Wedding Rings

“I’m not sure how I feel about gay weddings”, a friend told me yesterday. He and his male partner have been together for forty years. My friend is now retired, and his partner is not far off it, and they come from a generation where expectations about marriage for same sex couples were not on the radar. Hey, back in “their day” male gay sex could get you some time in gaol, and was mostly never talked about. Times have changed, but many people remember the past. He told me this late yesterday, after telling him I’d been to my first LEGAL gay wedding held at a nearby registry office.

We all laughed when my friends (one in his sixties, one in his forties) had to declare they were over 18 years old, as they’ve been together for close to 18 years, and they’re no spring chickens. They also had to declare they weren’t related, which also gave us a smile, as one of them is Anglo-Australian, and the other was born in Thailand.

They were able to choose their titles – they went with groom and groom – but the only thing they changed straightaway, was from ring fingers on their left hands to ring fingers on their right hands, as they were the ones that fitted!!

It was short and sweet in lots of ways, held in the registry office.

The older friend I mentioned earlier told me he was also going to a wedding this weekend of a couple who had been together for a long time. “They’re doing the whole she-bang”, he told me. An interesting contrast, I thought to myself, between couples who had been together for a long time, with one couple choosing something short, sweet, and mostly about legalities, whereas the other was about a big public celebration. I make no judgements either way, just noting that in this day and age, there are lots of ways to get married, that don’t necessarily involve white dresses and churches.

Lovely.