Tell us your love
story!
We met when I
(Charles)was visiting New York for the weekend, back in 2007. I was
living in San Francisco at the time. My friends and I had tickets to see
Margaret Cho at the Zipper Theater, but dinner finished early, so my friend
suggested going to a nearby bar, Barrage, to have a drink. It was pretty
early for a bar, so there weren’t too many people. We needed an extra
chair and there happened to be one at the table where Gary was sitting with a
friend. I went up, asked if it was OK if we took it, he said yes. When I sat back down with my friends, I happened to look his way, saw him
looking at me, and I thought, he’s cute! I remember his smile. After a minute of us looking at each other and not really doing anything
about it, my friend Kevin, a little exasperated, said, “Would you just go over
and say hi already? He’s been looking at you since we walked in.” (Gary contends that the eye contact was mutual) So I did, and when
I got to his table, Gary looked at me with this playful/wry look and said, “So,
here to steal another chair?” I said, no, I wanted to see if I could join
them. He eagerly said yes, please do, and then we (including his friend
Jason) talked for an hour or so. A very fast hour. My other friend
came up to us, told me we needed to make our way to the theater, so we
exchanged phone numbers. And that commenced a series of non-stop
texting that led to our meeting--just the two of us--a few nights later and
then more texting and calling once I returned to SF. I was back in NY to
visit and stay with Gary within three weeks. We spent the next 6 months
traveling back and forth between SF and NYC. We saw each other every 2-3
weeks (racking up a lot of frequent flyer miles) and Skyped each other almost
every day.
Tell us about the
proposal!
It was June 26,
2014. The day that the Supreme Court was giving its verdict on the
Windsor case. Gary is a political nut, so he follows MSNBC, all the blogs, knows everything about the House, the Senate, governors, etc. I can never follow politics, I can never remember names or offices. But this particular week, and on that particular day, I was following the
news very closely, and when the news came out that the Supreme Court favored
Windsor--clearing the way for federal recognition of gay marriage--we were obviously
thrilled. At home from work,
we watched the news programs on MSNBC. We rarely do that; usually, over
dinner, we watch something like “Top Chef” or “Project Runway”, something light
we’ve DVR’d earlier in the week. Tonight was different. After eating,
we made our way to the couch and were watching Rachel Maddow. And
suddenly, it hit me: I wanted us to be engaged on this historic day. Never mind I hadn’t done anything to prepare (like a ring, or a speech),
or that we hadn’t talked about marriage in years. We’d talked about it
before as something we wanted to do but not until it was legal on a federal
level. Now it was, and I felt convinced we had to do it now. So I
asked Gary if he would marry me. I think he thought I was being
theoretical, he answered “yes” in a such an unemotional way. So I said to
him something to the effect of, “I mean, I am asking you to marry me.
Will you marry me?” And he said yes again. He was really
taken aback.
Something to know
about Gary: he’s impossible to surprise. I am easily surprised, which is
why he’s been able to plan surprises for me for birthdays and things like that,
because I’m gullible and suspect nothing. Gary is always thinking several
steps ahead. When we watch mysteries or thrillers, he knows who did it
within minutes, whereas I haven’t even thought about it. The only way I
can surprise him is if I don’t know what’s about to happen either.
When did you know
that you were meant to be with each other?
Charles: We did
long-distance--SF/NY--for six months, and by that point, we knew we wanted to
live together. We would have been happy living in either one, but it was
a lot easier for me to move and find a job in NY than it would have been for
him to come to SF. So it took another six months before I could make all
my arrangements to move. I drove in my car across the country, with Gary
meeting me in Omaha, to drive together the rest of the way. I can’t think
of a specific day or moment when I knew we were meant to be together, but by the
time I left my SF apartment, I knew this was going to be it. Gary and I
weren’t old, but we weren’t young kids. We’d been around, so we knew what
felt serious. And this did.
Gary: I can’t
pinpoint an exact moment that “I knew” but I have a general idea. After a
couple of years in my apartment, we decided to look for more space. We
ultimately bought a house that turned out to be a gut renovation. It was
a very stressful and time consuming project. At any point during
the three year process, one of us would be freaking out about some aspect of
the renovation, while the other would be a calming and grounding force. At some point during those three years I realized how wonderfully
suited we are for each other, with enough in common to connect us, but with
enough difference to balance the other. It is not something I think I
would have recognized at a younger age. It also helped that all of my
friends absolutely adore him.
Tell us about your
big day…
Magic. It was
the culmination of a weekend of festivity. It was a Sunday late afternoon
wedding, so starting the middle of the week leading up to it, our families and
out of town friends began to arrive. On Friday, Gary and I had dinner
separately with our extended families; Saturday morning we hosted anyone who
wanted to come for coffee and light brunch, and Saturday night we had the
rehearsal dinner where our parents met for the first time. It was a big
build-up. Sunday morning,
Gary and I just relaxed and went to a local restaurant that we go to every
weekend for brunch. It’s like “Cheers”; everyone knows our name there, we
have the same waiter every time. We had a normal brunch, just the two of
us, then came home, and started getting ready for Jacqueline to arrive at 2pm. I felt nerves, but good nerves, the sense of something exciting to come. Jacqueline was great; she spent an hour with us in our home, taking
pictures of our house and of us getting ready, and looking back, I think it
helped us get in the “wedding mode” and ready for the attention we were about
to receive. And did we. We got to the site about an hour before the ceremony, did some family
photos as the guests began to arrive. Melissa, our planner, had us go to
a little room with family members who were going to be in the ceremony. Then, she had us get into our ready positions just outside the courtyard
entrance to the Green Building. Once the music cue for the ceremony went
on, things took off. Everyone always told us that the wedding goes by so
fast you don’t have time to eat or think, and it’s true! Once Gary and I
made our vows, things accelerated. It wasn’t a blur, because I felt like
I was present at every moment. But it was non-stop and exhilerating. Everything was amazing from the flowers, to the music, to the Koolhaus
ice cream truck that pulled up late in the evening. t was a perfect
party and a great reflection of our personalities. We had arranged for
a Photo Booth for a four hour period, and Melissa came by us toward the end and
made sure Gary and I got a picture in there. We were the last people to
take pictures, and it made me realize just how fast things had gone. I
couldn’t believe it was already 10pm, which was the time we’d told the caterer
and the DJ things would be done by. (Melissa asked our DJ, Duane, and Jacqueline
if they wouldn’t mind staying an extra half hour, and they were so generous
about it.)
