Blogging for LGBTQ Familes Day: Now With Children

Yep, that's right--there's a new post here. I don't know that this will be the start of a trend, but when I realized that my first day of maternity leave and Carrie's first day back at work coincided with Blogging for LGBTQ Families Day, it seemed like a sign from somewhere.

The last three years have been some pretty intense times for our family. Remember when we went to Greece and London for our honeymoon? Oh, you don't remember because all you heard about that trip was these two pictures? Fair enough.

Well anyway, shortly after we got back from that trip, we met with a Reproductive Endocrinologist to start the process of trying to make a baby with Carrie carrying. That process took much longer and involved much more heartache than we expected. Infertility is unspeakably hard. For those who were with us on that long, painful journey, thank you for your love and support. And for those of you with whom we didn't share this process, please understand that we dealt with the stress and pain the way we needed to.

We'll never know what finally went right to create the two beautiful daughters we have today, but when I look at them now, I know that they were meant to be.

And now that the journey of trying to make these babies is over, I know that the new journey of parenting and raising these beautiful babies to become caring, strong, smart women has only just begun. I am immensely grateful for the modern medicine that helped us to become parents and to the LGBTQ families who came before us, paving the way for this process to seem possible. And of course I am enormously grateful to our family and friends, who have been wonderful so far and who I know will continue to support us and our girls.

The world is changing rapidly. Last June, Carrie and I celebrated with thousands of others in front of Stonewall after the historic DOMA decision. And near the beginning of Carrie's second trimester, New Jersey recognized our marriage. Since then, 5 other states have followed suit. As I look at our baby girls, I hope for a future world where their mothers' relationship won't be up for debate, and where they can be who they are and love who they love without fear.

Wedding Wednesdays: Dress Shopping Surprises

I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to write a regular recap post this week, but fortunately Carrie's mom suggested an idea for a post related to wedding dress shopping. For those of you who only had/have one bride in your wedding, be glad that you get to avoid this issue!

Carrie and I decided that we both wanted our dresses to be a surprise. Given that we normally do and choose just about everything together, keeping our opinions on dresses secret was no easy task. There were many evenings of both of us sitting on the couch with our computers angled away from each other so that we could look at dresses online without the other seeing. In addition to that, we both did much (in my case, all) of our dress shopping the weekend that we were in Minnesota in May. With the whirlwind of things happening that weekend, we also had to schedule appointments at some of the same stores in a way that we were sure to not run into each other in the process.

We had considered the possibility that we might fall in love with the same dress but figured it was unlikely since there are thousands of dresses out there and we are different people after all. But just in case, we agreed ahead of time that our moms could compare notes on dresses and at least warn us if we were picking the same one. I don't even want to think about what the negotiations would have looked like if that had happened...

Fortunately, we did not choose the same dress, but we did come rather dangerously close! In retrospect, our moms must have been cracking up when they were comparing pictures after our crazy day of dress shopping.

For your viewing pleasure:

This dress was my back-up plan in case Carrie happened to pick my first choice.

Carrie, sporting the same dress

Another dress I tried on

Carrie's actual dress (so pretty!!!)

This was in Carrie's top 3 (she actually had the consultant convinced enough that she was going to buy it that they let her take pictures despite a no-photo-unless-you're-buying policy.

My actual dress. Yes, the neckline is literally the only difference.

That last one was definitely our closest call. The store that I bought it from (Wedding Shoppe in St. Paul) was my last stop of the day but had been Carrie's first stop. I explained to the consultant that Carrie had been there earlier that day, so after I tried on this dress, tried on a few more, and then went back to this dress and declared it the one, she went and grabbed Carrie's paperwork from that morning. She then came back into the fitting room looking sort of stunned and dragged my mom out into the hallway. She tried to pretend like they were doing a good job of hiding it from me, but I'm not an idiot and knew that Carrie had either been interested in the same dress or something shockingly similar. But the advantage I had over the consultant was that Carrie had already sent me text messages at lunchtime saying that she'd liked a dress there but it wasn't her first choice. There were definitely a couple of tense days while Carrie figured out what her first choice was before I could actually order the dress, but obviously it worked out great in the end. To those of you who know us in real life, I'm sure our similar taste is no surprise, but I'm glad that we didn't both want exactly the same thing!

