I'll take "C"

If I had to pick a dream job, it would be taking surveys. There's just something invigorating about prying myself into a multiple choice answer and reading the horoscope-like interpretations of who I am.

So I was thrilled to take the "Find Your Wedding Style" survey in David Toussaint's "Gay and Lesbian Weddings." I also made Kelley take it, though she does not share my affection for all things survey. I had to read aloud the questions and answers for her and demand responses.

Wouldn't you know -- we have different, but complimentary, styles. I am intimate and she is casual.

The big differences in survey results came when we had to pick a favorite Mary. She chose Tyler Moore. I went with Bloody. When it came to who we would most like to be interviewed by, she went traditional -- Barbara Walters -- and I went crazy -- David Letterman.

We matched in our favorite sexual position, female gay icon and perfect date movie. That would be it's all good, Katharine Hepburn and Annie Hall, respectively. Oh wait! Kelley said The Exorcist for movie. Shit. Maybe I should reconsider. I freak out when she talks in that demon voice.

Nooo, that would be jumping the gun. On a review of our results, we also both prefer martinis for cocktail, writers for company, Christmas for holiday and drinks with friends on Saturday night. Whew. Wedding on.

Our proposal 

Grooms doomed

The announcement ran in Sunday's editon of The MetroWest Daily News.

View Text Version

Candles in the wind

Goodbye England's rose, hello conjugal bliss — Elton John plans to tie the knot with his longtime boyfriend later this year.
The pop superstar says he'll marry partner David Furnish in a civil ceremony around Christmas.
"Meeting David has been the greatest thing to happen to me," John told Britain's Daily Mirror.
Gay civil partnerships become legal in England on Dec. 5, and John says he hopes he and Furnish can take their vows at Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II's official residence.
"There will be no honeymoon — I'm on tour," John told the paper.
John, 58, and Furnish, 42, have been together for 11 years, and the singer credits his younger lover with helping him kick booze and drug addictions.
"Cocaine is more a danger to me than drink. So I don't put myself in situations where it might be," he said.

Certainly, there won't be any cocaine at our wedding, Elton. I won't even wear white. Want to pop for a double ceremony?

NASA, we have a gay wedding

Let the countdown begin: five days until I break the wedding news to my mom and dad.

I have a little speech in my head.

Kelley and I are planning a ceremony next summer to celebrate our relationship and commit our lives together. It will be in Massachusetts because the state recognizes gay marriages. The event will be small and simple, with just our closest friends. We'd like you to be there.

Words not in the speech include "wedding," "wedding reception" and "wedding dress." I'm conflicted on why I've left those out. Maybe they will come in the revision.

Now, I have to anticipate their follow-up questions and my answers.

Things like, "I wasn't planning on inviting grandma. We don't expect you to pay for anything. It will be a real wedding." Ah-ha! The wedding word comes up in the rebuttal.

Evidently I have some issues to work out. I need to be able to talk about this without wincing or feeling like I've let them down.

I want to prance

Thanks to the Allen B. Schwartz web site, I now have the language to describe my dress. Ivory and silk, it has a cowl neck and shirred back. (Translation: it is droopy in the front and a la Hillary Swank at the Oscars on the rear.) I've stored the dress away in a garmet bag in the closet, resisting the urge to put it on and traipse around the house with a cigarette holder. I wonder if I should be fantasizing about a bouquet instead.

Judith Parker Phillips-Quinn 

Naming rights

As a supporter of all women keeping their maiden names as a feminist gesture of autonomy and a nose-thumbing to The Man, I hereby declare that I will keep my name and Kelley will keep hers.

Judith Parker Phillips-Quinn, however, will remain a hyphen, as will any other living things for whom we care.

Wife, dyke

Shaving my head and getting hitched both require commitment and risk, and both will inform the way I see myself and the way others see me.

Hair is a status symbol and a gauge of confidence and emotion. I've worn my curly locks as a crown and cut it short in times of heartbreak. It looks vibrant after sex and flat after work. Only twice have I changed its color. A rebellious white streak came out gold. An expensive marmalade job was like the emperor's new clothes. The underside is shaved periodically, in high school to match a boyfriend's, post-college to resist becoming a professional.

Shaving it off at 20 would have been a baby dyke rite of passage. Going bald at 50 would mean I was sick or becoming my mother. Age 30 it is a deliberate decision. I am opening the door, stepping over the threshold and waving good-bye to "passing," to my overt femininity, to beauty, and saying hello to my big ol' alien head.

Kelley hates this idea, seeing as she wants to carry me over the threshold and make me her foxy wife.

Getting married, going bald

Two things I've put off until I'm 30: getting married and shaving my head. I'm beginning to think they are linked.

Kelley and I met when I was 24 and she was 31. When things got serious, she floated some ideas on how I could demonstrate our commitment. Being loyal, but future-phobic, I gave the same answer to all of her suggestions (which included buy a house, adopt a baby, get a joint savings account and go into major debt together, but, come to think of it, she never suggested we get matching tattoos). "Let's wait until I'm 30." The age seemed a decent way off and a milestone at which I could make a grand gesture. It also gave me a few years to get used to the ideas and accept that I was, well, an adult and that adults do those sorts of things.

