Rona's Wedding Thoughts

Thoughts on the institution of marriage, the insanity of the wedding industry, the small joys and large annoyances of wedding planning, and the pulse of love that's at the heart of why I'm doing this.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

We're Legal!

So H. and I had our legal wedding ceremony at the ornate and elegant San Francisco City Hall rotunda this past Wednesday, accompanied only by three of our close friends (who are also in our wedding party). We had a great time, especially watching all the same-sex couples get married. I wanted to take pictures of them more than I wanted to have pictures taken of us, since their weddings are truly historic and represent an important part of the advancement of civil rights in California and in the nation. But alas, it would've been slightly rude and probably way more distracting and irritating than flattering to bother all these couples and ask if we could document their weddings. I did take a picture of one lesbian couple who were by themselves, but only with their camera. I was happy to help!

We decided to do a legal ceremony before the 'real', big-day wedding ceremony for a few reasons: 1) All of our 'real' wedding stuff is happening in the East Bay, and H. is a Frisco native and we wanted to acknowledge his hometown; 2) It seemed really cool to get married in SF City Hall during all this gay marriage hoopla--and it was!; and 3) I'm superstitious and knew that getting married in August was supposed to be good luck according to Chinese tradition because of the number 8 (although we were too late to book 8/8/08 for our City Hall wedding). And although this wasn't one of the reasons we decided to do this smaller legal ceremony first, I am now thankful we did it this way, because the overwhelm of realizing you're married may have been too much to deal with for the first time on my actual wedding day. This way, we get to kind of ease into it a little bit.

We filled out some paperwork, waited in line a lot (although not too long, for the City seems really prepared to churn out weddings like hot cakes these days, and good thing because there were a lot of people getting married that day!), had our witnesses sign our marriage certificate, and then traipsed up to the small antechamber at the top of the grand marble staircase in the City Hall rotunda where marriage ceremonies take place. It was a sweet, romantic and intimate moment that H. and I were very happy to share with our friends A., M. and R. (yeah I know, initials are irritating and mysterious but I'm too paranoid to put people's actual names on here!). And then H. and I went and had a casual but yummy lunch at the Ferry Building, walked around downtown, went to see Wall-E again, then took the ferry back to Oakland, then ended with another nice meal at Breads of India, then dessert at one of my favorite restaurants, B Restaurant, both in Old Oakland.

Here are a few photos from the day. And yes, we were (and are) very very happy. Thanks to all the folks who've sent us their good wishes via Facebook or otherwise. Enjoy!





Filling out paperwork. A cold, bureaucratic process, but necessary. Doing paperwork, ironically, made both H. and I feel more 'serious' about the whole thing I think.


H. walking up the stairway of the rotunda.



On the ferry ride on our way back to Oakland, acting touristy. We asked a real tourist to take our photo.

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1 Comments:

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August 20, 2008 at 9:42 AM  

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