Wedding Wednesdays: Planning from Afar

The first decision we made about the wedding was where to hold it.  It was always a given that we would have a legal ceremony in a state where it would be called marriage.  But whether that ceremony would be the ceremony was initially up for debate.

When we got engaged in November 2009 there was buzz around New Jersey that New Jersey would pull it together before Corzine left office, and we dreamed briefly of asking our friends and family to travel to our home state to hold a single celebration of a newly legal marriage.  We also pondered acting politically with our financial investment of a wedding celebration and holding our party in Massachusetts or Connecticut, where same-sex marriage was already legal.  But in the end we decided that the best answer for us was to hold the wedding we would want to have if it were legal, and not let haters dictate where or when we should celebrate our relationship.  Sadly, the Minnesota government is currently seeking to reaffirm their disdain for our relationship by amending the state constitution to ensure that our marriage could not be recognized.

In an acquiesence to political reality, we did conduct a tiny legal ceremony in Massachusetts, which you can read about here and look at pictures of here.   But for the most part, we consider the Minnesota ceremony and party to be "the wedding" and "our anniversary."  (And it was certainly the bulk of the wedding spending!)  I grew up in Minnesota and Becky grew up in Wisconsin, we both have family and friends and family friends centered in these two neighboring states, and we were able to get married in my childhood church.  Initially the decision felt like we were selling out the idea of putting our money where our politics are.  But ultimately I have no shame in financially supporting all of the wonderful, supportive vendors we worked with.

So, planning a wedding in a state you don't live in is a lot like planning a destination wedding.  Except my impression is that when you plan a Jamaica wedding or a Mexico wedding, most of the vendors are geared towards destination wedding go-ers.  Apparently Minneapolis isn't high on the destination wedding list.  So we had to sort it out ourselves.  To be fair, we had a bit of a blue print in my sister's wedding planning from five years ago, but she was primarily willing to allow my mom to be her wedding planner.  In our case we had not one but two brides who wanted to control every little detail, and also not one but two mothers-of-the- brides who also had opinions and needs. 

Our overall strategy was to do big chunks of planning in marathon wedding weekends, during which Becky and I, Becky's mom, on a few occasions other relatives, and my mom had wedding retreats in my parents' house.  This involved some quick bonding for our mothers who had only met for the first time in December 2009! 

Our first trip to Minnesota was in January 2010.  We toured four potential reception sites, were stood up at one arranged site tour, and drove by two other potential sites.  We met with six photographers and were canceled on by one additional photographer.  And even just reading that right now I feel like we were crazy.  But part of the stress of planning from afar was that we had to have lots of options lined up, because we didn't have the luxury of loving one vendor on the internet and then going in person and hating it/him/her and then trying again the next weekend.  This whirlwind approach forced us to do our internet homework and then jump in and do.  I think it was an advantage that we saw everything/met everyone all at once so we could easily compare and choose.  But it certainly felt stressful at the time!  When I got the e-mail from the photographer who canceled (she had a family emergency) I almost broke down crying, because somehow her cancellation solidified for me that she was the one photographer we were destined to love.  Crazy much?  Never fear, we picked ourselves up and loved another.

This is me diligently studying the reception contract, ever cautious to not sign away the rights to parent our first born (I'm fairly certain we avoided this, but I won't be entirely shocked if one of our vendors shows up at the hospital someday expecting that!):

I think the whirlwind version may have been good for our indecisive selves also, because at the end of the weekend....we obviously weren't going to pick a photographer we didn't interview or a venue we didn't view, and thus we had to just freaking make a decision.  And ultimately, those big decisions from weekend one were the easiest.  We loved in person the same venue we loved online.  We both easily agreed that the photographer we thought we loved online was unnecessarily expensive and not a personality click, and that the photographer we did pick was an easy personality match.  Of all your vendors, your photographer is the one whose personality you should like.  Ours felt like she could have been one of our college friends.  Win.

