creating unlikely advocates

Even in the midst of all the wedding planning, we have not lost sight of the fact that our home state of Maryland is one of the few states in the country where marriage equality still hangs in the balance. In the last week, my home state of Maine as well as the great state of Vermont signed marriage equality bills into law. Yet, if we went to one of those states and were legally married, Maryalnd wouldn’t recognize it.

Most of the guests at our wedding are heterosexual – in fact, we only have one other gay couple attending. Those folks take for granted the legal protections that marrying their partner of choice affords them. In fact, there are over a thousand legal protections automatically granted by state and federal governments the moment that a heterosexual couple ties the knot. Just a few of those include tax benefits, the right to visit an ill partner in the hospital, the rights to make funeral arrangements for a deceased spouse, and community property ownership protections. For a full list and more information about the inequality that still exists, visit the Equality Maryland website.

Our wedding day is one of the few changes that we will have to ask our friends and family to reach out to legislators on our behalf. Though we don’t want our ceremony to become a stump speech, we have decided to have postcards printed with our name and picture, pre-addressed to our governor and printed with the following message.

Dear Governor O’Malley,

I am writing you in support of my friends. Although they cannot be legally married in their home state of Maryland, today I attended an intimate ceremony in which these two women pledged their lives to each other. I am pleased to be a part of their life together. My friends are among thousands of Marylanders who are waiting for their state to take action and provide legal status for their relationship. Despite the joy of their celebration today, they are still strangers under Maryland law. On this happy day, I ask you to work towards marriage equality for my friends.

Sincerely yours,
(your name)

We feel that this is an opportunity to softly encourage our friends and family to work towards a cause that’s important to us. This fight will be won in incremental steps, and educating your friends and family about the discrimination that same sex couples face is an essential part of what’s needed. Be bold, and do the same.

the flowers

Like everything else we’re planning, we wanted our flowers to be simple and classy. We had decided long ago to go with white orchids: I want to wear a few in my hair, and Jen recently decided on a flower lei to complete her look. Since we are only three weeks out from our big day, you can tell that I have left this important detail to the last minute.

I wanted to order our flowers online, but that’s a scary undertaking – I have sent flowers online before, with mixed results: sometimes they are too small, not what you expected, or the wrong color altogether. I carefully researched wholesale online florists, and came up with two possible options. The Grower’s Box and Fifty Flowers. Both sites have good prices for large quantities of multiple stems, and both feature pre-mixed “Wedding in a Box” kits that come with your choice of main flowers plus supporting cast members. Both sites require that wedding orders be placed at least 10 days in advance – actually, I was considering a pre-made bouquet from Fifty Flowers but apparently those need to be ordered about a month in advance.

It was a difficult choice, but I found some negative reviews of Fifty Flowers online so I decided to go with Grower’s Box. The prices at the Growers Box were slightly higher, but overall I felt more comfortable with their site and glowing customer testimonials. Grower’s Box prices include shipping, too, which is great for budgeting.