While Amber and I are in some ways astonished that we've now been together 20 years, it also feels like the most ordinary thing in the world. Our relationship is our safe harbor, the cozy cove from which we venture forth each day to ride the choppy seas of these troubled times.

That's not to say we take it for granted - we speak of our gratitude for each other, to each other, every day. But when it came to commemorating the day, in this year of big upheavals, we didn't feel the need to make a big splash.

Instead we spent the evening of our actual anniversary at a bird watching class at the Audubon Society. We played hooky for a day earlier this week to visit friends from our MichFest family as they passed through Astoria on the cruise ship they were working. And then we gathered members of our many communities for a low-key happy hour at a local restaurant.

How blessed are we? My godchildren and niece and nephew who set out our photo albums and greeted our guests. College friends who knew me as a 17 year-old. Amber's "tennis wives". Her father's best friend of more than 50 years. My cousin and brother. Former coworkers. Clients. Good people I've met through my Death Café work. Members of our Thanksgiving and 4th of July family. Social justice colleagues. A MichFest sister. Fellow Orphan Wisdom School scholars. The partner of my roommate from 20 years ago who witnessed the very first steps of this new relationship. Such a treat to see those many strands of our lives woven together for a few hours of celebration.

It brought us back to that very first time we asked for our relationship to be witnessed and blessed by our community, when we were five years in - on a day that ended up eleven days after 9/11 and eleven days before my father's death. We needed to be together as a community then, more than ever. Our low-key coming together last night was a reminder of how much we need each other, still.

For every person able to come by to wish us well there were so many more at too great a distance or otherwise occupied with families or their own good works. To know so many good people, to be connected even if only occasionally, is evidence enough of the benevolence in the universe that we feel well buoyed to sail another day.

More on how we got here:
I Now Pronounce You: Our third and final wedding.
My Big (Null & Void) Gay Wedding: Our White Salmon and Lucky Lab ceremonies.
Yes, I'll Marry You: A whirlwind tour through my 26 years of activism for LGBT equality.

It's not everyday that I get to shake the Vice President's hand. Just another surreal moment in the cascade of intense endings pouring through my life this summer.

For the past 5 years I've worked part-time, behind the scenes with Freedom to Marry, the campaign to win marriage equality nationwide. Our Supreme Court victory on June 26 was the culmination not just of thousands of people's blood, sweat, and tears over decades - but for me, personally, of a through-line of activism that began in 1988 after I'd just come out as a lesbian and volunteered on the first of a string of anti-gay ballot measures. (See links below for more on my personal journey.)

Oregon has faced more anti-gay initiatives than any other state - so it's no coincidence that lessons and political operatives key to our national victory emerged from our local experience here - messages that opened America's heart and movement heros like Thalia Zepatos, Roey Thorpe, and Thomas Wheatley. After co-leading the successful campaign to defeat the third hateful OCA ballot measure in 1994, I stepped off the front-lines. I'm grateful to Freedom to Marry, and Thalia in particular, for providing me with the opportunity to continue to contribute while pursuing my work as a Celebrant.

The struggle for full LGBT equality is far from over. But the incredible team that dedicated itself to achieving this astonishing win on marriage is done. On July 9th Freedom to Marry celebrated with the Vice President and 1,000 key activists and donors. The next day, we met as a staff for our final, farewell retreat. We spilled out stories of the difference the work had made in each of our lives and the lives of countless others, along with tears, disbelief, pride - and most of all: love.

Here's a beautiful 6 minute video that recounts this remarkable piece of history that was years in the making but finally arrived, as President Obama notes, "like a thunderbolt".

Earlier posts on our years living with and working against marriage discrimination:

• I Now Pronounce You: In which my friend and colleague Thalia Zepatos officiates our latest and last wedding.
• My Big (Null & Void) Gay Wedding: Our White Salmon and Lucky Lab ceremonies.
  
• Yes, I'll Marry You: A whirlwind tour through my 26 years of activism for LGBT equality.
  
• The Perfect Bookend to a Long Chapter: Kelly and Dolores sharing their role in history with their children.
  
• Old Married Couple Legally Weds: Another couple navigates the question of how to cross the new legal threshold for the marriage they'd already celebrated.
  

Couples who engage me to marry them know that a wedding is more than a party. When you set aside the details of décor and DJs, it comes down to this: what are the two of you committing to? Here are five questions to help you make your wedding ceremony a perfect expression of who you are and what you mean to each other.

