My wedding day disasters part two

Yes, there is more! Don’t worry, some things did actually go right for us! I’ll fill you in on those another time.

My friend who was chosen to sign the registrar was told, months before our big day, that valid photo ID was required to be an official witness. That was no problem for him apparently so I didn’t waste another moment thinking about it. Seven days, exactly, before our day he told me that his photo ID was out of date and had been for months. In a panic I emailed our registrar and asked her what we could do now. We had to face a long wait for her reply over that weekend. Monday brought good news, however, with an email sitting in my inbox informing me that she would accept the out of date ID. Wahoo!

My better half wanted to wear cufflinks with her shirt which was fine. Well, it was fine until we realised that her brand new shirt only had one open cufflink hole. We were seriously not impressed. So, I left her sitting in my bedroom at my Mother’s house while I went downstairs and started ripping things out of the drawer in the hope that I could find something to help our situation. The lining was present so I could clearly see where the cufflink hole was meant to be. Eventually I had a light bulb moment and poked tiny holes along the lining of the absent hole. I used these tiny holes as a guideline of where to cut. I tried my best to cut in a straight line to create the best opening possible. (A gay on her wedding day attempting to do anything straight is madness.) Somehow I did it. It turned out perfect and no one could have ever guessed that her shirt was temporarily confused about whether it wanted to be cufflink friendly or not.

During our vows the words “lawful impediment” had to be said. You know, declaring that there’s no lawful reason why you should not be wed. My love struggled here big time. There was obviously no reason why we should not wed. The problem here was that pronouncing the word “impediment” was incredibly difficult for her. I think she would have happily said her vows upside if it meant she could avoid saying that word. We had practiced pronouncing it and she had improved a lot but on the day the nerves of saying it in front of everyone got the better of her. She attempted to say it three times before saying “Yeah, that word”, however, on the fourth attempt she did it. Yay!

As part of our ceremony we planned to light candles so we had a small candle holder that held three candles. The idea was to light a candle each separately then light one together as a symbol of two people joining together. This was a simple gesture that should not have taken up much time. Who am I kidding? There was no simple with us that day! One of the legs of the candle holder broke, before we had lit any candles, turning it into a bit of a potential fire hazard. This issue was resolved by my wife putting her cigarette box underneath the candle holder to replace the missing leg. Our registrar said some lovely words then it was time to light the candles. Unfortunately, our lighter was in the cigarette box. Damn! Our guests noticed the problem and we suddenly had lighters coming our way from every direction. I felt a sudden strange surge of gratitude for the fact that so many of our friends and family are smokers.

Despite all of our obstacles, we were wed. We left the room to the sounds of Savage Garden’s Truly Madly Deeply as our friends and family applauded and wished us the best in life. I was almost expecting the CD to start skipping or for the stereo it was in to decide to stop working. Luckily neither of these things happened. What did happen was this: as we both walked away we knew this was the start of our forever together and it felt amazing. I would have happily frozen time just to enjoy the elation I was feeling for longer. Life is so much better with her and I am so much happier knowing that she is mine.

My wedding day disasters

My wedding day was filled with a lot of mini disasters. Nothing major, nothing that could have ruined the day but definitely little hiccups. Many people turn wedding planning into a top priority in the months or weeks before their big day but honestly no amount of planning can totally guarantee you the perfect day. To prove to you all that a perfect wedding day is not necessarily required for an amazing marriage I’m going to tell you about some of the disasters we faced along the way…

A week before our wedding I realised that my ring was big enough to fit on my thumb all of a sudden. Uh oh, who would have guessed that weight loss equaled to smaller fingers? I dropped a few clothes sizes since we had bought our rings and clearly ring sizes too! So, a mission began to get me a new ring. After arguing with the man in the jewellers I was actually lucky enough to exchange my ring for a smaller one. Success!

On our wedding day, about an hour before we were due to start our journey to our venue, my better half started crying. A lot. We were at my Mom’s house so, of course, Mom overheard the crying and presumed it was a case of cold feet. Honestly, I kind of thought so too. After a painful few minutes I finally got to the root of the problem – she was worried about our dog. Yes, that was it. I had been eating a chocolate bar before we left our house and I left some of it on our kitchen table. She was terrified. I think she had visions of our dog eating the chocolate and becoming really ill with no one there to help her. We quickly went back to our house, checked on doggy, she was totally fine and I threw the culprit in the bin.

We had to stop at the venue we had chosen to have our wedding afters in before going to the ceremony venue. We dropped off some last minute items required for our after party then happily left to get married. They say that brides are meant to be late so as two brides arriving together we were double late. Hey, it’s tradition so that was okay! Unfortunately we realised we had another problem… our CD that had the songs we wanted to walk up and down the aisle to was accidentally left at the party venue. Aagh, stress! My patient Mother and confused Uncle drove back and got the precious cd for us. Wahoo, we now had music!

There was actually other problems along the way but I’ll save those for a future post! Don’t let planning and obsessing over perfections distract you from what you are really aiming to do: make a commitment to your love in front of the ones you have chosen to be there.

My very own love story

Sara Bareilles – I Choose You: http://youtu.be/xjE5D9cHiOk

Sara Bareilles’ recent offering is such a heartfelt song! In this music video she helps two people to propose to their partners. The really awesome thing is that a beautiful lesbian couple is one of the pairs hoping to get engaged. Lesbian love is the best, right? Their happiness made me smile as I recalled proposing to my wife. It was the most simple yet magical moment. We were laying in each other’s arms listening to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol when I asked her the most important question I’ve ever asked. I said wife so, you guessed right, she said yes! One year later we had our Civil Partnership (Ireland hasn’t made it to Civil Marriage just yet). Our relationship was criticised from the very beginning. My wife is eight years older than me and I was only eighteen when we got engaged so of course the whispers of “She’s too young,  she’s not ready” were loud and ever present. The fact that we got engaged a mere three months after we got together (typical lesbians) didn’t help to convince the sceptics. Nevertheless, one year later we were wed in a ceremony that was perfect to us. Laughter, tears, love and hope rained down upon us as we promised ourselves to each other.

This June we will be together four years so I suppose we proved people wrong. Yes, I was young but not too young. Yes, it was soon but not too soon. Yes, it was love, the truest and most precious of loves. I feel like I’m living my very own love story. I hope you all have or will find your love story too one day. We all deserve a happily ever after. For now, whatever your relationship status, sit back and enjoy this sweet music video. Smile, life is good even when it’s bad.