Our second trip to Minnesota was in May 2010.  We managed to connect it to a Wisconsin trip we were planning to take anyways.  We got a private food and wine tasting at our reception venue (special perk of long distance planning!), met with four florists, met with four bakers, took engagement pictures, scoped rehearsal dinner venues, met with the minister, shopped for invitation supplies, and shopped for wedding dresses.  Once again our selection of vendors was probably overkill, but I don't regret meeting with any of them.  I like to make informed choices!  The one thing we really could have done at home was wedding dress shopping, but we wanted to have our moms in on part of it at least.  I ended up buying mine off the rack at a boutique in Minnesota and then conning my mom into shipping it to New Jersey for me to have altered.  Becky ordered hers through a shop in Minnesota and they mailed it to her to have altered here.  Alterations was one of the most stressful parts of the wedding planning, and I would highly recommend buying your dress from a shop where you plan to get it altered.  While in Wisconsin we also went bridesmaid dress shopping with Becky's sisters and made a tentative decision.  Like the colors??

 

We didn't go back to Minnesota until three weeks before the wedding.  Pretty much all of the detail finalizing with all of the vendors we did over phone and e-mail, we hired DJ and limo companies over the internet, we instructed our wedding party to order outfits over the internet, and we worked on all of the paper goods and favors and all the little details from home.  We ordered box after box of stuff to be sent to my mom, who would open boxes on Skype and show us our unity candle or our boxes of dozens of bubbles.  We also asked each of our mothers to take care of buying or doing certain things for us, like sorting out only red and purple Hershey's kisses from dozens of bags, or tying personalized ribbons. Not everyone was equally enthused about ordering their outfits:

 In October the whole gang descended on Minnesota again, and we did hair trials, had a shower, re-tasted our cake (to be sure of the flavors!!), and worked on finishing and folding and organizing all of that stuff that our moms collected for us!

People on the wedding internetz talk a lot about wedding planning taking over your whole lives....  we definitely had lots of days where we didn't really have any wedding related tasks we had to complete, but that freedom was obviously created by these intense whirlwind planning weekends.  I might be a little crazy, but I liked the intensity of being forced to get so much done at once, and of having our families with us in our intense focus for just those weekends.  When my mom first warned us of how many planning trips we would need to take to Minnesota I was a doubter.  Now that we've done it I think it's a miracle that we didn't need more.

ETA: ARGH, I did it again!!!  :(  This post was written by Carrie, despite Blogger's claims that it was written by Becky.

In Sickness and in Health

Well, "in sickness and in health" wasn't actually explicitly in our vows... but trust me, it was there in spirit!
On Friday morning I had my gallbladder removed, and I honestly don't think I could have made it through the last four days without Becky.  She has cooked and cleaned, waited on me, set an alarm to give me pain medication in the middle of the night, and helped me in/out/on/off the couch/chairs/bed/toilet/car/pretty much every surface in our home.  I have no idea how single people have surgery. 

Overall, the hospital staff was really great about not missing a beat when we answered "she's your friend?" with "no, wife."  I didn't really expect anything less from a hospital in Manhattan, but you never know for sure.  Before surgery they took my blood pressure and it had spiked; I attribute this partially to the fact that they made me leave Becky.  (Thankfully they let me have her back again before the surgery, and before she left that time the anesthesiologist gave me some Valium in my IV...haha.)  Before surgery they also made me take a pregnancy test, despite my best assurances that I was 110% definitely not pregnant.  Apparently their results concurred because the surgery went forward. 

As they were starting to think about letting me go home, the volunteer lady (aka meanie head visitor gatekeeper) told me that she was sending "my friend" up.  Usually I am not one to get annoyed about these things, and given that standing up was taking all of my mental attention, it was certainly not my moment to complain out loud.  But in that moment of being seperated from her and really wanting/needing her to come back and take care of me, I was definitely reminded of the profound difference between her being my friend and being my wife. 

My brain is still a little fuzzy, probably from a combination  of surgery fuzz and pain medication, so this post isn't the most coherant.  But I hope the underlying message of how much I love and appreciate my wife is coming through!  Thank you Becky!

Today I gay worked. You?

(As seen on Queer Skies Ahead and A Homegrown Wedding.)

It's Different

After we booked our honeymoon tickets the other day, I tweeted something about needing to get a new passport. Someone tweeted back about the fact that she'd been married several years and hadn't bothered to get a new passport.

And my first thought was simply, "It's different."