1.  What does marriage mean to you?
I’ve been married three times – all to the same woman. Like many same-sex couples, we created a commitment ceremony back before legal weddings were conceivable. We married legally in those few weeks before Oregon's Measure 36 declared us “null and void”. By the time of this spring's historic ruling, we already felt like an old married couple.

For some, the opportunity to marry is primarily a formality. Having long committed to each other, these couples want a simple way to confirm their legal status. For others, planning a thoughtful ceremony represents a do-over to the hurried, cookie cutter wedding conducted during the brief window in 2004. And then there are the newly-paired lovebirds.

What about you? Is your wedding threshold at the beginning of your journey together? Or a celebration of many years of road-tested commitment? Will it be a renewal of vows you’ve made to each other before, or a chance to newly consider the question of what you’re pledging to each other?

2. Who will marry you?
Clergy and judge used to be your only options and they still suit many of us. Others have a best friend do the honors. Wedding Celebrants like me are secular ceremony experts who can help you create a ceremony as unique as the two of you, customizing every word to reflect your love story, your values, your community. Do you want someone to simply officiate the ceremony or to work with you as a creative partner? Do you thrive on the risks and rewards of a DIY approach or do you want the support of a professional with countless weddings-worth of experience?

3. What will you pledge to each other?
Vows are often the last thing a couple gets to after wrangling over guest lists and catering menus. But these promises, likely the most intimate words you’ll speak in public, are truly the heart of the matter. You can each write your own, revealing them at the altar, or write them together (there’s no better values clarification exercise). You can get some great examples off the web or from your Celebrant. Give yourselves plenty of time and see what you can learn about each other through the process!

4. Will you involve your community?
If you’re inviting more than the two-witness minimum, it’s because the presence of your community means something to you. How will you express that? A few special people might recite a reading, offer a piece of music. The wisdom of those whose relationships you respect can be written on ribbons that encircle you, to be consulted later when the going gets tough. Everyone can be involved through a ring warming or a community pledge of support. Get creative and find a ritual of connection that reflects you and your peeps.

5. How will you include those not present?
Weddings are one of those times when those not present can be felt as deeply as those in the room. Whether deceased, estranged or unsupportive, or unable to attend due to illness or other circumstance, there may be missing loved ones who are on your minds. Find a way to honor their absence, even if privately. More public acknowledgement can take the form of an empty chair, a memory candle, a photo displayed discreetly.

Here’s to a heart-felt celebration of what really matters, expressed through a ceremony as unique as you.

Reprinted from PQ Monthly.

Read more stories:

• I Now Pronounce You: My latest (and final?) marriage ceremony with Amber
  
• My Big (Null & Void) Gay Wedding: Our White Salmon and Lucky Lab ceremonies.
  
• Yes, I'll Marry You: A whirlwind tour through my 26 years of activism for LGBT equality.
  
• The Perfect Bookend to a Long Chapter: Kelly and Dolores sharing their role in history with their children.
  
• Old Married Couple Legally Weds: Another couple navigates the question of how to cross the new legal threshold for the marriage they'd already celebrated.
  

When Amber and I invited 100 friends and family to celebrate our relationship with us twelve years ago in White Salmon, we didn't call it a wedding. While we'd been together five years by then and wanted to pledge ourselves to each other publicly, the words "wedding" and "marriage" weren't important to us at the time. But we noticed that everyone else called it our wedding, especially our straight friends.

In the years since then, America has been having a conversation about why marriage matters, recognizing that it’s about love and commitment, and standing up before your family and friends to pledge yourselves to each other. We came to realize that we did marry that day in White Salmon, marriage license or no, that proclaiming our intentions in front of everyone changed our relationship, consecrated it in ways we couldn’t have anticipated.

And so when Judge McShane declared that we - along with all loving and committed couples in Oregon - could now add the legal icing on the cake, we didn’t want to dishonor what had come before by "getting married" again. With my mom and step-dad coming for a visit from the east coast we decided to hold a simple, family-only, vow renewal in our backyard.

Our White Salmon ceremony had been absolutely perfect. We paid homage to that magical day by reviving several elements: the vows we'd written; the beautiful altar quilt combining my fire with Amber's calm that Marcy had created; my lovely jewelry made by Maura; the commemorative needlepoint my mom had fashioned; foregoing catering for a potluck meal contributed by participants.

