Dancing in the dark

I’ve been pretty quiet here lately because I’ve been so busy. Not just running around doing things busy, but busy in the head—lots of scattered thoughts and no mental lasso corralling them all together. If I had posted these past couple of weeks, it would’ve been a bunch of half-baked thoughts spilling over the pages all willy-nilly.

We’re 28 days from the wedding. On my way to work this morning, I was thinking about how great it is that we’re living together already, because with everything going on right now, moving in together would’ve been the last straw, the push over Crazy Cliff for me. We’d have to throw out furniture, buy new furniture, weed out duplicate CDs, figure out how to live with another person…as it is, we still haven’t weeded out all of our duplicate CDs, and in fact, we’ve MADE some duplicates for those times when both of us want to listen to “Pinkerton” at the gym. At least having our home and cats as constants is providing me a modicum of stability and sanity (though this may be the first time I’ve put the words “cats” and “sanity” in the same sentence without the word “losing” between). But then I got to thinking—what’s different after March 26? Our life will go on as it did before, albeit less hectic. We won’t suddenly be different people, either together or individually. We won’t act any differently. We’ll file our taxes differently, and should one of us lose our jobs, we’ll still have medical insurance (though in domestic-partner friendly California, this wasn’t really an issue anyway), but other than that, why are we getting married? Even if we never legally tie the knot, our commitment is no less than a married couple’s. I’m not thinking, “Egads, 28 days until I can easily bail.” For all intents and purposes, we are married, so why legalize it? Why now? I don’t really have an answer to that, other than it’s something we both felt like we wanted to do and this point in time makes sense. But maybe that’s a good enough answer.

Wedding planning has become simultaneously less interesting and more stressful. All the big decisions are behind us; now it’s just a matter of executing them, which is doing all the nitty-gritty boring stuff. We’ve been more-or-less on the same page for most of the planning process. Only two things have led to protracted discussions and vehement disagreements: our seating arrangement and our first-dance song. Random? Yes. Our initial song choice has a pretty fast tempo and it’s a waltz, and as we’ve spent the last four weeks learning how to foxtrot and swing, it seems silly not to use that to our advantage. We’re looking for a song that is upbeat, hopeful, and playful, not schmaltzy or shmoopy. Apparently, there’s a dearth of love songs that don’t involve the words “destiny” and “meant to be” and “fate” and “I’ve been waiting for you since I was but a mere zygote.” The best was when Chris suggested U2’s “With or Without You.” He started crooning, “I can’t liiiiiive, with or without yooou…hey! That song kind of sucks for a wedding!” Right now, it’s a toss-up between ABBA’s “Money, Money, Money” and Madonna’s version of “Fever.”

Kidding. Sort of.