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An Unconventional Marriage

Real Love, Fake Wedding

By Shenaya ChinoyPublished 6 years ago 10 min read
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Yet Another Unconventional Marriage

I love calling him my husband. I’ll find any excuse I can to throw it into a conversation on a daily basis. My husband needs to make an appointment. My husband asked me to pick up some Tylenol. My husband loves that flavour of ice cream. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel loved, safe, settled. Whenever I catch a glance of my wedding band, I smile and kiss my finger. It’s corny, I know, but it’s true. I think of the day he put it on me. I remember never having smiled so much as I did that day. I remember laughing and dancing, I remember him holding me close.

I had known my husband about 15 years before he finally wore me down. With that kind of history, just dating wasn’t really an option. It was a serious relationship right from that first kiss. It was hard for me to accept at first, the idea that someone could fall for me so hard like that. Someone who was willing to take me on in such a complete and selfless way. Anyone who knows me, knows that I come with a lot of proverbial baggage. I was truly lost during that time. I had no real home, no job, no purpose. He saw me for who I was without all of that, he saw my soul, the woman I could be if I just let myself give in. He took me in, gave me a safe place to rest. He spoiled me rotten. He didn’t have to but he did and my love for him grew everyday.

I had gone back and forth my whole life on the idea of marriage. Growing up the way I did, I saw a lot. I saw marriages of necessity, marriages of convenience. I saw multiple divorces, I saw unfaithfulness, deception. Despite all of this, I was a born romantic. The concept of two people together forever was not so unbelievable to me and I clung to that idea as much as I could. I had decided though that everybody was just doing it all wrong. Whether it was the older generations who stayed together out of some sort of responsibility rather than passion or the younger generations who were all about the passion and didn’t think about the responsibility, it was just all wrong.

I made up my mind that there was a way to do it right. Now that I was finally in a serious relationship, I had my chance at a real life experience.I started by asking the most logical question I could think of. Why are some people getting married and others aren’t. We are living in a world where the unconventional has never been more tolerated and parallel to that, the divorce rate has never been higher. Yet you still have those people aching to walk down the aisle and on the other side you have those who absolutely refuse to buy into the idea at all. They call the concept a government conspiracy or even a religious one. I started to think of all the arguments for and against marriage and realized that a lot of them were actually quite similar. It’s just a piece of paper, why is it so important for me to get married? It’s just a piece of paper, why don’t we get married. If I get married, it will be harder for him to leave me if things go wrong. If I get married, it will be harder for me to leave him if things go wrong. Then there were all the practical reasons people threw out there. Well it’s a break on your taxes. If you have kids, and then you break up, things will get complicated. If you get into an accident, he’ll be able to legally pull the plug. You’ll have the right to half if he leaves you. Not one legitimate argument on either side talked about love or respect for one another. Not one talked about knowing and loving someone so completely that you knew without a doubt what you wanted to do. It all seemed insane to me. It was exactly what was wrong with this world. It was all about the bottom line and I refused to buy into it. My options were to get married so that I had the right to his money or not to not get married because I didn’t believe in conforming to society.

Part of my conflict throughout my life was that as much as I wasn’t sure about the idea of marriage, the romantic in me always dreamed of what my wedding would be like. I wanted the wedding dress to pick out with my friends, the one I would offer my daughter thirty years later to wear on her wedding day. I wanted to argue over chicken or fish with my fiancee. I wanted a band to play our favourite songs as we made fools of ourselves on the dance floor. I wanted to recite vows that I wrote for the man I love. I wanted to remember my wedding day years later as being full of crazy problems but ultimately the best day of my life. I’ve known a lot of women who get married just so that they can have a wedding and that concept baffled me more than anything else. It’s like saying you don’t believe in celebrating birthdays but you’ll have a party so that you can get the gifts. Not only is it selfish, it’s downright stupid. The cost, the stress, the planning, all so you can feel like a princess for a day but you have no real desire to be with the person standing there with you at the altar. Mistake.

