All That Defines My Marriage Is Alcohol, And Love, But Mostly Alcohol

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Seeing as we’re still in the height of wedding season, I’ve seen my share of ceremonies at this point. I myself was just married in July (please hold your applause), but I’ve already been to another wedding since then, with another next month. There’s really no end in sight. Wedding season is all the seasons now.

I’ve sat through ceremonies shorter than fifteen minutes, and I’ve sat through full Catholic masses. There have been humorous ceremonies, and solemn ones, and ones with way too much singing. At one of them, the microphone stopped working, so I can’t really comment as to the content because I couldn’t hear shit. However, all in all, my favorite ceremony was my own. I think that’s how it should be, right?

When I started researching wedding ceremonies in general, one thing stood out to me. The proposed unity ceremonies were all stupid. I’m non-religious, so that cleared out a lot of options for me, but all the non-denominational choices seemed a little silly. I wanted to do something that was unique to my wife and I, and we don’t exactly spend our free time planting tiny trees or pouring sand into glass vases. I know that for most guests, the ceremony is just the time spent sitting down and waiting for the reception to start, so I didn’t want anything generic or boring.

I dug deep. What were the things that defined our relationship? What reminded me most of us?

All I could come up with was our dog, and alcohol. And our dog is afraid of strangers, so that left alcohol.

I wrote a ceremony that focused on two of our favorite things to drink: IPAs and red wine. The IPA was from our favorite brewery; we live about a quarter mile from it and have dinner and drinks there at least once a week. They bottle their beer onsite, and it’s made to be drunk sooner rather than later. The IPA, I said, represented our “now.” It was about enjoying the moment, and the place in our lives that we’re in, while we’re still in it. The red wine was made in our home county, an area famous for wine production, and was spicy and bold. I chose red wine to represent our relationship deepening and improving as the years passed, and as a symbol of all we had to look forward to in our future. (Corny? Sure. But I still got to get my buzz on at my own ceremony, so it was worth it.)

On the flip side, the fact that I managed to incorporate two types of alcohol into my own wedding ceremony could very well mean that I’m on my way to alcoholism. So, I did consider that. But if our favorite things to do on the weekend are wine taste, or go to the beach with a few beers, then so be it. That’s the couple I want to be. If going out for bloodies on Saturday morning, taking our dog on a walk, and then going back to bed until our favorite sports bar opens is wrong, I don’t want to be right. That’s our lifestyle, and I love it, and our ceremony represented us accurately. In all our semi-alcoholic glory.

Our ceremony was totally original, and totally us, and that’s all I really wanted. I’ll be clinking my beer or wine glass with this person until we both die, so we might as well make life a party, right?.

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Rory Gilmore

Rory Gilmore on the outside. Emily Gilmore on the inside. Email me funny shit at rory_gilmore20@yahoo.com.

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