She's married to a man, so even though they don't have the same last names in their passports (she did choose to take his name, but the same rules apply to the many women in hetero marriages who don't change their names when they get married), their marriage is likely to be recognized wherever they go. If they approach the immigration officer at the airport together and say they're married, that person is unlikely to declare that they're not a family and must go through immigration separately. And if some tragedy were to befall them, either in the U.S. or in another country, and one of them were to need medical attention, the hospital staff would likely take their word for it when they say they're married.

It's different.

In contrast, it's only in the past few months that the U.S. government declared that patients have the right to decide who has visitation rights, even if that person is a same-sex partner. That directive grew out of a Florida case in which a woman and her children were denied visitation rights to their wife/mother as she was dying, despite the partner having a health care power of attorney. And outside the U.S. the situation can be even scarier. We love traveling, and we're not about to abandon our desire to see the world just because we're a same-sex couple.

But it's different.

So not only will we both update our passports to contain our new shared last name, but we will travel with a certified copy of our marriage certificate. And we will travel with originals of our healthcare proxy and power of attorney documents. And I'm already working on scanning electronic copies of these documents, along with our wills, so that we could access them online anytime if needed. Yes, we have wills. We've been married 4 months, we have no substantial assets, and we don't have children yet, but we have wills. Our families are very supportive and would no doubt follow our wishes to the best of their abilities, but depending on where we are, our marriage has different levels of recognition. (The drive home from MA to NJ is always fun: now we're married, now we're not, now we're married, now we're sorta-married, now we're maybe civil-unioned?) I'm generally a pretty risk-averse person anyway, but on these matters, I'm taking as few risks as possible. So yes, we'll be spending that $220 to update our two passports as one more marker of the legitimacy of our relationship.

I don't mean to sound bitter; I don't begrudge the privileges of anyone who's in a hetero marriage. I just wish those privileges could be shared by all of us.

I wish it wasn't different.

So all of these thoughts were running through my head yesterday, when I got a bit of a reality check. I was about to leave work when my director asked if I knew of resources for someone claiming asylum. I didn't have much, but after hearing the story behind the question, I spent a good hour Googling my heart out for resources. Without giving out too much identifying information, she was asking on behalf of someone who had recently come out to his/her parents and been met with a very hostile reaction. This individual comes from a country where homosexuality is illegal and potentially punishable by death, and after successfully re-entering the U.S. following this traumatic coming out experience, this person is now trying to figure out how to apply for asylum in the U.S.

That's different. In a way that makes my passport concerns seem rather insignificant.

I did find several resources to pass on to that individual, but I'd also like to share one with all of you. Immigration Equality is an organization that is working to change immigration laws as they impact LGBT people and also help LGBT people who are struggling with the immigration system now. They do advocacy, they provide information, and they provide legal assistance for people who couldn't otherwise afford it. So I'd urge you to take a few minutes to at least read about their work, read the stories of people they've worked with, and get involved if you feel so inspired.

Help make it different.

What's in a name? That which we call...

This is my post in honor of blogging for Modern Families week at Goodkin.

As we were planning our wedding last year we settled on most of the big decisions pretty easily. A lot of the decisions, like where to hold the ceremony, how formal it should be, whether we would both wear white dresses, whether to invite children, just seemed obvious to both of us. We had already agreed on colors and patterns to decorate our home, and the decision to reuse those choices came easily. Overall, we found most traditional wedding planning and customs to adapt easily to a same-sex wedding. It’s surprisingly easy to read bridal magazines and wedding planning sites without even encountering mention of a groom, and when he does show up rarely do his jobs require him to be male or dressed in a tuxedo or called a groom.

One of the decisions we found the hardest to make was the one about last names. In the last name business we found little guidance from tradition. The night before the Massachusetts marriage license application (at which we needed to declare our new names, in order to benefit from the free name change granted by legal marriage) we spent hours debating back and forth, practicing writing and signing all combinations of possible names, and generally obsessing about the right choice. We had previously agreed that we would not share our debate with friends or family until after we had made a decision, because we wanted to feel confident that it was our decision. In the end we made one of the most nontraditional decisions of the whole wedding/marriage/anticipated life. We decided to merge our names. We kept part of mine and part of hers, and we ditched part of mine and part of hers. We would each have the same name, which would convey the connection to each of our extended families, and any future additions to our family would also be able to share that name. Our new name identifies us quickly and easily as a real legitimate family in a way that no other marker could.