But there were several new elements that felt important to include this time. First and foremost, I wanted the four children in our lives, not yet born when we last stood up before our loved ones, to have their understanding of what makes a family shaped by witnessing our commitment. They indulged me by wearing flower crowns, and we indulged them by encouraging bubble blowing throughout our brief ceremony.

Equally important to us was the opportunity to step across the historic threshold of legal matrimony with the woman who's done more than anyone in our personal community and our state to make this act possible: Thalia Zepatos. When Thalia and her husband Mike brought their communities together to celebrate their marriage, they committed themselves to the day that all of us could do the same. Thalia has not only worked for the freedom to marry full-time for 10 years, by leading the movement's message work, she’s helped countless Americans think about their gay and lesbian family members and neighbors differently. We asked Thalia to obtain the credentials to pronounce us legally married as an expression of immense gratitude and appreciation for the role she’s played in our lives for over 25 years now. 

What a thrill it was to hear Thalia say the words she's worked so hard to win for us: "By the authority vested in me by the state of Oregon, I now pronounce you spoused for life!"

Finally, there were two traditional elements we had foregone in our White Salmon ceremony. 

A wedding ring, for me out and about in the world, had always seemed like an invitation to the inevitable question about my husband. That particular symbol didn't feel important to us at the time. But now, with the world so rapidly changing, we wanted to make our new status as a legally married couple outwardly visible. Choosing to use rings handed down from my maternal grandparents (mine, given to my grandmother then to my mother then to me; Amber's, made of their wedding rings now joined together forever) honored their legacy of commitment and how much we've come to value family.

And on the more whimsical side, I had been enchanted by a Facebook post on the day Judge McShane ruled. My friend Kate Brassington had celebrated with her three young daughters by baking a mini wedding cake decorated with same-sex toppers created by her twins Shaelyn and Davia. She jokingly posted that they'd be happy to create custom toppers for others. I couldn't resist taking them up on it! The girls took their task very seriously, offering us two versions so we could mix and match gender presentations. 

From the perfection of our White Salmon ceremony to the political theater of our first legal wedding at the Lucky Lab Brew Pub on International Women's Day in 2004 (later declared "Null & Void" when voters approved a constitutional ban)... to the exquisite sweetness of our June 1 vow renewal... I could say "third time's the charm." But the truth is, we have felt charmed throughout these 18 years together. We feel profoundly grateful and truly blessed.

Read more stories:
My Big (Null & Void) Gay Wedding: Our White Salmon and Lucky Lab ceremonies.
Yes, I'll Marry You: A whirlwind tour through my 26 years of activism for LGBT equality.
The Perfect Bookend to a Long Chapter: Kelly and Dolores sharing their role in history with their children.
Old Married Couple Legally Weds: Another couple navigates the question of how to cross the new legal threshold for the marriage they'd already celebrated.

On May 19th I awaited a federal court ruling outside the Multnomah County Registrar's office with a line of gay and lesbian couples ready to obtain a marriage license if the judge, as we hoped, ended Oregon's ban. I was flooded with memories of those giddy days ten years earlier when marriage was briefly legal for us, and the opportunities I'd had to be on the front lines of history.

I wasn't the only one taking a trip down memory lane in those nervous hours before Judge McShane cleared the way, once and for all, for the freedom to marry in Oregon.

Kelly Burke and Dolores Doyle were among the very first couples wed in Multnomah County back in 2004. Together already for 16 years, they had a young son. They courageously stepped into the public eye to show the world what was at stake for their family, not only through media interviews surrounding those first marriages, but then later when the marriages were declared "null and void," in a lawsuit seeking to defend the validity of their union, in legislative hearings that helped establish domestic partnerships, and in countless other settings.

When Judge McShane announced that he would rule on May 19th, Kelly says, "I was ever so hopeful." But as she shared with friends and family in an email, "As you know, we have a long personal history in this battle having been among the first to sue the State of Oregon for the right to marry over a decade ago, so I was also nervous. I started getting phone calls from staff who had shepherded us through those times, inviting us to join them at campaign head quarters for the moment the ruling was announced. This sparked many questions from the kids." 

