"I want to hear about how your families are responding."

Ah yes. The families. Anonymous commenter, you touched upon a major point that may or not have come across in my previous post. You see, my family doesn't know that I got married last week. It is infinitely complicated when it shouldn't be. Frankly I'm a little intimidated by my mother and don't quite know how to break the news to her. As for Ms. K, she told only her mother. Still waiting to see how this all goes down.

But let's rewind a little.

While it may seem out of left field that Ms. K and I would run off and get gay married, we've been talking about it privately for almost a year. We've also gone back and forth on whether this was something we wanted to do, but the possibility of my health care benefits extending to Ms. K was a huge lure. I know it's not very romantic and neither is a civil ceremony, but there you go. That said, these are murky legal water we've waded into. No, we won't be changing our last names.

So how did this all evolve?

Back in September, Ms. K and I started talking about moving from our much maligned apartment. If fact, had I been blogging that month, I would have regaled you all of tales of apartment listings on Craigslist and the place in Park Slope we looked at. Great location! By the park! In a brownstone! Dog friendly! But the place looked like squatters had been living there and it was overpriced in its condition. Alas.

The thrust into moving and the challenges that it would create led us to another conversation about perhaps waiting till early 2010 to commit to moving. Then it was like, "If we're not moving this month, why don't we get married instead?"

Crazy!

I picked an auspicious date and time in the future, which turned out to be October 28th at 11:15 am. As that day grew closer, we scrambled to buy wedding bands, rent a car, and buy dresses to wear. I even bought a pair of 3 1/2 inch stacked heels to wear with my new blue dress. Ms. K looked beautiful in a new gray dress paired with brown patent leather heels that she already had. No virginal white for us; the jig was surely up. On the day of, we got up early and drove in the rain to New Haven. By the time the paperwork was done and the justice of the peace had married us, it was noon. So much for my auspicious time frame.

When we finally got home and returned the car, we drank a bottle of Moet in bed and lounged around as "joined legal spouses." Then it was off to our wedding meal at Applewood in Park Slope where we had the tasting menu with the wine pairing. Afterward, tipsy and full, we took a car home where we crawled into bed exhausted, but most importantly married.