Nerdlyweded!

Yes, the title of this post is another portmanteau (nerd + newlywed = nerdlywed)...I'm a scholar and those of us in sociology and cultural studies tend to me full of them.  So I'll apologize for my blogging absence of late because my December went from finals week to my nerdy wedding.

Post-wedding selfie in the hotel room

One week ago, I married my partner and best friend in Las Vegas, Nevada on Friday, December 13th.  I know that the date may seem odd, but I am the person who has had some incredibly neat things happen to me on various Friday the Thirteenths (heck, I even have a tattoo with a shamrock and the number 13 on one of my legs).  It was also hearkened to the struggles he and I have been through, and that our relationship has been forged through fire (mostly grad school and spine surgery).

Photo description: A self-photo taken in a hotel bathroom showing a fair-skinned, red-headed woman with plastic framed glasses. Her hair is shoulder length with some of the hair pulled back, dangling earrings, and makeup. She has an olive green drape covering her shoulders and torso, & is holding an iPhone with a Starfleet logo and a Royal Manticoran Navy sticker

The Las Vegas part of the wedding was my partner's idea.  After I proposed, I asked him if he had anything he'd always wanted for his wedding.  He told me that he wanted to get married in Las Vegas by Elvis.  With a little research and discussion, we found a chapel that had a variety of theme weddings....including an intergalactic wedding (the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel).  Since we're both geeks, we decided we may as well make this as fun and campy as possible (especially combined with my constantly uncertain.  I had no interest in wearing a wedding dress, so we wore outfits from our original intergalactic fandoms.  I wore a Starfleet uniform from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with the officer's pips for Lieutenant Commander (my rank in the Royal Manticoran Navy fan organization) and he wore Mandalorian bounty hunter armor that he created from Star Wars.

We had both of our immediate families meet us in Las Vegas and it was absolutely fantastic.  Because the chapel broadcasts all of their weddings on their webpage, we were able to share the link to the ceremony with friends and family that couldn't attend for various reasons.  Even better, my parents agreed to pay to have the wedding stay on the chapel's webpage so even more people could virtually attend & celebrate with us when they were able!

Our view from the Excalibur hotel room

Photo description: A snapshot from our room on the 22nd floor of the Excalibur Hotel & Casino. Several brightly lit buildings of the Las Vegas Strip are shown as well as the red sign of the Excalibur.

As I recover from the trip, I'll write more about the trip....but we still have a local reception to plan for (details will be on our wedding site for local folks to attend).  I will also have a "Flying While Gimpy" post (I didn't fly with my wheels, just with forearm crutches).  I'll also post some about access issues I had in Vegas as a part of the User Friendly Vegas project from Pattie (my first guest blogger).  I'm trying to break up the trip by topic instead of giving you all a play-by-play of our five days of travel!

If anyone wants me to write about anything in particular, let me know!

Does your heart beat only for this person?

My claddagh ring on my left hand

The photo to the left shows my hand, a pale small hand with side fingers on resting on a black keyboard.

Those of you that know me personally probably already know this (the magic of Facebook status updates!), but I figured that a grand announcement on my blog was also in order.  On June 17th, I proposed to my partner and he said yes.

One of my reasons for writing this post was to really say something about why I proposed.  I also wanted to address where that puts me in the cogs of society's expectations of couplehood.

Ever since I knew that my partner and I were serious, I swore that I would not get legally married until I could marry whoever I chose, regardless of sex/gender.  This was important to me because I've dated people of various genders, and I felt like I was using opposite-sex relationship privilege just because I had it.  The reality is that I felt like I had to choose which parts of my identity I was betraying.  I have disabilities and I really need to know that if something happened to me that my partner would have the power to make healthcare decisions on my behalf.  I'm a working class person that doesn't have the finances to do the paperwork that would give me somewhat similar rights and benefits that marriage would confer with a cheap marriage license.  I had to hope that my health doesn't get any worse and that I wouldn't need to access Medicare (the US health system for the elderly and disabled that requires poverty to access) because of marriage penalties for disabled folks on SSI/SSDI.

In short, while I've chosen my partner as my beloved, I had to slog through intersections of classism, dis/ableism, and heterosexism to decide if I wanted to take the legal marriage plunge.  These decisions take some of the romantic heat out of a marriage proposal....but I think that this kind of analysis of "the personal is political" makes our engagement even more meaningful.

So for the fluffy details, we're going to get married in Las Vegas, Nevada and we're aiming for December 13th, 2013 (date not final though).  My partner has always wanted to get married in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator, so we're going for a campy fun wedding.  We're planning to wear geeky costumes (as we both want something that we'll be able to wear again, so cosplay was a logical conclusion).  We're inviting any of our friends and family that can make it to Vegas for the event.  I'm putting together a wedding webpage that will have all the details (including registries...Target, Amazon, and ThinkGeek, in case anyone is curious).  We're currently undecided about having a reception back in North Carolina....I'm still recovering from surgery, and the combination of time plus money is difficult in our lives.

So there's the big news *grin*

The title of this post comes from this link on Offbeat Bride.  It's a part of the Klingon wedding vows (if you ever doubted my geekiness....)