And so they spent the weekend engaged in a very personal home history lesson. Here's how Kelly described it:

"There is a large cardboard file box in the cabinet that I have not opened in many years. I spread the contents out across the playroom floor, so the kids could see all the newspaper articles, cards, notes from political leaders, press clippings, VHS and cassette tapes full of media interviews, copies of our testimonies & speeches, and photos of our family speaking out for equality. As we talked I realized they don't carry with them any of the ghosts of shame and fear nor the battle scars that I do from a lifetime seeking acceptance and basic rights. They have lived in a different world and carry no such scars. That to me is as beautiful as having the right to marry my love.

"Evan at one point said 'Wait! You and Mama AREN"T married? But we have wedding photos and you wear rings and our family is like other families!' Oh boy, did we have some explaining to do.  She was also rather indignant that Avery was in all the early media photos, didn't matter that she hadn't been born yet. 'Not fair that he was born first and I missed it!' And that's when I knew that they needed to experience this part of their family history for themselves to better understand and have their own moment in it."

So on that marvelous Monday, Kelly took her children out of school and down to the campaign office. 

"For me it was like old home week, full of hugs and tears upon reconnecting with many people with whom I share a deep connection and emotional history. Avery blushed repeatedly as people marveled at how 'little Avery' was now as tall as I. Evan grinned wide as they recalled a charming petite baby Evan upon my lap while I testified to a State Senate committee and her perfectly timed 'Uh oh!' as the name of the rabidly anti-gay religious leader was called next. 

As the rooms became full with more people and media, we awaited the news. Out of the nervous hum came a voice: 'It's a win!' and the room erupted in cheers, hugs, and joyful tears. The kids wrapped their arms around me, kissing and hugging me, big smiles on their faces whispering in my ears, 'We won, Mommy!  We won!' Within moments, Multnomah County began issuing marriage licenses and we were off to the Melody Ballroom where officiants were waiting."

Kelly and Dolores did not, however, join the nearly 100 couples who obtained a marriage license that day. Kelly explains:

"We've had a big, gorgeous commitment ceremony with our family and friends on our tenth anniversary, a quickie wedding in front of cameras and reporters near our 16th and quietly registered as domestic partners in a county clerk's office after our 18th. This time requires a different sort of celebration and we're just beginning to explore what that might be. However, I am leery we may have unleashed a monster as the kids are bursting with wedding planner  ideas/demands. For example, can our dog Henry be in or at the wedding? And Avery is heavily lobbying for a honeymoon in Hawaii. He doesn't seem realize those don't usually include children. This conversation was egged on as we spent the afternoon with friends and their children, cheering on newly married couples making their way down the marble steps of the hall as our children rushed towards them, arms outstretched offering flowers and congratulations."

Kelly called the day "the perfect bookend to a long chapter. Of all the things I've done, my children and the work I did for equality are the things I am most proud of in my life. And to still be here to see it happen, to thank the many, many people who have worked so tirelessly for this moment and to cheer on all the families stepping up to partake in their civil right to marriage, was incredible.  I'm still trying to absorb it all."

*          *           *  

My deep thanks to Kelly and Dolores for sharing their story, in this post and for the past 10 years. Stay tuned for stories in the coming weeks of other longtime couples (including yours truly) figuring out how to cross this latest legal threshold. And here's one you may have missed, from an "old married couple" in California who faced the same question: how to mark your now-legal marriage when you've already celebrated your wedding?

On Monday, when Judge Michael McShane overturned Oregon's ban on same-sex couples marrying, it was a victory ten years in the making. But for me, it was also the culmination of nearly 26 years in the trenches fighting for gay rights. 

History is made through the concerted and cumulative actions of thousands. This is one woman's story - my story - of swimming in the rising tide of justice.  

I officially came out as a lesbian in 1988 just months before the Oregon Citizens Alliance placed the first statewide anti-gay initiative on the ballot. I threw myself into that campaign as a full-time volunteer. We lost.

By the time the OCA was back with their first attempt to amend the state constitution to declare homosexuality "perverse and abnormal" and on par with pedophilia, necrophilia, and bestiality (no, I'm not making this up), I was the director of the statewide coalition of battered women's shelters and rape hotlines. Our coalition mobilized a base of opposition to the OCA's hateful measure in every one of Oregon's 36 counties, leading to the formation of the groundbreaking Rural Organizing Project, founded by my brilliant friend and comrade Marcy Westerling. The nearly two-year No on 9 campaign galvanized and strengthened our communities even as it deeply terrified and traumatized us. We won.

