While in Toronto last week, rIAm and I encountered, for at least the second time, people who consider us, essentially, already married. In each case, it was family who expressed the opinion. It’s certainly a heart-warming thought, but how close to reality is it?
Obviously, from a strictly legal perspective, we’re not married. We’ve not gotten a license or gone through any formal ceremony. So no, we’re not married. But under Canadian law, we’d qualify as common law partners if we went back to Canada right now. And that’s pretty similar to being married. So let’s go beyond the legal mumbo jumbo for a bit.
The bottom line for those who consider us married already is that I asked rIAm to marry me — to spend the rest of her life with me — and she said yes. So we’ve already made the commitment, right? We’ve both said “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” and then we shared that decision with everybody we know.
What are we really accomplishing in 205 days that we haven’t already accomplished? Sure we’ll be making it official and legal that we are married — not common law — but really, we’re throwing a giant and fantastic party. Our commitment to each other will not suddenly have changed. Our relationship won’t really change, either; we pretty much function like a married couple as it is. So all of this work rIAm (especially), and many others, are doing in order to have a phenomenal wedding day, is so that our closest friends and family can see us exchange our vows and then have a wonderful meal with us — and party.
In fact, rIAm and I see this as much a great opportunity for a family reunion as much as anything — when else will all of these amazing people be together in one place? But as for being married, back in June when I decided once and for all that rIAm was the woman for me, I made the big commitment — vow — and took the plunge. On July 30th, I’ll simply re-affirm the promise I made in the form of a question, but this time in front of 200 people: I want to spend the rest of my life with one and only one woman, and her name is renée.
as my grade three tearch mrs.valiukas used to say when she was exasperated with something we had done in class (which was often, because she had such high standards), “mary, joseph, christopher columbus”… as touched as I am by this posting, i am currently a blubbery mess at work… i loves you, jft… thank you, you rock my world!