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Marriage

Over the last weekend, Helmut and I got married. This is both much bigger and smaller than it seems, or at least it started out that way. Smaller, because the main reason for doing it was the paperwork: I am here as a tourist and I need to have more reason to be in Paris than being a tourist.

It is bigger for me because marriage has never been on my radar, so it was never anything I aspired to. Helmut has been deep in this pool, and has had a very long relationship with a woman (3 children) but never married because he doesn't believe in marriage for anyone (too many benefits arbitrarily given to those within and withheld from those without the institution). So, even with this, we decided to do it. After we decided to do it, Helmut decided he wanted to have rings. Wow, that made it somehow bigger and more important.

We decided to do this in NYC. France and Paris, specifically, love their paperwork. Since neither of us are French, we would have had to get our birth certificates, a document stating we are single (which doesn't really exist in the U.S.) some kind of medical records, and then have it all translated into French. By a "certified" translator. Yeah, like that isn't going to be time consuming and expensive. Plus, you need to get married at City Hall and ONLY at City Hall. In NYC, you don't need anything but your passport. ANYONE can get married there and you can do it anywhere, as long as you have a certified officiant (which you can get on the internet with little fanfare). Fill out the paperwork, wait 24 hours, and the person of your choice is attached to you legally for life. Well, a while, at least.

So, NYC it is. We wanted a small gathering of close friends, easy food. Originally we wanted to go to the Boat House in Central Park; a lovely spot and so NYC. Unfortunately, they don't take reservations until November, so that was out. Helmut came up with the idea of having a picnic, and my friend Leslie offered her apartment for the ceremony, so it all came together.  

The day before, Helmut and I went to City Hall at 9AM to get our license; no issues and only had to wait 45 minutes. If we had done it later in the day (an hour or so) it would have been little to no wait. But, so far, so good. Since our food theme was picnic, I was planning to make fried chicken and three or four pies (which could be more American picnic). Luckily, my friend Don offered to do the desserts. He is a wonderful baker and I jumped at the offer. I still had to get the chicken and marinate it. Two days to go.

The day before, we did the shopping and I finished making the chicken. Of course this is the traditional "bachelor's party" so of course we... went to the Opera. (Is that too gay?) Anyway, Helmut wanted to see "Turandot" at the Met and we actually had these tickets before we decided to get married. For those who do not know, the Metropolitan Opera House stage is one of the largest in the world, and this production takes up most of it. At the climactic scene, the Emperor, who is the person farthest back, is sitting close to Amsterdam Avenue, and the audience is closer to Broadway. We figured there are about 500 people on stage. Just enormous.

(Those people in the front are not the audience; that is the entire Met Chorus in about 10 feet of space in the front).

The day of the wedding, we got up and were ready to go around 9 or so. The ceremony was scheduled for 10:30 and people were to show up around 10. I was feeling a bit mischievous and wanted to arrive late, but Leslie would have been shooting daggers at me all day, so we arrived around 9:30. I was not nervous, but when the officiant (Mark) began speaking, I teared up a bit (no one saw that since I was facing front) and when I looked at Helmut, he was a bit teary as well. Of course neither of us will ever admit to that. 

Of course, the weather did not cooperate, so we did not end up having a picnic. Indoor picnics can be fun as well. It was such a small group (about 20 people) and we had French, Italian and Americans who all got along and communicated well. I found it interesting that at this point, I was flowing from an English conversation to a French one and translating when others didn't understand. (Wow... the language thing is coming along!). We had really a wonderful time. Owen, my 11 year old nephew who visited Paris this summer, has taken another step in maturity and was absolutely a perfect gentleman (bravo, Owen!!).

So, there you have it. Married. For the first time. At age 60. Who'd have thunk it??? The smaller bits got a little bigger and the bigger bits got a little smaller. 


Of course, now comes the fun part: registering the marriage in Paris. This should be fun, because there is no gay marriage in Germany and Helmut is a German citizen. Wee! Stay tuned.



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