We won - but the OCA came right back at us with a sanitized version of the measure. The prior campaign had disbanded. We had to start from scratch. I left my job and devoted myself full-time to the idea that we could build a campaign-ready gay rights organization that would not only win at the ballot, but build the movement for social justice. I served as the deputy campaign manager for No on 13 in 1994. We won. And from our campaign, we created Basic Rights Oregon, the primary author of this week's victory, widely recognized as one of the most effective state LGBT organizations in the country.

When the OCA came back in 2000, we beat them again. But when another opposition group placed Measure 36 on the ballot in 2004, to amend our constitution to define marriage as "one man, one woman," we lost, along with the other 10 states facing similar measures that year. 

The loss was particularly hard because the marriages the voters had chosen to snub had a face - over 6,000 faces, in fact. Earlier that year four courageous Multnomah County Commissioners, at the request of Basic Rights Oregon, had begun issuing marriage licenses, based on a legal opinion now validated by Judge McShane. Several counties followed suit and ultimately over 3,000 loving and committed same-sex couples wed.

Amber and I were among them. We had already pledged our commitment to each other in a DIY (do-it-yourself) ceremony before 100 family and friends on our fifth anniversary in 2001. (Read about that magical day, suspended midway between 9/11 and the day of my father's death.) To be honest, in the lead-up to the brief window in time when we could have the state certify what our community had already witnessed, my own marriage was not at the top of my mind. 

I had been asked to recruit the very first lesbian couple who would wed. I approached my dear friends Mary Li and Becky Kennedy with an unconventional proposal. How would you like to make the history books? The only catch is, you can't tell anyone until it's a fait accompli. I played secret agent, transporting the "first couples" to get their licenses and on to the wedding venue. I held their daughter Ava, my goddaughter, as Supreme Court Justice Betty Roberts pronounced them married in front of international news crews. A few days later Amber and I had caught our breath and added ourselves to the list of officially wed couples, before the courts closed the door to any further marriages. 

Later that year when Measure 36 qualified for the ballot, we along with thousands of gay and straight Oregonians, yet again exhausted ourselves in a defensive ballot measure battle over our lives, our loves, and our rights. We lost. Soon after, our marriage was declared null and void. 

Fast forward to 2014. My involvement has continued to be political, professional, and deeply personal. For the past three years I've worked as a part-time consultant to Freedom to Marry, alongside the nation's foremost message strategist, my dear friend Thalia Zepatos (who I met on that very first 1988 campaign). Since the Valentine's Day kick-off of the Oregon United for Marriage Campaign in 2013, I've conducted trainings, facilitated campaign events, co-organized one of the highest-dollar houseparties. And I approached the campaign with the idea of organizing Wedding Professionals United for Marriage, many of whom donated their services for the very first weddings conducted just minutes after Judge McShane lifted the ban.

I was one of those wedding pros. After volunteering for the campaign outside the County Registrar's office all morning, with nervous couples and campaigners awaiting the ruling, I hopped in a donated pedicab to the wedding celebration site where I joyfully officiated the weddings of some of those very first couples. After Portland Mayor Charlie Hales watched one of my ceremonies, he asked if he could borrow my script. I stepped aside to give the various VIP officiants their place at the front line of this historic moment and sat down for the first time in six hours. 

What an amazing privilege, to have been witness to the very first wedding of a same-sex couple in Oregon 10 years ago, with my chosen family Mary and Becky and Ava, and now, again, to be able to celebrate and support the marriages of these beautiful couples who had chosen each other against all odds, cherished each other through years when the state dismissed their love, and now at last could hear one of their own, a lesbian Celebrant who had fought in the trenches for 26 years, say the words, "By the power vested in me by the state of Oregon...."

*        *         *

In the coming weeks I'll share more stories from these momentous times (including the most adorable cake toppers you'll ever see, and what Amber and I will do next, nearly 18 years into our love story). 

 I'm pleased to offer another great story by a colleague, this time from Barbara Parker, a Life-Cycle Celebrant living in the beautiful Canadian Rockies. The details of her week differ from mine - a wedding, a memorial, and a vow renewal - but the depth of experience, the gratitude for all that this work offers, is the same.

