Love & relationships
The first same-sex weddings were celebrated in the UK on 29 March 2014 and in the 10 years since, thousands of couples have tied the knot. Among them is Rachael E Lennon, who explains why it was so important to have a public celebration when she married her wife, Claire
In spring 2016, my then girlfriend, Claire, and I enjoyed a holiday in Italy. On a warm evening in Sirmione, one of our conversations about the future became a little more serious. As we looked ahead to one day leaving our little rented flat in London and moving somewhere we could buy a home, we discussed our dream to have children and to build a family, and we made the decision to get married.
There was no proposal. No one dropped to one knee mid-conversation or anxiously pulled out a pre-purchased ring. But we were engaged. A few days later, we bought ourselves two brightly coloured glass rings from a tourist shop on the island of Murano in Venice, and wore them on that most significant finger on our left hands with silly delight. On our return to London, we chose a set of four rings together – the matching symbols of our engagement and wedding that we wear today.
Neither my wife nor I took on the pressure of creating a proposal event alone. Neither of us waited, like a character from a Jane Austen novel, to receive an offer of marriage. If we’d both followed the ‘traditional’ expectations of our gender and waited to be proposed to, we wouldn’t be married today.
Making the decision to marry felt like a relatively easy one. Like so many couples, our motivations were romantic, personal, symbolic and a little intangible. And they were also pragmatic. Being married meant that Claire and I would both be legally acknowledged as the parents of our children when they were born. I was aware of the long history of marriage as something that had excluded same-sex couples and repressed women in the UK for centuries, but I was excited to take the leap with Claire. In the early years of same-sex weddings, our decision to marry seemed to have a radical edge.
REJOICING IN RELATIONSHIPS
As we shared the news of our engagement with friends and family, our conversations shifted from the abstract idea of getting married to the planning of how to tie the knot. With London’s high monthly rents and expensive fertility treatment on the horizon, we knew that there would be financial sense in choosing a small ceremony or an elopement. Claire was tempted. But I realised that I wanted a public celebration.
I had been a bridesmaid six times before my own wedding, and a guest at countless others. There’s a lot to love about a wedding. It’s easy to let the significant moments of our lives pass quietly, uncelebrated and unacknowledged. That wasn’t what I wan