The hairstyle idea predates our relationship. Going bald was a dyke ritual I skipped over due to my lipstick persona. It was reinforced by vanity -- I have a large head, my grandfather's nose and a gobble-gobble -- just not a combination worth showcasing. But shaving my head made the list of things I should do before I die (alongside fall madly in love, which I've done a couple times to date), and again that "I'll do it when I'm 30" line rang in my head.

Obviously, I'm not a "sometime is now" sort of person.

Pirates argh cool!

I could be a saucy wench.

Say why

We picked a tentative date for the ceremony, July 29, 2006. It is the day before my 30th birthday. Part of saying "I do" is about growing up.

Kiss and tell

I had that comment about the bachelorette parties coming.

A recent episode of the "L Word" featured such a bash and it included both brides, two lap dancers and, regrettably, two mothers of the bride. It got me wondering if we should keep this ritual and if it would make sense to party together. If this night was to be the last possible night to legally snog a stranger, I wanted to consider whether or not to participate.

Kelley said it was already too late. The morning after our first "date" I rolled over and said, "When can we do this again." That did me in.

Ah well. Lap dances give me the willies anyway.

Dear Kati

Since you have nixed my idea of a pirate-themed wedding in Key West, I say we have the best of both worlds. We can have a small, intimate ceremony on the cape and then celebrate back in Chicago with a reception of sorts at our favorite piano bar. It would be like karaoke, but better. Now, about the bachelorette part(ies) ...

XOXO,
Kelley

Location, location, location

Where oh where should our ceremony be? We live in Chicago and are regulars at a swank cabaret perfect for a reception, but our marriage would not be recognized here. Provincetown is a gay wedding mecca and close to Kelley's hometown in upstate New York, but we're not sure all our friends could plop down the cash for a destination wedding. Our hometowns -- Normal, IL and Elmira, NY -- are out because much of our family won't be invited. Chi-town or P-town, which will it be?

Time to rethink my Queen of Wheat theme.  

Ideas worthy of stealing

Smart wedding moves made by friends: guests in black, Pogues coverband, champagne toast on a mountaintop, wine tour reception, white water rafting with the wedding party, hotel bars, surprise ceremony, bubbles instead of rice, Cape Cod farmhouse and postcard invitations.

Traditions erased by the non-traditional: strip clubs, white shoes, tossing a bouquet.

Rituals to keep: personal vows, honeymoon, you may now kiss the bride.

What not to buy us as a wedding gift. 

To do, since I will, list

1. Put down in writing why I decided marriage was something to do afterall.
2. Figure out who in my family gets an invite and have whatever life-altering conversations that decision requires.
3. Find a way to run spellcheck on blogger without losing everything I write.
4. Pick up my dress from the dry cleaners a few weeks late. (Good thing Lisa, the cleaner, is on a first name basis with me and my dog, Judy. She gives us liver biscotti.)
5. Decide if it is appropriate to propose to Kelley or to be proposed to -- even though we've already exchanged rings and agreed to tie the knot.
6. Determine if wanting someone to see me looking hot in my wedding dress is a good enough reason to invite them to the ceremony.
7. All that other stuff about picking a date and a place, etc.

Family ties

My freshman year of college, I let myself into my dorm room in Mayflower Hall to find my roommate had removed all my posters of Tori Amos, Rage Against the Machine and Dykes on Bikes (hey, I was 19) and replaced them with nothing. Simply put, she was tired of my shit and my sexual escapades with girls who believed in fairies, boys who sold pot and bald-headed travelers, though I don't remember her being that concise.

An emotional eruption ensued, and soon I was having a teary-eyed conversation with my mother about my new address, my broken heart and the girl who broke it, who happened not to be my smallminded roommate, but a friend from my high school class.

My mother took the liberty of broadcasting the news to the rest of the family and gave my grandmother an ultimatum: deal with it or lose Kate. I wasn't cut out of the photo albums, and my boyfriends and girlfriends have always been welcomed with hugs and gifts at family gatherings. But my mating (and now nesting) habits are not something I bring up with the extended fam. Par example: Kelley and I vacation in Cape Cod, not Women's Week. My mother knows I danced on a box at a bra party, but the godparents just don't need those details. They have all marveled at my "engagement" ring, but it was a birthday present -- which it was, but whatever.

All of this leads to a question. Which family members do I include in our celebration? Do uber-Catholic and uber-special grandma and grandpa, married for 50+ years, get an invite? Do I wait until they are dead? Am I a total wuss? Erg.

Maybe the "kiss test" is the way to go. I will only invite people whom I feel OK about seeing me lay a sloppy one on my kq.

SWLF seeking wedding planner

I ordered "Gay & Lesbian Weddings" by David Toussaint from Amazon this morning. Toussaint scored a coup d'etat in 2003, publishing the first article on gay weddings in Brides magazine. I trust he advises against rainbow flag themes.

If our wedding is ...

a karaoke party, we'll sing "Nothing's Going to Stop Us Now," by Jefferson Airplane.