Sounds about right. Gotta love Grover and little kids.

well, it means that Alex and Yasmin won't be at the ceremony. ;-)
but they can come to the reception.

Marriage is, to me, now, more closer to its historical meaning. A contract. Legal issues. How the government relates to my partner and I. And it is important for those reasons. Immigration. Taxes. Visitation rights. Etc., ad infinitum et nauseam.

That said, marriage remains only a blip on the radar for my partner and I. If our relationship could survive for 16 years without all the official bits (that we still legally require and will qualify for once we marry here in Canada), then we have the basics of what most people have, in the past two hundred years or so, confused marriage to mean: love.

What we have right now, without the official bits, is understanding and patience that comes from getting to know one another. We have anger and generosity and exhaustion and passion mixed together such that we can forgive one another practically everything.

And we already have the beginnings of the blending of our larger families that marriage will no doubt conceptually solidify for them.

When we do wed, it will ultimately be a party that says: we recognize that we've made it together thus far, that we intend to make it for as long as we both shall live, and that we are ready for the insurance, tax, and immigration, etc., benefits that are normally awarded to those who do marriage, and that we want our family and friends to be even closer within the circle of our love.

In the patriarchal enviroment in which we find ourselves it is a kind kind of human version of horsebreeding among classes of people. Taken to extremes we get the arranged weddings of 5 year-olds which are used to tie together familial, tribal, and clan lines. Marriage has long been a tool of politics and statecraft.

If you ask 'what has love got to do with it?' well you get the same answer as you do when you ask what does god have to do with it?. Nothing at all. Marriage is a civil ceremony in the past it was handled by the chuch because they kept the best records at the time. God as the chief bureaucrat, don't you love the imagery?

Marriage as an act of love is really for many except the lowest classes, a recent event. I mean it made compelling poetry and a rousing tale when told just right, but all in all, love was about duty and the continuation of male bloodlines. Like racing horses or hunting dogs.

You can keep marriage, give me a good hand fasting any day.