So yes, I was a bit damaged, and what I really needed when I met Chris was a friend more than anything else. And that’s exactly how Chris and I had our start during that hiking weekend on the Isle of Wight.
The years since the day that Chris and I first got together as a couple flew by, just as the years flew by when I was in my first relationship with THS. That’s when you know you’re in a good place – it’s like when you’re watching a good movie: you become so engrossed in what you are seeing on the screen that you become oblivious to time.
We had a bit of a commuter relationship in the beginning, because Chris lived down in Surrey, to the south of London, and I lived in Clerkenwell, near the city centre. It took over 90 minutes to get from my door to his, so we pretty much only saw each other on weekends for the first few years of our relationship.
Chris and I have a lot of happy memories from this time. Even early on, I knew there was something special about Chris and that I was on to a winner. In fact, during one of our earliest dates, when we had only been together for a month or so, I surprised Chris by inviting him to accompany me on a business trip to Japan that I was planning for the summer. Mind you, this was March and we were just a few weeks into our relationship, and the trip wasn’t going to happen until July at the earliest. And although we had just started dating, I already knew then that the relationship would last at least through the summer, and that he was someone I wanted to have at my side to explore Shinto shrines and climb Mount Fuji under the light of the full moon.
Other highlights and adventures during this time included trips to California to meet my family, and to explore the natural beauty of places like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. On one trip that coincided with Chris’s birthday, we visited San Diego and I surprised him with a special tour of the San Diego Zoo, where we got to sit with flamingos, feed a rhinoceros and pet a kangaroo.
But the major turning point in the relationship was when I purchased a small flat in the borough of Islington in north London. This was a bold move for me, and it was a sign that I was taking positive steps towards establishing my own roots in London. But Chris wasn’t prepared to move in with me yet and, perhaps wisely, he wanted to take things a bit more slowly. This was the autumn of 2009, and we had only been together for 18 months, so I could understand his hesitancy.
It wasn’t until a year later that Chris finally took the plunge and moved in with me, and that was probably the biggest life-changing event for us both. Moving in together is the step where a life for one becomes a life for two, and every step you take from then on needs to have the couple’s best interests in mind. Also, this is when a couple needs to address more grown-up and unglamorous, but necessary, practical issues, such as paying the mortgage, figuring out a cleaning rota, and money for groceries and utilities. This was a much bigger change for Chris, since he had only ever lived with housemates before. But for me, it took me back to familiar ground, since I have spent more of my adult years in a relationship than being outside of one. Nevertheless, it is a defining moment in the evolution of any relationship, when you transition from being boyfriends to becoming partners.
And now we are ready to take yet another step forward – from being partners to becoming husbands!
Chris – 5 December 2011
London is our home – it’s where we’ve spent all our time together as a couple, and we’ve decided that it’s where we want to be married. Many of our London friends have had their weddings outside of London, and I totally understand why they would do that. There’s a lot more space and you can get a lot more for your money. But there’s something special about getting married where you live. It’ll be tricky, but we’ll make it work somehow.
The other challenge we are giving ourselves is that we want to organise and pay for everything ourselves, and not look to our families for financial help. We want this to be our day, and we want to host it. Our parents and families will be our honoured guests, but we don’t want them to feel like they have to help run anything.
So, what sort of wedding will this be? Technically, of course, this won’t be a wedding at all: it will be a ‘civil partnership ceremony’. However, Donny and I have decided to call it our ‘wedding’ and our ‘marriage’ in all the invites and whenever we talk about it. The word ‘marriage’ has a powerful resonance in our culture. We don’t see what we’re doing as being any different from a regular wedding, so why should we use different terminology?
Having said all that, over the years we have been to countless weddings, both gay and straight, where everything follows the set pattern of service, champagne, photos, food, speeches, dancing (in that order). Sometimes it seems that the bride and groom just have to turn up wearing the correct outfits – everything else is taken care of. I will admit there is something quite tempting about this – everyone involved knows what’s expected and it essentially means your day arrives as a kit with a few pre-arranged personalisations here and there. Even most of the gay weddings I’ve been to follow this pattern. And they’ve been great – don’t get me wrong – but surely a gay wedding gives you an opportunity to break the pattern? After all, while mixed-gender weddings have followed a similar format for a couple of hundred years, gay weddings are a new phenomenon. Can’t we create our own new traditions?
The fact that we are two men means we can’t get married in a church. Although many of my gay Christian friends have had civil ceremonies followed by a blessing in a church, that’s not what we want to do. Not only does Donny not share my faith, but I think there’s something important about having the actual legal joining as the key part of the whole day, with everyone watching. So many people over the years have campaigned for gay people to be able to have legal recognition of their partnerships, and we want to celebrate that by having it centre-stage on our day.
So, churches are out, but I also don’t want to get married in some drab room in a town hall. Right now, our idea is to find a large hall or venue where we can have the ceremony and reception all in one place. It’ll just make everything simpler, and we won’t have to transport everyone from venue to venue. There are a few possibilities in our part of London, so we’ll start exploring at the weekend.
Style-wise, we want it to include just enough standard wedding stuff so people feel comfortable, but enough imagination to actually make it memorable. But how far can you push it before a day goes from ‘imaginative and individual’ to being ‘just a bit weird’? After all, for many of our guests it will be crazy enough having two guys tying the knot, without us descending from the ceiling on abseil ropes (although that would be quite cool). But equally, we want enough personal content for our wedding so that it feels like OUR day, and that it couldn’t have been anyone else’s. I’m sure we’ll figure it out.
Above all, we want the wedding to be a classy affair, but we also want it to feel relaxed, so that everyone can feel welcome and at ease – like an amazing dinner party, just with a hundred or so of our closest friends.
And we’ll release a flock of white doves – obviously.
Donny – 7 December 2011
We all have preconceived notions about weddings. They are one of the few events in life that are nearly universal – whether you grew up in Mongolia, Australia or Brazil … you will have been to a wedding. And there will be common elements to most weddings, since Western cultural traditions are so pervasive. If you’ve watched Four Weddings and a Funeral, you will have seen the archetypical silver-screen weddings (and also what can go wrong at them!).
As