There were so many things to take into account when making this decision. I didn’t want to make the wrong choice. I had made so many of those already and I was still so young. I knew I would be making a ton more in my life. But not about this. This had to be certain. I had to be right. I thought with my head, I thought with my heart, I thought with my gut. I took others’ opinions into account but I didn’t let them drive my decision. I discussed it with my boyfriend but didn’t let him cloud my judgement.

My husband, like me is a romantic. He truly believes in Happily Ever After. But he understood how I felt. He understood that the concept was confusing to me and that I refused to consider marriage until I figured it out. We talked a lot about our future together right from the start. We knew in our hearts that this was forever, with or without the certificate. One night we were laying in bed discussing what we would want if we did get married. He told me that he wanted to get married on the beach that his parents renewed their vows on, as a tribute to them. I looked at him that night and something hit me. It wasn’t exactly a proposal he had just made but it made me think. I wanted to be with him, that was certain. If we did get married, it would have been purely for love. There was no other reason floating around the air. Then it hit me. All of the pros and cons came together and I realized I didn’t have to choose between the two. I could create my very own situation that was more real than anything else out there. I could walk down that aisle, pledge my love and call myself his wife for all the right reasons without anything legal coming into it. I could have my cake and eat it too.

And so, we announced our engagement, with only our closest family and friends knowing our true plan. He even surprised me with a ring on the night of our engagement party. I felt a bit guilty having a party, even more so when we decided to register for it. In the end though, a little practicality wasn’t going to ruin all the romance. Let’s face it, we needed the dishes and the toaster. New bedding is always nice when you’re starting a new life together and I don’t think I could live without my rice cooker. It was a great night, bad food, awful dancing, laughing, drunken speeches, family drama, a lot of love, everything you expect at one of these events. Suddenly, I was an adult, an engaged adult. It was like I was suddenly put on a map with a little pin in it saying “I was here”. We were getting marriage advice from everyone we met. We answered questions about the big day, our future plans, whether we wanted a bunch of kids or a bunch of cats. (We always said both). It rolled on. I got a dress, we booked our flights, finalized the menu and before we knew it, it was time.

I woke up early that morning, while the sun was still rising and just stared at my wedding dress hanging in front of my bed. I layed there and smiled for about two hours. I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t nauseous, I had no regrets. I knew no matter what happened that day, it was going to be the happiest of my life. The whole day was pretty relaxed, considering it was a “wedding day”. We had breakfast, sat by the pool, watched the resort workers set up our ocean front ceremony scene. I got my hair done, my friends did my makeup and helped get me in my dress. Next thing I know, the song is playing and I am walking down the beach heading towards my future. I smiled, he smiled, our ten guests smiled. It was perfect. We professed our love in front of those who mattered most to us but most importantly to each other and with a kiss we were husband and wife. What made it so special, so romantic, so different? When all was said and done, we didn’t sign a contract, we didn’t get a piece of paper proving what we had just done. The proof was solely in our hearts. Nobody had to come up and sign that they had witnessed us tie ourselves together. They simply had to applaud and smile. I never had to doubt myself. I never had to worry that I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. I didn’t have to think about all those failed marriages I had seen. All I had just done, was put on a white dress and tell the man that I love that I will love him. If I hadn’t felt like that was true, I wouldn’t have done it and nothing would have changed. We ate, we danced, we cut the cake, we threw the bouquet and garter. Pictures and videos were taken, more drunken speeches were made. The sun set over the beach and just like that, it was over. We had no other obligations to anyone but each other for the rest of the night.

A week later, we came home to our own apartment. Nothing had changed, but everything was different. To the world, we were married. We had the pictures to prove it and I had every right to call him my husband. But the stigma wasn’t there. We bound each other together with our hearts with a promise to be there for each other until such a time as we can’t anymore. The words divorce, alimony, marital duties, desperate housewife, trapped. they just didn’t exist. Nothing is forcing me to love him, nothing is guilting me into staying, everything we do for each other, we do simply because we want to. The wedding day portrait on our wall is simply a reminder that we were in love enough to want it to last forever.

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