When I told my mom she initially reacted with surprise. I can’t even remember now if she had expected us to keep our names or to hyphenate, but she did not expect the merge. My mom at times in the past has been a recreational genealogist, and thus one of her initial arguments against our decision was that creating a new name would make us difficult to trace for future genealogists.

Creating our family our way will probably cause many headaches for future genealogists. We hope that Partner 1 and Partner 2 on the marriage certificate will eventually pave the way for Parent 1 and Parent 2 on countless forms (unless conservatives have their way, in which case we'll have to flip a coin on who gets to be the "father"). We're stretching our own imaginations, and asking those future genealogists to come along for the ride. I commented on this to my mother, and eventually we agreed that it is a new world out here on the family frontier.

I have a feeling that our whole lives together are going to be a mix of repeating familiar traditions that are surprisingly non-gender-specific and occasionally needing to sit down and come up with creative solutions that may challenge us and the other people in our social worlds. In later conversations with my mother I have gotten the impression that she came around to our new name. Her initial reaction was more surprise, needing a moment to ponder and understand, than disapproval. So I can only hope that future genealogists can manage as well as my mother, with that decision and all the others we will have to make in the years to come.

A breath of fresh air

The last couple of days here have been delightfully cool, with the nights even delightfully cooler. I'm not actually ready for fall yet; this was clearly demonstrated by my rummaging around in the storage closet looking for sweaters when I realized that it was only going to get to 72 yesterday and today. (Note: because we are oh-so-organized, the cold weather clothes only got moved to the storage closet maybe a month ago, so having to get some of them back out already was a bit ironic to say the least.) But I have GREATLY enjoyed being able to sleep with a comforter on the bed again for the last couple of nights.

Of course, to balance that lovely, happy, snuggled-under-the-covers feeling, the cats have felt a need to wake us up every couple of hours for the past two nights. It seems that the heat puts them into sort of a lethargic stupor, rendering them incapable of moving during the night. But once it cools off a little, they're suddenly young and frisky again and think that 3 a.m. is a great time to squawk at your moms until they wake up and play with you. Or throw things at you, one of the two.

In addition to cool days and cool nights, this weather has also brought...cool evenings (funny how that happens, right?) And cool evenings are the perfect time for knitting! Yeah, knitting, remember when I used to do that? The temporary onset of cooler weather, coupled with rapidly approaching September, has suddenly reminded me of all the knitting projects I had planned for various gifts this fall and winter. And yes, at least a couple of them were things that I said months ago "oh, I really want to finish this for Christmas this year, so I need to just work on it a little at a time all year to make sure it's done on time." Guess how well that went? Oh well, I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to knit in the next few months--it's not like I have anything else to do, right?

Wait, what's that? The wedding hasn't planned itself yet? Hmmm.

Speaking of wedding planning, I know Carrie already told you all about the limo issue. So we had emailed a well-recommended limo company and were all excited about their price. Until, of course, we discovered that they were passive-aggressive homophobes. C'mon people, if you're gonna hate on us, at least have the decency to admit that you're hatin' instead of not responding. But in all of our wedding-planning so far, this was the first negative vendor response (or, I guess non-response) that we've gotten regarding being a same-sex couple. And it stung, more than I expected it to. After they didn't reply the first time, I thought "okay, give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they're just slow, even though they did reply to the online form super fast." But after there was no reply to the second email, my thoughts mostly involved a lot of expletives that I do not feel to be blog-worthy. And then I was upset because it's really hurtful to have someone reject our relationship (I mean, besides the federal government and 45 US states that won't recognize our marriage, such as the states we're getting married in, live in, and work in) and because I was pretty convinced that we were going to have to pay significantly more for a limo from another company. (And if you know me well, you will know that I have some money anxiety, so it shouldn't surprise you that the wedding is no exception). But I'm so glad that we asked the question, as we have with everyone we've dealt with in planning. I would much, much rather avoid any awkward situations on our big day, and of course I much prefer that none of the wedding budget be going to homophobic businesses or individuals.

