I have been excited about this wedding for weeks.
Ridiculously so.
The night before, it is hard to find sleep. Lying in
bed, I am wondering what they’re going to be wearing, if they’ll have written
their own vows, if they’ll walk in together or if someone will give them away.
The way I’m carrying on you’d think it was the first wedding I’d ever been to.
And, in a way, it is.
The first time I went to a wedding, I was nine and I
was ridiculously excited then too. My oldest cousin was getting married and I
got a new dress. I was never that into
dresses though, so I think I was more excited about the prospect of staying up
late, of being one of the adults. That, and the purchase of three boxes of
confetti to throw, blue on one side, pink on the other, embossed on both with a
cartoon bride and groom.
If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve been to forty or so
weddings since that first wedding, maybe close to fifty. Some blur into each
other, some I’ll always remember, some I’ve loved and some I’ve liked and some
had too many drunken uncles saying ‘you’ll be next’ too many times. But this
wedding, the one I flew back from New York for, is the first time that
statement might actually be true.
Because this wedding has two brides.
Waiting for them to walk down the aisle, we have our
cameras and Smartphones at the ready. And our tissues. And there they are, both
in white, different dresses but the same look on their faces, both radiant with
love and excitement and emotion like any bride. Only they’re not like any
brides. This might be the first time they’ve held hands in front of some of the
people here, certainly the first time they’ve kissed. Months ago we discussed
that kiss – one of the brides and I – what kind of kiss it should be, how you
wouldn’t want to have the kind of kiss that would shock the aunties too much.
We’ve talked about a lot of things over the last
couple of years, that bride and I, things that when I was a teenager growing up
in South Dublin, I couldn’t even let myself think about, never mind talk about.
Like me, she came to who she was later than some, only a little while before I
did. Watching her sit there, holding hands with her lover, her best friend, her
soon to be wife, I remember a freezing February night when we walked Dun
Laoghaire pier in the dark. I had a toothache and the wind was biting, whipping
my words away as I told her what was on my mind, that I’d met someone, that I
didn’t know how to tell people. She hugged me, she said it was brilliant news
and she couldn’t wait to meet her. She’s not one to give unasked for advice and
the piece she gave that freezing night, I took to heart. ‘Don’t act like it’s
the end of the world when you’re telling people,’ she said, ‘because it isn’t.’
She was right, of course, it wasn’t the end, only
the beginning. It was the beginning of so many things – a love that has taken
me to New York, to a new life, or a new version of my old life. Of digging
deeper than I’d ever dug before to find a courage I didn’t know I had, to tell
the people I loved, the people who thought they knew me, that there was
something they didn’t know, something I’d hidden away so deep I’d hardly known
it myself.
After the ceremony, there are canapés and music and
before we sit down to eat, by a roaring fire, the speeches begin. As the wind
throws rain at the windows, we listen to a father, a mother, two brothers and a
bride speak about journeys, about courage, about the commitment to being yourself.
They talk about all of those things and I reach for my tissues more than once.
But mostly, they talk about love.
The people who I love, who loved me before, still
love me now. Maybe they love me more, even. I think I love them more now– I
think I can – now that they know fully, who I am, now that I do.
Over dinner, I try and explain it to my best friend,
a friend who has known me for more than twenty years, the friend who was the
first one I summoned up the courage to tell, more than four years ago now. She
nods and says she can imagine how it must feel to see them get married but I
don’t think she can, not really. So I ask her to picture a world where she’d
been going to gay weddings for her whole life, that they were the norm and that
one day that changed – that she walked into a wedding and there were a bride and
groom on top of the cake. As I explain, she nods and something in her face
changes and this time when she says she gets it, I know she does.
Later, when the brides throw the bouquets, I end up
with one and people say ‘you’ll be next’ and I laugh because this time, it
could be true and they know it too. And later still, climbing to the top of
the old wooden staircase to try to get a signal to call my girlfriend, to tell
her about the day and how much I love her and how I wish she could’ve been
there, I know if anyone spots me I won’t need to make up an excuse about who
I’m calling. That the worst that would happen is that I’d be slagged, just like
anyone would be slagged, the ultimate Irish acknowledgement that things are OK,
that you are one of us.
Like the new Mrs and Mrs who are downstairs on the
dancefloor, holding hands and dancing in a circle of parents and aunties and
sister- in-laws and friends, there is no need to hide anymore.
Not for them. Not for me.
Not for any of us.