A Week in the Heart of a Life-Cycle Celebrant
by Barbara Parker

When I started my blog I was worried about my audience, and thought I needed to appeal to my “ideal client” and all of that. Since my business includes weddings and funerals, and any rite of passage in between, that covers a lot of ideal people. I’ve been a little self-conscious. You know, you post something about a Death Café, and the brides don’t like it too much. You talk too much about vows and tulle, and the baby boomers glaze over.

The truth is, life is messy, and full of love and loss, every inch of the way. There is no such thing as a major life event that doesn’t contain within it the whole shootin’ match, the entire spectrum of beginnings and endings:  dreams, potential and farewells. What I noticed this week, as I walked some length of a lifeline through ceremony, is how much we share, at whatever stage of life we’re at. I also noticed, (no big surprise) that my clients change me. So I write this blog the way I’ve always written in my life, not so much because I have something to say, but because I need to figure out what just happened.

First thing Monday morning, I married a young couple at the Banff Springs Hotel. This was a joyous occasion. They were teenage sweethearts, who had met at an ice-cream shop and began their relationship nine years ago to the day. They were well suited to each other, they had already tested their relationship, and they adored one another.  And still, the tears! Her father, in the hotel lobby, minutes before he walked his daughter down the aisle. Wiping his eyes, which were already tearing up, he admitted to me that he didn’t realize until that minute that he was losing his little girl, and handing her over to another man. Of course, the absurdity of his statement was also apparent, as she was well grown up and had been with this fellow for many years. Still. The ceremony cemented an understanding, and helped him face the passage of time and meaning.

Later, when we mentioned and brought to mind the parents and grandparents now passed, there wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd, which was comprised of the very closest friends and family.  Once again, the sensation of the wheel of time, and our precious part in it, was shared among all the family and friends, and the room was thick with emotion.

Mostly though, there were smiles and laughter, as in, when the bride raised her eyebrows “so high”, when her groom spoke of his pride at this particular skill of hers. The groom look as pleased as punch in his new grey suit. The bride’s confident and powerful recitation of her vows only cracked when she said “the father of our children”. Hope, love, and Orange Juice, all before noon.

The rest of the week, with the help of a community of friends, I walked a place of more sorrow than joy, as we planned and prepared a memorial service for one of the brightest human beings on the planet. This particular community turned a raw and snowy spring day into a riot of colour, with pots and pots of daffodils, tulips and irises. The cavernous school auditorium was transformed into a garden, and there was music and singing, and words to lift our very heavy hearts.  The function of this ceremony was to give us a container; a space for our grief for a time, so we could feel held and embraced by the love that guided our friend’s life.

I noticed as we collectively remembered her ever-present smile (in the face of great challenge), the atmosphere in the room was light, and I felt my own heart soar. To truly bear witness to an exceptional life was inspiring beyond circumstance. In the midst of grief, I noticed myself re-dedicating to life, surprised once again by the middle road we walk between winter and spring, hello and good-bye.

The week rounded out with a trip to the winter wonderland of Lake Louise, where I met the couple from Florida and their twin girls, who were there to renew their vows after ten years of marriage. The big loss this time was luggage that didn’t arrive, which meant the brand new suit and dress also didn’t arrive. But this couple took it in stride, shopped at Cross Iron Mills on the way from the airport, and carried on with their plan.

The ceremony was intimate: just me and the family, and the photographers (and my friend and her guide dog as witnesses).  We were in the empty ballroom at the Chateau, which of course, felt a bit like a castle in a fairy tale for girls who had never seen snow before. When I told the couple’s “love story” to them, I was reminded that days before I had addressed my friend’s grown children with the words, “We know ourselves through our stories.”

These six-year-old girls hung on my every word, and they were especially delighted when their “entrance” was announced within the story – the day they were born, when their parents knew their job was to stay together because they were a family. When the groom read his vows aloud, his daughter looked at him like he was Prince Charming – her mouth rounded in a small “o” of wonder and pleasure.

The girls added their own words to the story within the ceremony, sharing what they love about their family: “My mom and dad take care of me when I’m sick. They take us on trips.  My family gives me cuddles and kisses.” When they stood in a circle and smiled at each other, I sensed this moment would imprint on all of them, and become one of those treasured memories.  No tears this day, just some heartfelt words of thanks for love recognized. And poodle hugs.