So, I was in a funk over the limo, to say the least. And then I got an email from Carrie while I was at work, forwarding me the response to our quote request from the limo company made of Awesome. I was quite pleased when I saw that the quote was lower than we expected it to be (including lower than the aforementioned meanie limo company). But when I got to the end of the quote and read, "As far as being same sex couples, we are gay owned and operated and have chauffeurs on our staff that are gay...All of our staff is VERY diverse and open and you would not have a problem with anyone," I actually started to tear up at my desk (Fortunately none of my co-workers were nearby!) Needless to say, the limo is booked, and I am ecstatic about it.

So, the limo was a learning experience, and I'm glad it all worked out in the end. Just when I was getting tired of summer, we got a break with some cool air. And just as I was getting depressed and angry about some people's views of our relationship, I was reminded that there are supporters out there. The limo good news and the first few RSVPs all arrived at a very good time, particularly as we're starting to panic about how much we still need to do in the next 10 weeks or so. Yikes! Okay, back to breathing...

This post brought to you by the rambling thought and the overused parentheses....

Weekend 'o Fun

This was a lovely summery weekend! Playing outside makes me seriously wish I was a teacher looking forward to two months of this, but I guess I have to just appreciate what I do have. Friday night we finished watching Nurse Jackie and then Valentine's Day while Becky threatened to die of a cold. Saturday we woke up and the weather forecast said 90 degrees and sunny so we took off for the shore! We're both scared of sand in our cameras and leaving valueables on the beach while we swim, so sadly there are no pictures from this adventure. But rest assured, we conqured waves for hours, ate too much delicious Nagle's ice cream (but they were out of their flavor of the day - chocolate cake better!), and made our feet hurt from wandering on the boardwalk too long. I seriously can't believe how far the Asbury Park boardwalk has come since we first started going there a few years ago. Where once we tried Taylor Ham at a rundown beach grill with one table, now there are fancy restaurants. We planned/schemed/dreamed of our upcoming shore vacation with my family. At one point Becky commented "I hope everybody else has as much fun as I plan to have." Me too!

Today we headed the other direction into New York. We went to Governor's Island for the Veuve Clicquot Polo Match, featuring His Royal Highness Prince Harry (last name, Windsor, as Google tells us - who knew?). By far the highlight of the day was when the prince fell off his horse just in front of where we were standing. He laughed it off and climbed right back on while the crowd cheered excitedly. That's him in the white outfit walking up to the horse. Apparently the crowd around us knew about as much about Polo as we do, since we overheard them asking each other things like "how do they score a goal?"

Unfortunately the weather was just as hot and sunny as Saturday, but with no swimable beach in sight. We asessed our finances and determined that we are a bit too poor to enjoy the $70/bottle champagne being served. $3 bottled water seemed overpriced but do-able. Except that one cafe, two food stands, and a hot dog cart were all. sold. out. Seriously people? Did you not anticipate high demand for water on an island with no potable drinking water in 90-degree sun? We eventually did find something cool to drink, but not before we'd ruled out bike riding as a viable activity for the day. We'll have to go back another weekend, especially since the vendors seem to have vastly increased the amount and variety of bikes available for rent! 6-person surrey bikes seemed to be the Sunday activity of choice for several Orthodox Jewish families visiting the island. Come July and we'll be hauling Jen and Sean and Matthew and Thomas on an Asbury Park surrey bike!

Although we were tired and hot, we did decide to swing by the NYC Pride festival on the way home. Sadly I think we missed most of the free stuff and hadn't had nearly enough alcohol (aka none) to make it a good time. But here's some photographic proof anyways.


Back at home we enjoyed a relaxed dinner and a movie. Goodnight weekend, we'll miss you bunches.

Teh Gay

I thought tonight's episode of Glee was quite excellent--dancing football players and a positive coming out story all in one episode! I am a little sad that said coming out story was going on at the same time as the premiere of Modern Family, which apparently includes a gay (male) couple who just adopted a baby. So much gayness all at 9:00/8:00 Central!

I actually thought this TV predicament was particularly interesting in light of this article from the New York Times about kids coming out as LGB (sorry, no T in this article) in middle school. Unlike the kids in this article, I had no idea I was gay in middle school, but maybe I would have sorted that out sooner if there had been more representation of gays and lesbians in the media at that time. The article also mentions the role that the internet has played in helping gay teens to connect and find support from their peers. Now if only schools across the country could get with the picture and provide some of that support in real life by taking a stand against bullying...