we do not register somewhere.)

Target’s registry allows you to select the second person as another bride. We were worried that one of us would have to choose to be the man.

Better yet, you can set up the registry online. Unfortunately, many of the items we were interested in appeared to be online only, and we don’t want to make anybody order something online. So it turns out that we’ll probably have to go to the store and start picking stuff physically.

Hoping nobody will think twice about two women holding one of those registry scanners together. Maybe we’ll have to pick a day when the whackjobs are outside illegally soliciting for their pet causes. And hold hands on our way out.

Screech, giggle, shriek! February 16, 2008

In our early fact-finding mission for trying to find a dress for Jade, our first stop was David’s Bridal. My best friend had gotten her plus-size dress there on clearance; $30 is hard to beat.

But we were probably shopping at the wrong time, just shortly before Christmas with no change between fashion seasons.

We showed up at the shop, and it wasn’t open yet. 10:45 a.m. Thought that was weird, during the holiday season, but then again, you don’t normally go to a bridal shop to buy last-minute gifts, either.

So we sat in the car for a moment, noticing people waiting in their cars, or going up to the door as we had.

Were people seriously waiting to get in the door at David’s Bridal?

We decided to go for a drive, mail some stuff, and come back. We got back at 11 a.m., and tried the door again. Still locked! We see other people waiting, chatting.

We make fun of them, even though on the surface, we are one of them.

We bet each other that they would shriek incoherently while looking at dresses in the store. Oooh, squawk, shriek, giggle SCREEECCCCH!

When are you getting married? February 15, 2008

We’re not really fond of playing traditional roles in the Jade-Lizzie household. We don’t fall evenly into butch-femme lines, though we have arguments about which of us is more butch. We have three cats, though that doesn’t make us lesbians. Although Jade will be very quick to point out that she only lives with those cats. They are not hers. And I do not particularly like manual labor, though I am built like a football player. She wears more jewelry, but played football for a season.
We’re just two girls in our early 30s, trying to figure this lesbian thing out. We both knew that we liked other women, way back, but we also liked men. That has sorta faded when we both looked up one day, realized we were still together, still getting along, and couldn’t imagine what we’d want to do with a man when we had each other.

Yet the lady in the wedding dress shop made the assumption that everyone does: that all of us want to get married, to a man some day.

Continued from Which One Of You Is Getting Married?

She sells fairy tale dreams. Big, beautiful flouncing dresses in the latest styles. Jade picked three or four dresses off the rack, even though they didn’t come close to her size. The lady assured her that she would still be able to get into them, that she just wanted Jade to see herself in the dress, to get a feel for what she would look like.

The first thing she did was open Jade’s jacket and take a look at her boobs.

“You’re a busty girl, aren’t you?” the lady observed. I wanted to die laughing, but knew I couldn’t. Jade is indeed well endowed. “I love big breasts,” the lady continues, unaware of the irony. So do I. “Look at these,” she continues, opening her own blazer a little and displaying padded B-cups. “I wish I had your boobs. I have to wear a padded bra.”

She ushers Jade into the dressing room with her dresses, also picking out an appropriately sized strapless bra. I sorta wondered if most brides bring one already. Who knows? We don’t ever do anything the right way.

Which one of you is getting married? February 14, 2008

I’m cheap. I admit it. Part of the goal of this ceremony is to keep it reasonable, and not to embark in a fairy-princess-for-two extravagant waste of money.

I found a dress that I thought would work for me, on eBay. It appeals to my love of fantasy — a flowing, white renaissance-like dress. It also hurts that I am plus-size, so I knew whatever choices I would find in wedding gowns would be few. It’s casual yet bridal, and best, it was a good price.

But Jade, on the other hand, was still interested in doing things the so-called normal way. Nice, beautiful dress, shopping at bridal shops. Maybe we could find her a dress on clearance.

David’s Bridal really does require a separate entry. I’ll leave that until later, but let’s just say for now that the experience was unsatisfactory and made me feel like I was going to break out in hives.

So we looked up a bunch of bridal shops in the area, and started just dropping in.

No sizes for Jade. No, nothing in that size. No, no, no.

Then we wandered into a sketchy part of town, to a couple of bridal shops we often drive by. I’ve often fantasized about sneaking out with my camera in the middle of the night to take a picture of one of the eerily lit displays.

The first store had a sign in the window. Knock on the door, we’re in the back. We knock, wait, knock, wait some more. Then call the phone number on the sign. “I’ll be right over.”

Over?

Turns out that the two store are associated, and she had to walk down the street to open the shop.

“Which one of you is getting married?”

Dead silence, and then Jade splutters, “Me.”

“Ok. When’s the happy day?”

Silence for a minute, “Um, um, we don’t really have a date yet. Sometime in March, probably.”

“What kind of dress are you looking for?”

“Um, I really don’t know. I guess I’m just looking around right now.”

The girl looks at her a little oddly but we paw through the dresses anyway. What kind of a bride are you if you haven’t already picked out the kind of dress you want by the time you were 15? What kind of bride are you, if you’re just looking at dresses in December, a mere almost four months until the happy event?

Eventually, she tells us there’s more dresses in the other shop if we want to walk down. “I’ll call ahead and let her know you’re coming.”

If it was awkward then, it became more awkward when we went to the next store, and a middle-aged lady greeted us.

“Which one of you is the bride?”

Point at Jade. “Oh, you’re so lucky! You’re a beautiful girl!”

Admittedly, Jade and I have been struggling with this whole identity as lesbians thing. We don’t know what to tell people. We keep it to ourselves. We’re certainly not going to tell a middle-aged woman in a dress store that we’re both the bride. Or maybe we were just caught off guard. We hadn’t thought about what we’d say, or whether we’d tell the plain truth. Technically, we hadn’t been lying. Just omitting information.

This entry is long enough. The next one will feature the saleswoman and the bride-to-be’s breasts.

When Are You Getting Married?