There are all kinds of parents of gay kids in the world. Parents who happily accept your sexuality with no questions and pay for your gay wedding. Parents who are surprised but willing to work on their ingrained prejudices to support you and eventually walk you down the aisle at your gay wedding. Parents who think you’re turning your back on god and refuse to come to your gay wedding. And then there are parents who don’t accept your sexuality, don’t come to your gay wedding, and then later ask you to have a whole other fake wedding for your extended family.
That’s what happened to Reddit user iseebleachwipes and her wife Mandy, apparently. Mandy’s parents didn’t take her lesbianism or relationship with her girlfriend seriously, and so they didn’t take her engagement seriously either. Don’t “waste time fooling around with lesbians” they texted her repeatedly before her big day. Well, the big day came and went and finally Mandy’s parents got cool with lesbianism. Gifts, phone calls, birthday cards, rainbow flags, Tegan and Sara tickets, the whole thing. Until Mandy and her wife went to visit.
It turns out that they were so ashamed that we pretty much eloped and had a same sex marriage, that when family members showed up with our wedding pictures they found on Facebook they had been telling everyone that we were just at a mutual friend’s bridal shower and were “pretending” to be brides. At the same time, they knew that they couldn’t keep it a secret forever, so they had been telling their family that Mandy was seeing a “very nice boy” and might be getting married in a couple years or so.
Weird, but hold onto your butt ’cause it’s about to get weirder.
I asked them what exactly their plan was now that everything was out in the open. And you guys… Not only did they actually want to have another wedding ceremony with the family invited to corroborate their fake timeline, they wanted me to dress up as a man … Mandy asked them what they were gonna do once the extended family inevitably found out that I was a woman, and her parents basically told us that we didn’t ever have to interact with the rest of the family again. Just invite them one time to this fake straight wedding to trick them into believing their story, so that they could save face.
Just one time. Just this one imaginary wedding this one time where you impersonate a man. Come on, it’s one time. What lesbian hasn’t pretended to be a man to get married to the woman she’s already married to, just once? It’s like a single afternoon. What were you going to be doing anyway? Playing Gone Home again? Cleaning the kitchen to the Fun Home soundtrack? You don’t even need a cat sitter. You’ll be home before midnight and then you simply have to avoid all contact with your extended family for the rest of your life. You’re telling me you’re so selfish you can’t give up one afternoon to fake a wedding? Wow. Wow.
Mandy’s wife wrote in to Reddit for some advice because Mandy was kind of feeling it. It was a free party, after all. But before anyone was forced to buy a pair of Groucho glasses and a trench coat, Mandy texted her extended family some wedding pictures and told them she was gay married to her gay wife. Her extended family was like, “Right, obviously.” Mandy’s grandpa blessed their lesbian union and invited Mandy and her wife to a cookout. “It was pretty sweet.”
This is just your daily reminder that straight people are not okay and truly must be stopped; and that you, dear queer human, are perfect, just as you are.
Is it terrible that part of me would want to go along with the fake second wedding? If only so I could dramatically rip off my fake mustache at some point half way through, and ruin everything. I would want it to go full soap opera drama, if I have to be part of a farce.
I would pay to see that.
Seconded!
This was what Mandy thought they should do
This is so weird and it made me laugh in my office.
Yes! Have the fake straight wedding and then reveal yourself a woman during the reception! Preferably while going down some stairs, like in Tootsie
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2yivwu
The thing I love about this is how cool the extended family was, especially Mandy’s grandfather.
I think I’d do it….then rip off the male “disguise” with a choreographed flashmob to “Man I Feel Like A Woman”.
But I’m showy like that…..
STORYTIME: Something like this happened in Spain in 1902 – NINETEEN-OH-TWO. Just let that sink in.
In Galicia, Spain, two women, named Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sanchez Loriga, wanted to get married, except it was 1902, so they couldn’t. So what they did was Elisa PRETENDED TO BE A MAN. She took on the name of Mario Sánchez, fabricated a false history as the son of a shipwrecked atheist, was baptised and took communion (because Spain is and was super Catholic), and then they were married by a priest in a church in June 1902! Shortly afterwards, Elisa/Mario’s identity was discovered, and they were both fired and excommunicated, and escaped on a boat bound for either America or Argentina. They were never heard of again, but can we assume they lived happily ever after?