Going into the
wedding planning, what did you definitely know?
We always joke that
Gary is a planner at heart. He likes a plan. Not even 24 hours of
engagement bliss had elapsed after the proposal that he said to me he’d already
researched places to have a ceremony and we had to act fast because those
places were booking up!
We knew we wanted
to have the wedding in Brooklyn, and we knew we wanted the Mister Sunday
(afternoon dance parties thrown by Mister Saturday Night) crew to be the DJs. Everything else, we were open to. We knew nothing about catering,
about flowers, about decorations. Gary quickly found out about the Green
Building, which appealed right away because it’s close to our house and close
the Mr. Sunday parties which (until that summer) had been just a few blocks
away, on an abandoned lot on the Gowanus. So, we had booked
the music and the venue before we even had our wedding planner. Everything else was a bit of a mystery for us.
What surprised you
during planning? What was easy, what was difficult?
When we got
engaged, we’d just three months earlier moved into our house, which had been a
gut renovation and took three years. It had been a nightmare of logistics
but also decisions: what kind of light fixtures, how many, what color paint
(there are hundreds of shades of white, I learned). Gary is far better
than I am at filtering through and making a few selections. I need to have 3-4
options at most given to me, and then I can tell you which I like the best. We had the help of Melissa to guide us through it, but since we wanted
this wedding to reflect on our lifestyles and personalities, she wasn’t in a
position to make every decision for us as we wanted to be involved. So if
you have the same problem I do, just be prepared: there are decisions to make. I took the advice
of another friend who was also planning a wedding (but six months in advance of
ours), someone prone to over-planning and getting neurotic about it. She
warned me against feeling I had to meet lots of vendors in a specific category;
she said it was OK if I only met one and went with it, if I felt good. So Jacqueline at
Readyluck was a good example. We had looked at the websites of various
photographers that Melissa suggested, and Melissa had reached out to arrange
meetings with a few. We met Jacqueline first after another one had to
cancel and reschedule. There was a particular album of Jacqueline on her
webpage that I loved, so for me I just wanted to meet her and see if we got
along. Gary pretty much deferred to me on picking the photographer.) We met, liked her a lot, and so I told Melissa we were going with her, so
we could cancel all the other meetings. And she did great! I think the month
prior to our wedding--late April/early May--we’d hit wedding planning fatigue. Even though all the vendors were pretty much in place, there were still
some things to change (like one vendor not having the specific table/chair or
something like that). We were frankly tired of it all.
Is there anything
you wish you knew while you were planning your wedding that you know now?
Well, there are
some people who probably don’t have this problem, but our wedding was not
dissimilar from our house in this respect: it cost a lot more than we
originally planned!
Any advice for
couples planning weddings now? Anything you would have done differently?
Just some random
thoughts:
- As I
mention above, you don’t have to meet a ton of people in every category
(catering, flowers, etc). Most of the vendors we went with, we only met
one in person. All of them were fantastic.
- On
that same note: there is no one perfect wedding option that is out there
you should be straining for. There are lots of great options out
there, and if you don’t stress out too much, it will end up becoming
perfect.
- Don’t
feel locked into convention or what everybody else has done. There
are truly no rules. For example, we didn’t want a first dance, so we
just turned it over to the DJ after we thanked everyone and let the party
begin. Likewise, neither of us are wild about cake, so we had lots
of little desserts passed on the dance floor and to the tables and then
had an ice cream truck show up late in the evening and everyone piled out
into the street.
- Photobooth
for people to take playful photos: WORTH IT. Do it!!!! And pay
for the option to have an album made on the spot for guests to sign. Those pictures are priceless, and it was great having an album right
away that we could look at.
- Having
Melissa get everything together for us and handle it all seamlessly on the
day of: so worth it. I know some people don’t hire a planner and
have friends/family do it. It’s a serious responsibility with a lot
of stress for that person (and I would imagine possibly for the couple, if
that person doesn’t handle stress well). Our wedding site was the
kind of place where you have to arrange everything, so this was much more
of a big deal than a wedding venue where all the catering and supplies are
handled in-house.
- For
people who are worried about having a Sunday afternoon/evening ceremony
(we were worried about it) because the next day is a workday: relax. The people you care about most will definitely fly in and come for
it.
What was your favorite part of the day?
Hard to pick
favorites, but the toasts given to us--by three friends and one unexpected by
Charles’ father--were lovely. That was the one point I wish someone had
videorecorded the event. We also loved the few minutes that our
planner carved out for us alone in a side room with a cocktail and some of the
appetizers just to absorb the moment together before we reemerged as a married
couple.