The Goose Got Fat, Eaten

I don't think either Michael nor I feels especially bad about not posting for a long time since the wedding. We have some explanations, none of which is an "excuse" because we are not particularly sorry for the past seven weeks of silence, except in one important dimension:

We owe our amazing network of fellow wedding bloggers a serious apology. In the weeks before our wedding, you were here for us, being sweet, making our wedding seem like the most important day in the whole world. We should have been celebrating with you virtually, as you celebrated with us, and tossing good vibes and pithy advice your way.

Instead, we spent the first few weeks of our married life detoxing from stress, the spending, the narcissism of what we did. We spent a lot of time with local friends and with our parents. There were turkeys. We bought and wrapped and exchanged Christmas gifts. Very importantly, we got all our thank-you notes written and in the mail before Christmas vacation. We were reading your blogs (seriously!) but not commenting. We never once navigated to this page.

I think both of us were a bit shocked by the life that this blog took on. Literally dozens of regular readers supporting us and learning about us, visiting the site hundreds of times each week. It fed our egos, and it stoked the smoldering embers of guilt. Who were we to merit this attention? And who on earth were all of you to give it to us?

We never meant to be gay-wedding journalists or memoirists. We started this blog to make sure that our guests knew where to stay and eat, and buy us silverware. Obviously we had more to share, and I'm glad we have had the platform.

As we opened our lives up more and more, things got more rewarding as well as more scary. We knew we wanted to draw a line at some point. As much as we hoped for our wedding to be a very public celebration and to set an example for others, we didn't want same-sex marriage to become the defining issue of our lives. I'm not sure that's avoidable, but that is still our hope. Michael is a scientist and I am a professional fundraiser - we are not full-time grooms.

The weeks after our wedding were an emotional roller-coaster in other ways, especially with the passage of Proposition 8 and similar state initiatives across the country. Not only was that personally painful, but I think both of us felt shouted-down by our friends who thought that we were making too much of the issue, and should just be quietly grateful that we got the wedding of our dreams (and the end of the Bush morass).

So, part of our silence was fostering some bitterness about that. We are certainly recovering, trying to think optimistically about things we can do politically to help secure marriage equality, things that go beyond complaining. And, we both led anti-hunger fundraising and advocacy drives at our respective offices; it has been tremendously rewarding to do something purely for others, immediate and tangible, that doesn't benefit one's self at all.

In any case, even though our wedding has come and gone (and I do see the thank-you notes as being the Finish Line), we have more to say and more to share, and we appreciate the attention, and we do think of you - incredibly - as friends.

I am developing a new blog that I will announce and launch once I figure out what it ought to be and have enough material on there that you should want to visit it. I'm not sure if Michael will continue to write, and if he does, what it will consist of (he's been an intermittent blogger over the years).