“Tying The Knot”…To Love, To Commitment And To Us ALL Living Happily Ever After!

Last week I had the pleasure to witness the marriage of two people I have gotten to know over the past few years through Tampa Bay Business Owners, a local business organization I have mentioned numerous times before in previous blogs (mostly recent on this site as well as on my former blog over at tcP! Sweets) and on social media.  I was so honored despite the fact that I don’t think they really intended for anyone to be there other than their officiant, owners of the home where the ceremony was taking place and two other witnesses to make it legal.

In an email exchange after receiving the invitation to their celebration dinner a few days after the ceremony was taking place this is what I was told…

“You’re welcome to attend our ceremony if you want, and we’d love to have you! It’s on (TBBO) Main Event day so we didn’t want people to feel torn or rushed. We really want to keep it simple, and that can still include you! ”

That can still include me???

Ummm…

Call me crazy but…clearly they don’t understand I never miss an affair if I can help it. And I certainly never miss an opportunity for a good tears of joy / cry fest, especially one that represents so much about love and commitment. In a world that sometimes seems to do everything in its power to stack the cards against marriage, I am going to do everything in my power to be present and whatever energy I can bring to get them off on the right foot, I’m totally there.

I suppose I could have just gone to the dinner a few nights later and celebrated with everyone else. But despite the fact that I had just returned from Los Angeles less than 2 days before, was still feeling jet lag, had what seemed like a never ending amount of work to catch up on and was leaving the next day for Tallahassee to attend my daughter’s film screening (she’s a junior at FSU Film School …awesome program, by the way, for anyone thinking about going to film school), I put on a dress (a rarity these days) and arrived ready to see them literally tie the knot…

Official tying of the knot

I’ve never seen a wedding where they actually used two pieces of rope and tied them together to symbolize their union. So that got me thinking about the origin of the phrase and this is just one of the many I found thanks to a quick Google search (seriously, what did we do before Google???)…

“There is a suggestion that this expression derives from the nets of knotted string which supported beds prior to the introduction of metal-sprung bedrames. The theory goes that, in order to make a marriage bed, you needed to ‘tie the knot’.”
(Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/tie-the-knot.html)

Who knew???? There are many other theories that include stuff about girdles worn during the Roman Empire, illiterate sailors and soldiers sending pieces of rope to prospective brides and Hindu necklaces made of flowers but the exact origin…no one really knows.

And does it really matter? I loved the gesture which only made me cry more and feel greater joy for the happy couple.

But what really got me most of all was knowing what it took for them to arrive to this day. It was years in the making. They met in 1998 and on March 4th, 2004 actually did get married in Oregon.

A few days later, though, it was annulled…not at their request but because the state essentially revoked their license and thousands of others who got married on or shortly after March 3, 2004 when the county clerk began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. (For more on that history click here.)

Disclaimer:
For those of you who may be reading this and are very much against gay marriage and/or relationships, I officially give you permission to stop reading, but please don’t leave negative comments ranting about the evils of it all. I promise you I will not approve them. 

Oh and by all means, unsubscribe to my emails, unfriend me on Facebook, stop following me on Twitter and delete my contact information from your phone. Yeah, your entitled to your opinion but if you are going to get ugly, I won’t allow that negativity to be part of my world…sorry.

I’m not here to debate anything.

I’m here to share my day to day life experiences and, as I say, keep it real.

For the record and in case you didn’t know, I’m not a lesbian and attending a wedding or merely having friends who are will not make me a lesbian. And to the haters out there who think gay marriages destroy the institution and the notion of what a family should be, well, that shipped sailed a long time ago with heterosexuals divorce rate significantly higher than homesexuals.

What was so real to me standing beside those two women on an absolutely glorious sunny day, overlooking one of the channels leading into Tampa Bay was a feeling of commitment that they clearly have for one another. And truth be told, it was stronger than any other wedding I’ve ever attended. Maybe it was because this was, in fact, the first legal gay wedding I’ve been to and I can so appreciate everything they have had to go through to get to that day, that moment.

My decision to get married…both times…was simple. I was in love and believed in the life we could make together. My first marriage may have ended in divorce, but, still, no one told me I couldn’t get married when I decided to do it again.

Why should it be any different for these two women?

The very happy and very deserving couple!

Congratulations to them, to love, to commitment and to equality for us all to live happily ever after.

That’s it for now…#BlackerOut