It’s just such an incredible story, and I learned it fairly recently at an exhibition about the history of LGBT activism in Spain (where I’m studying abroad), and when it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this article. It’s considered Spain’s first same-sex marriage, over 100 years before it was legalised (in 2004). Just thought I’d share!
This is amazing. I hope they were very happy wherever they ended
Wasn’t this made into a movie?
This sounds a lot like Viola di Mare (The Purple Sea). Valeria Solarino in that movie…. ?
Yeah that’s the one I was thinking of!
This also happened in the UK! In 1954, Vincent/Violet Jones and Joan Lee managed to fool a vicar into marrying them after they met working at a telephone exchange. We have a postcard of one of their wedding photos up in my flat and a friend once asked if it was of my girlfriend’s grandparents, so they definitely did a good job.
oh that’s beautiful!
I mean, since more wedding weekend rom-coms will probably always be in Hollywood’s future, this could either be an amazing (or a terrible) queer version of Meet the Parents.
As long as Ilene Chaiken doesn’t write it….?
Someone dies on the wedding day, a bi character becomes biphobic, for some reason the POC character is play the wrong ethnicity(not even from the same continent), and fucking Jenny is directing the wedding.
ROFL Al omg
I’m always both angry and fascinated when parents aren’t supportive, but grandparents are. What happened in order for tolerance to skip a generation?
That is my family. I can’t explain it! But 15 years later I’m still closer to my grandma than my parents because of it.
I’m sorry! I hope your parents will realise that (grand)mamma really does know best.
I think it’s mostly that at this point, a lot of grandparents literally don’t care anymore. They’re coming to the end of their lives and figure well fuck it, best my grandkids do whatever makes them happy while they’re alive and don’t regret not doing things they could’ve.
Least that’s the impression my gran gave.
Fingers crossed I can post an image because this was the first thing I thought of:
No take-backs!
What is this from??
This very short video! That gif is really the whole thing.
Ahem, embedding doesn’t seem to be working, so here’s a link instead. 5 Second Films, The Sanctity of Marriage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eydZclTi5dA
Loving the exploding head
You know you like girls when you watch the gif at least 10 times and don’t notice the exploding head.
I ALSO HAD NOT NOTICED THE EXPLODING HEAD
I saw a clip of drag show that went something like that except the groom ripped away the tux to reveal a gown, not a dress but a gown. And there was a comment with many up votes that said something like “As a drag queen I gotta say that’s a heckva tuck job.”
Heather, your write-up made me laugh so hard sitting on a bench by the sea. It looked like I was laughing at some joke my dog cracked.
ok what a glorious place to read the internet!
I laugh at my dog’s jokes all the time.
Dogs have the best jokes
WHAT A WORLD.
Is this not, like, part of the plot of The Birdcage????
In reverse tho.
The groom’s parents were gay he and his fiancée (baby Calista Flockhart)were straight but her parents were stars of the conservative political set.
popping out of my week of homework seclusion to say WOOOOWWWWWWWW
someone option the film rights on this, stat
Huh, wonder if my parents will end up trying this with me and my partner? Considering they don’t share any pictures of us and still tell people they have a son….
I have no idea what my mother-in-law tells people. She still describes my husband as her “daughter,” and came very close to boycotting the wedding on grounds of lesbianism (thank goodness we had a two-year engagement during which she came around on attending the wedding, if not on describing her son as a lesbian). But she also still has our save-the-date fridge magnet posted, which obviously has our correct names on it, and she finally allowed us to invite some of her side of the family (with correct names on the wedding invitation), so, like, who knows how she reconciles that.
(Meanwhile, my mom outed my husband as trans to my whole family, because apparently the inaccurate idea of her daughter being gay-married is better than the accurate perception of her daughter being married to a short dude with a high voice. I do not understand the straights, I swear to god.)
This family’s plan seems completely flawless and well thought-out. I cannot imagine what could possibly go wrong…
LOL WUT