Off to the Courthouse
Yesterday was the big day no one
but me and Mark knew about --- we ran off and got married at city
hall! For weeks, I've been holding my tongue whenever I talked to
anyone I care about, dying to spill the beans but knowing I'd better
not. At night, I fought off nightmares where my friends and
family forced me into dresses and veils and churches.
I'm the one woman in a thousand who never dreamed of her wedding day,
who disavowed the notion of a church and state sanctioned
relationship. But after three and a half years living in each
other's pockets, we decided to throw a big party for our friends and
family --- kind of a commitment ceremony. And that got me
thinking, so I took a look at our taxes and realized we'd save $500 by
signing the sheet of paper.
We set the date for the day after the solstice so that even I could
remember when our anniversaries roll around. I also like the
symbolism of the light returning to the earth. And, of course,
there's the fact that we had to get married before the end of the year
to get the tax break.
Yesterday we set out, picture IDs in hand, to the county
courthouse. But ten minutes from home, Mark got cold feet.
After all, the temperature here has dropped into the
teens. So we turned the hot air in the car to blow down instead
of up onto the windshield and continued on our way to the court house
in the next county over --- our county doesn't have anyone on hand to
perform marriages.
We wandered into a vast office room with a science fiction mural on the
wall. There, a young clerk took down our information and printed
out a marriage certificate, then sent us out into the hall to wait for
another person to show up who was able to perform the ceremony.
There we sat for ten more minutes, facing a memorial to all of the
people from the county who had died in recent wars, until we were
ushered right back in front of the spaceships to pledge our troth.
To my dismay, God was invoked, but I held my peace and looked into
Mark's blue eyes and held his hands. And, to be honest, even
though it was just a piece of paper saying what we've already said to
each other hundreds of times, my stomach fluttered a little. No
rings --- I'm not into jewelry any more than I'm into white dresses ---
just our word and a slip of paper, and we headed together back out into
the cold, hand in hand.
A party is in the works --- set for September so that I'll have time to
grow the food. If you haven't gotten an email invitation yet and
would like one, drop me an email and I'll give you far more information
than you'd ever want.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.