I’ve been thinking a lot about weddings lately.

My partner Mark and I got married in November 2008, just before Proposition 8 was passed. At the time, I had given a lot of thought to the rights and responsibilities that came with marriage, and the fact that it’s denied to so many couples today simply because they were gay or lesbian.

But I had’t given a lot of thought to what marriage would mean to me in my own life, personally.

On that rainy San Francisco November day, I learned so much more, and I continue to reflect on all the little things that marriage means that most of us take for granted.

I actually realized the first thing four years before, when Mark and I were first married at City Hall in San Francisco. It was March 11, 2004, and after a lot of soul searching, we finally decided to go to San Francisco and take part in the weddings that had been happening there since Valentine’s Day, when Gavin Newsom threw open in the doors at City Hall to gay and lesbian couples.

It was a difficult decision, not because we didn’t want to marry yet, but because we really wanted our entire family to be able to come, and wanted to “do it right”, with the ceremony, music, the reception dinner, the works.

But the day before, we finally decided that it was important to be a part of this moment, to show how many gay and lesbian couples in California really wanted to be able to be married.

So we checked in San Francisco wedding appointment list and there was an appointment available for us on the next day. We hopped in the car and drove down to the city, arriving almost an hour late for our appointment because of heavy traffic. Our appointment should’ve been cancelled, but we think that the city had some inkling that the court was due to rule on the wedding later that day, and so they did everything they could to get as many couples through as possible that day.

So there we were, at the top of the steps in City Hall, with only the officiant and the man who had come down to City Hall to provide witness for those couples who needed it, out of the generosity of his heart.

We were participating in a ritual but would later be ruled invalid by the state Supreme Court, we were doing so without her friends and family around us, and without I’ll trappings of a full wedding.

And yet… and yet… it meant something. As we looked into each others’ eyes and said our prepared vows, it meant something. To commit our lives to another, and have a blessing, if not of the state, at least at the good people and city of San Francisco.

That’s what I learned, and it was reinforced on the day of our “real” wedding in November, 2008. That something really does change when you become married. Things become deeper and more solid.

That there is a real connectedness created by marriage, something that didn’t happen years before, when we signed papers to become domestic partners.

And I also learned that there is a clear and important distinction between a civil union and marriage.

The other thing that’s become clear to me in the almost two years since we were married is it something else special happened on that day that had not happened before.

The very fact of our wedding brought together people from Mark’s and my lives that had not been brought together in this way before.

It brought my mother and Mark’s mother together, and they were able to talk with each other, alone, for extended period of time.

Our wedding was planned for late afternoon on Saturday, and Mark’s mom had to check out of her hotel room in the morning. My own mother was gracious enough to invite Mark’s mother to her room for the afternoon until the wedding was to begin, and the two of them spent three or four hours together, alone, talking about Mark and I, their families, and their lives in general.

I’ve since heard from both of them of the bond that was formed that day. Even though both had met before, they never before had the opportunity to speak to each other for so long, and to talk about so many things.

The other forced meeting was between my own mother and father. My parents divorced when I was very young, and although they had been civil, they never wished to spend much time together since, because there were many difficult memories between them.

But the day after the wedding, everyone else got home. My mother, my father, Mark and I would only ones left. I will not go so far as to claim that the morning did anything heal the rift between them, which had grown old and hard. But it was the first time I can remember that my two parents were together for any length of time, and they were able to recall a few of the good times they’d had with me when we were a family.

It was a soul-noursing moment– when, for at least a couple hours, things that had been broken were mended.

And in a strange way, it helped to assuage my own fears for my marriage with Mark. You see, I came from a broken household, and he didn’t. And there was always that fear that there was something inside me, maybe something I inherited from my parents and their relationship, that might someday break up my relationship with Mark.

But somehow, seeing those moments of connectedness between my own parents, I was at peace.

I am sure that through the years, I’ll learn much more about what it means to be married, to pledge the rest of my life to someone who I dearly love: both the obvious and the subtle things that come from this union.

But I know enough already, to say this: marriage is more than a word, more than a definition. It’s something that, in a unique way, brought us together – not only as a married couple, but also the various members of the two families in a way that is unmatched by anything else.

When all is said and done, we weren’t looking for political gain when we got married. And we weren’t looking to radically redefine anything.

Our marriage isn’t a gay marriage.  It’s just marriage.

–Scott