my first gay wedding

[hermionesviolin]

From the November CHPC newsletter:

Wedding Invitation
The Clarendon Hill community is invited to witness the joyous wedding of Mike Nickey and Steven Bucchianer (service only), Nov. 22 at 11 a.m., Gordon Chapel in Old South Church. They will be having a small family reception. CHPC offers Mike and Steve many blessings and congratulations!

It took me about 50 minutes to get there -- so I was 15 minutes early (I got both a Red Line and a Green Line almost immediately but had allowed for having to wait).  It's the church that hosted Boston Pride's interfaith service this year, but I hadn't noticed the chapel that time.  It's a very simple stone chapel.

There were maybe 40 people present (and barely enough chairs).  There was a good showing of the core CHPC folks -- SarahG did the bagpipe prelude/recessional, and also in attendance were SarahD, Pierre (Corinne had a recital, hence why she and his wife Jill weren't present), Karl and Katherine, me, and Gusti.

Steve was wearing a white jacket (black vest and bowtie, white shirt and black pants).  Mike was wearing a white shirt and tie (black jacket and pants).

The hymns were "Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise," "Here I Am Lord," and "Joyful, Joyful."

The Scripture was 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and Colossians 3:12-17.

I'm always thrown by Communion at a wedding.  The minister said some nice stuff about "share a meal" as relates to the whole family/cebration aspect of a wedding.  She said the table is open to everyone -- "saint or sinner, gay or straight, Catholic or Protestant" ... Christ is the host and we are all guests and Christ never turned anyone away from his table.

The program didn't indicate which version of The Lord's Prayer and I honestly couldn't remember which version the UCC uses so at first I said "debts" because I was sitting with CHPC folks and that's the version they use but it was "trespasses" -- which I think is still my default were I to recite it unthinkingly on my own, but I got too wrapped up in thinking to be on autopilot.

Lighting the Unity Candle is adorable -- two thin white candles (already lit) on either side of a thicker white candle (unlit) and each partner picks up one of the thin candles and they hold them horizontal and touching (so they make one flame) and lower them down to light the thick candle and the T shape unity thing is a really nice visual.

The vows emphasized encouraging and supporting each other in their growth, which felt different to me than other weddings I've been to but I liked it.  One line was, iirc, "I give myself to you as I am and as I will be."

I'd been looking forward to the "by the power invested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you..." because this was the first same-sex wedding I'd attended and I wondered if I'd get all teary.  (I was thinking about how I've been legally allowed to get married to whomever I want since I was 20, a little less than 3 years after I came to self-identify as queer, and how that potentially influences how I react to the same-sex marriage debates.)

The whole service lasted about 35min.

Edit: While we're talking about same-sex weddings, mjules linked me to the photos from Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi's wedding day.

Comments

[sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com]

I'm curious - why are you thrown by Communion at a wedding? I know it's not usual, but it's what my parents had - my mother insisted on it - and I've always loved it as an idea.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I don't have any problem with it, just any time I encounter it I'm like, "Oh yeah, some people do this." It was very important to Trelawney to have it at her wedding, but I can't remember if Mike and Meredith had it (and the first wedding I got my very own personal invitation to was a hippie pagan Ren fair wedding with Jewish aspects, so...). *thinks back to other weddings* Paul and Barbara are non-religious, Miles and Donnamarie are Jehovah's Witnesses. The two weddings I remember from my childhood were low church Protestant, so I'm fairly certain they didn't have Communion. Though it's possible that they did and I just don't remember because I have such a low theology of Communion (which makes it extra amusing that I out of all my religious friends get Communion at least twice a week due to the churches I'm involved with).

[sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com]

~nods~

So not unlike the way I was thrown at Dave and Cath's wedding, which was the first civil ceremony I'd ever been to: the lack of God just seemed so strange to me!

[hedy.livejournal.com]

Speaking of potentially reacting and Ellen, I'm amazed by the number of straight people I read whose first reaction to Prop 8 was "what does this mean for Ellen?"