Something Old, Something New

Two weekends ago my parents came to visit so we could attend the wedding of a family friend upstate in the Berkshires. I didn’t know the couple or really anyone else who would be attending, but the promise of an all expenses paid weekend away with the added bonus of a black tie affair had me packing my weekend duffle faster than you could say …well faster than you could question whether 7 outfits were needed for one weekend.

Three hours, or a short nap later my parents and I arrived at our hotel and prepared for the ‘casual,’ rehearsal dinner/BBQ on the bride’s family’s country estate at the edge of New York and Massachusetts. Given the circumstances I thought a polo, jeans, and flip flops would have been dressy enough, until I discovered that except for my soon-to-be new best friend, also dragged by her mother to this wedding from the city, everyone was pre-high school, almost 30 (mostly married) or much, much older, and looked like they stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalog. My attire was on par with the teens they’d hired to valet the cars in one of their fields beyond the house.

Not to be deterred by this, I bellied up to the open bar and began my evening with Jack Daniels. My fellow city refugee and I hunkered down together for the evening and deftly hid our giggles at the endless marathon of toasts and tributes from girlfriends, older brothers, and mismatched band mates.

The thought of socializing with these kind of people is usually unthinkable in my day to day life, since I rarely converse with anyone who is even entertaining the thought of procreating, but something about being outdoors and the several generations in attendance recalled my own siblings’ weddings I’d participated in every few years from middle school until mid-college.

At my second sister’s wedding, (second of two, I being the youngest of 4 with a brother in between those two girls) I declared that it would be the last “Nichols’ wedding,” which at the time met with a mixture of laughter and nervous glances since I was 19 at the time and probably only half the attendees knew I was gay.

Nevertheless, as the evening wore on the sentiment and whiskey began to run its course and I became increasingly invested in the ceremony of the whole affair. I went to bed that night eager for the wedding and more importantly, the reception. After a day of playing tourist in the quintessential New England towns that dotted the hillsides, and convincing my father to purchase more than a few things for my apartment, it was time to return to our hotel, don our rented tuxes and witness the most lavish wedding we’d probably ever be invited to attend.

I would be lying if I said it didn’t live up to the hype. After we watched the bride and groom exchange vows under the hoopa at sunset on the crest of a hill in the backyard, we were immediately filed into a tent for at least a dozen different appetizers before the sit-down dinner, and of course the ubiquitous open bar. After cocktail hour we traipsed down the hill to the circus tent below and were treated to three courses and three hours of singing, toasting, dancing, and general celebrating. I don’t know if it was the 17 glasses of the Veuve Cliquot I had consumed throughout dinner or the three Ketel and sodas that had preceded it, but I found myself wistfully thinking about how my own nuptials would play out. I’d always imagined a small destination wedding on an island somewhere, so only those most important to me could attend, but having so many people come out to give their blessing and support for your newly founded union all of a sudden seemed so appealing.

I only recently realized how much lifelong commitment meant to me in my pursuit of relationships, and so I won’t pretend to have planned it out since puberty, but I think in light of new law in California and all over the country, every gay may be beginning to think that many more opportunities to express and celebrate their love are now available to them.

In that sense the weekend was bitter sweet. Sweet to be with two people who love me more than anyone, to be in the presence of newly minted love and commitment, and the warm embrace of their extended family who exuded happiness and support in every moment, yet bitter with the thoughts that this may still be an event I never witness in my life. A weekend that a few months ago I thought would be my parents’ opportunity to meet a guy I loved, that sounded like an excuse for us to eat great food, and laugh at silly traditions, became a weekend of self-reflection of how my life had changed, how my parents now saw me, and how I wanted it to continue from there.

I thought they’d want me to be settled by now, like my siblings had been at my age, but they see me for who I am as an individual and would never assign me value based on the failure or success of my relationships.

This weekend I will travel back to where I graduated high school to witness my classmate’s wedding. No, it won’t be as extravagant and perhaps not as elegant, but I am excited to yet again witness the exchange of vows and promise of eternal love. We all know these unions don’t always last forever, but at least in my family they have all done pretty well so far. I won’t worry about catching the garter or the bouquet, because everybody now knows that what I said at my sister’s wedding isn’t true, it’s my turn next.