I’m getting married this year. Yes married, not civilly partnered. Now we all know that society has galloped on an amazing distance in the past 20 years but that still doesn’t mean it’s plain sailing when it comes to non-traditional wedding planning – far from it. Don’t believe me? Read on… Continue reading » “Wedding Planning Pain”
Well that was easy wasn’t it? So long as you discount the decades of struggle, years of neglect and a whole 13 months from the Same Sex Marriage bill being approved in the Commons to it finally becoming law. Yes, the British legal system might move at the speed of chilled glue but we now have a date when same sex marriage will be legal: March 29th 2014. All of which means that when I get married in May, I really will be doing just that…
Yesterday, my partner and I went to the local town hall to register our intent to have a civil partnership next year. We’d like to have a wedding, but we’ve decided to go ahead with our celebration as planned and not wait around for the government to finally catch up with the public wish for marriage equality. They’re not the most speedy bunch. And neither, as we found out, are the people at the council. Here’s roughly how our experience went…
February 5th was a historic night in my life, in the life of British politics and the British populace. This was the night that parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of same-sex marriage, thereby ushering in a new era of marriage where it’s open to all, whoever you fall in love with. No longer are gays and lesbians second-class citizens at the wedding breakfast – soon we’ll be able to call it a wedding, call our spouse our spouse, and dualities of husbands and wives will be commonplace. This is so astonishing that even writing it is still astounding…