Posts tagged ‘Marriage’

Jun 16

Contemplating our First Anniversary

It’s hard to think that a year has already past since that blissful wedding day when I married my soulmate one year ago. That small but perfectly formed little Chelsea Wedding felt so emotionally momentous that I think I have been bouncing happily in its blissful wake ever since. Yet to think that it’s been a year is rather bizarre, not least when I consider that it feels as though I was only just finishing off the last dabs of gouache on my paintings commemorating our honeymoon. How time flies. But how happily tangible are the memories still.

Our magical day

It was in the contemplation of this anniversary that Dominik and I recently headed to Deiá, easily our favourite place on the island of Mallorca, and perhaps in the whole world. We knew that there could be no better way to celebrate a first year of marriage, and 7 years of being together. While my mother’s witty gift of toilet paper (and a little something extra) reminded that this is traditionally the “paper anniversary”, for us it was bubbles and sunshine all the way as we toasted our union in the stunningly floral grounds of the Hotel Residencia over two glasses of cava – one brut, the other rosé. In a way those two glasses appeared to represent something of our relationship and the keys to its success. Two people who are characteristically, externally different, but whose integral sameness binds us so strongly together. And all this in the most exquisite surroundings of the Teix Mountains and the Mediterranean sea. Magical.

Bubbles at the Residencia and dinner at Restaurante Nama

While the 15th June marks our wedding anniversary, the 16th June is the anniversary of our first date. But there is something so much more special now in celebrating an anniversary of marriage, than that day of first discovery. Because while our daily life may not have changed all that much as a result of the certificate we signed, the comfort and security and wholesome oneness it has brought us can never been replicated outside of marriage. One more year has passed and another coat of time’s varnish adds an extra veneer of strength to our union. Here’s to that.

Jun 30

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Roots entwined: Our story illustrated

Two weeks ago I married my soul mate, and the man I am now lucky enough to call my husband, and on yesterday’s Daily Norm you were bombarded with photos of our ceremony. However, our marriage was a culmination of 6 years together, almost to the exact day of our first date in fact, on 16th June 2009, and from that moment onwards, I lived life as a man complete.

In celebration of our journey together since that first June date, I prepared for our wedding by drawing a little illustration of our adventures as a twosome. Inspired by the magical words of Louis de Bernieres in his stunning novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which were read at our wedding, my illustration takes the form of a complex interlocked image of our adventures, each stemming from the routes which now bind us so firmly together.

Roots entwined (2015 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.
And when it subsides you have to make a decision.
You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined
together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.
Because this is what love is.

Love is not breathlessness, it is notexcitement,
it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion.
That is just being in love, which any fool can do.
Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away,
and this is both an artand a fortunate accident.

Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground,
and, when all the prettyblossoms have fallen from their branches,
they find that they are one tree and not two.

Louis de Bernieres, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Jun 29

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The day I married my soul mate

I knew I wanted to marry my soul mate Dominik almost from the first moment we met. It was within a few dates that I knew we were two inseparables, so alike in our tastes and ambitions, thoughts and feelings, that it was like finding myself all over again, and gaining the best friend, companion and lover a man could wish for. We marked our commitment very early only – it was within 6 months that we placed eternity rings around one another’s hands on a snowy night in Montmartre in Paris – but it took us a further 5.5 years to seal the deal.

Getting ready for the big moment, and with mother of the groom and my nephews…

I suppose for us, the big step was engagement, and the marriage was only ever the cherry on the cake, or at least that was how it felt when we decided to opt on a completely secret, tiny ceremony two weeks ago, inviting only our most intimate family and very few friends, in order to keep our wedding small, both numerically and economically. For us it felt more administrative as we filled in the forms and gave our official notice. And when, in the days leading up to our wedding, people asked if we were nervous, I couldn’t understand why we were supposed to feel nerves, when on paper it all seemed so simple.

The magical moment, and stepping out into a confetti of peonies

That was until the wedding. In that moment, when joining hands before a Chelsea registrar, we looked into each other’s eyes, and placed the final wedding band on our fingers, suddenly it all became very, wonderfully real. The extent of our commitment, the magic of the moment, the utmost celebration of the most perfect union: the moment I married my soul mate. Now, looking back on those magical few minutes, my memories are flooded with the great surge of emotion I felt in that moment, the pride and the love, and the utmost and complete joy.

Photos, celebrations and a top-notch lunch

So for anyone doubting whether the US decision of last week, which legalised gay marriage across all states, was the right one, let my experience cast those doubts asides. Gay marriage in the UK has enabled me to commit myself not to a boyfriend, nor a civil partner, but to a husband, in the eyes of the law and before my family and friends. It has enabled me to bind myself to my one true soul mate, and in doing so share the same right afforded to everyone around me, whatever their sexuality. The world is finally moving forwards, common sense is prevailing, and equal love is truly victorious.

Rounded off with an incredible cake (courtesy of lady-aga.com)