It was a big week, and my heart is swelling with gratitude for the “clients” that I was privileged to work with. Because of course, they weren’t clients at all. They were teachers. That’s an ideal I can live with.

How do you celebrate your marriage when you already consider yourselves wed? 

Holly Blue and her life partner P faced this "unique and wonderful dilemma" after the US Supreme Court lifted California's ban on same-sex couples marrying. They had already sanctified their union in a Jewish wedding ceremony over six years ago. 

Their vows to each other had been recognized by their family, congregation, and community but now - as Holly told friends in an email - "as a result of years of civil rights work and passionate volunteer hours by folks like all of us, we are able to have our marriage recognized and affirmed by the state and federal government."

What to do?  

First: the pragmatic. Concerned that this new legal reality might prove to be fleeting (the freedom to marry had been granted and taken away before), Holly told friends, 'We picked the date carefully as a sort of leaping through what may prove to be a passing window of opportunity.' She likened it to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid "leaping into the legal unknown". 

Next: "How and when to seal this piece in a spiritually authentic manner?" given they had already held a ceremony affirming their spiritual marriage. After weeks of pondering and discussion, often in the company of another couple, good friends in the same situation, the two couples settled on a plan. They would meet at the County Clerk's office and witness each other's legal pronouncement. 

After the simple ceremony, the pairs retreated to a B&B on the coast "to sit back and absorb the personal and historic significance of what has taken place."

Finally: the party. In sharing their news with friends, the couples said, "We want to celebrate with you! And - we've already had weddings and wedding receptions years ago."

They framed their solution within Jewish tradition: "Instead of breaking another glass, we want to repair the world, with you at our side." They proposed a work party and invited suggestions about the beneficiary. The favorite choice was a beach clean up.

On the designated day, their friends and members of their congregations showed up to carry off 150 pounds of rubbish from the shoreline. The local newspaper showed up too, alerted by the sponsoring organization. Apparently celebrating a wedding by mustering a work crew was newsworthy! (Alas, the reporter didn't realize the joint celebration was in honor of two couples; just a little too far outside the norm, perhaps.)

And that, dear readers, is the story - as Holly puts it - of "how two 'old married couples' decided to navigate the changing landscape of the Dominant Paradigm".    

*       *        *

My deep thanks to Holly Blue Hawkins of Last Respects Consulting for sharing her story.

I’ve already written about how it’s never too late to remember a loved one well. This week’s story reminds us that it’s never too late to declare one’s love.

Inspired by my plan to tell 50 stories in 50 weeks, my sister Celebrant Alethea Devi reached out to share one from her own practice.

Jack was 78 and June, 82, when they met at a retirement home. Coincidentally, both were from Canada. Jack had been a community organizer and mediator; June was a retired school teacher and horse woman.

As Jack told Alethea, when he and June met, there were sparks. They became best friends and soon were in love. They wanted to live together in the same apartment, but the policy of the residence was that only "couples" could share an apartment. So Jack proposed to June to be married. June was diagnosed with dementia and so could not legally consent to be married, but they both wanted their special friendship to be recognized somehow.

Their families decided to gather in Portland for Thanksgiving and go together to see the famous Lipizzaner stallions, since June was so crazy about horses. They flew in from New York and Southern California: sons, daughters, and grandchildren. When their families saw how in love Jack and June were with each other, one of the sons contacted Alethea for a “celebration”.

Alethea suggested an Anam Cara ceremony. Anam Cara, meaning soul friend, is a Celtic tradition more recently popularized by the Irish poet John O’Donohue who described it as a friendship that “awakens an ancient recognition” between two people.

Alethea composed and led an Anam Cara ceremony complete with a hand-fasting with a long white ribbon, accompanied by a recording of Frank Sinatra singing Young at Heart. “As soon as the song started to play,” Alethea says, “Jack burst out to sing along. It brought a sweet tear to our eyes and became the theme of the day. As my husband said, “You never know when you'll feel 16 again, and poof you fall in love just one more time.’”

*       *        *

"When love comes into your life, it’s almost like the dawn breaking within your heart.” ~ John O'Donohue

Hear John O'Donohue share more celtic wisdom on soul friendships and other topics.

And for another 'Young at Heart" love story, read about Cynthia and Howard, wed after 63 years apart.

Thanks to Alethea for sharing the lovely story of a creative and heart-felt ceremony honoring the special connection between Jack and June.