Unlawfully Wed

I am a woman who views divorce as a victory. A hard-won, well-fought battle for freedom, which sadly creates casualties and ultimately empowers warriors big and small. And after all that, I swore off the institution of marriage until death do I part. Never again would I step up to the altar or enter the archaic arena of patriarchal rules.

That’s why I was more surprised than anyone when I  accepted a marriage proposal six years later.

When you meet a man in your own backyard, on your roof, in fact, it might be right to imagine he was heaven sent. Some kind of divine choreography, the answer to a prayer I had only recently revealed.

“I think I might be ready to meet someone,” I had told my friend Patti two days after the New Year and after two years of rather cloistered living.

It didn’t take long after that. A few weeks later, a fierce winter storm tore a chunk off my roof and sent it sailing into my neighbor’s yard next door. The following evening I stepped outside to investigate an odd tapping sound coming from overhead in the separate studio where I worked at home, and found a handsome stranger in a jaunty hat on a ladder leaning against the side of my house. “I hope you don’t mind,” he explained. “I found this in your neighbor’s backyard, and no one answered my knock on the front door.” I simply nodded. “It’s going to rain again,” he added. “You’ll probably need this.” His eyes twinkled in the darkness.

There was nothing hasty about our courtship. It was slow, sweet and enduring. My new man was loyal and patient and had a freedom of spirit that matched my own. He shared his views on marriage: “I think it’s a good thing between the right people.” And he knew mine. But over time, my “never again” stance softened. So three years after the rooftop landing, when my man proposed and my two young daughters chirped, “Yes!” and “Yes!” I echoed their sentiment. We all knew we had found a good thing between the right people.

At 44, I hardly entertained the illusion of a white lace, fairytale wedding, but I did want to create a meaningful ceremony. May first was rapidly approaching and Beltane, the Celtic holy day honoring the sacred marriage, offered the perfect date for our celebration. Time was short, my planning was swift, and my “to do” list was simple: Location, food, drinks, music, flowers, dress, ceremony.

My friends were generous and supportive. Terrie offered her backyard deck with its panoramic canyon view and a spacious “dance floor.” Kimberly and Laurie would sing during the sunset ceremony and later under the stars with a local band. Patti ordered tables, linens and dishes to be delivered the day before the wedding. Our guests were bringing their favorite foods in lieu of wedding gifts. Champagne, wine, beer, water and sodas were stacked in cases in Terrie’s garage; colorful ceramic vases were ready and waiting for the armloads of flowers Terrie and I gathered at the farmer’s market; and I had found the perfect dress to wear for our non-traditional ceremony.

Everything was in place on the eve of the wedding, when we assembled for a rehearsal dinner at the home of my friend Colleen, who would perform the  ceremony as an ordained minister from the Church of Life. Our eclectic ceremony could not have felt more authentic, divinely inspired and true. So when my mother-in-law-to-be rightly asked, “Where is the marriage license?” I was dumbstruck. “The marriage license?” I repeated, as my mind connected a constellation of dots, shedding light on this eleventh-hour mystery.

I flashed back to my first marriage, a union I had entered into for a confusion of reasons, and one in which I ultimately felt the life being squeezed out of me, bound by a legal document based on outmoded terms I could never live by. It had left me feeling trapped and suffocated, unable to breathe.

I turned toward my future mother-in-law and gasped. “I forgot it,” I honestly replied.

This was true. Not only had I forgotten the marriage license, it had never even shown up on my “to do” list. Whether conscious or unconscious, obtaining a marriage license was the furthest thought from my mind as I planned the wed- ding, anticipated my new marriage, and savored all the reasons I had said “yes” a few months earlier to a proposal that surprised me as much as my mother-in- law’s question.

Since the hard-won freedom from my marriage six years before, I had never intended to re-enter the institution again. There was no logical reason for me to do so. I owned my own home, and I had two beautiful daughters and an inspiring career. Pure love had prompted my affirmative response and intuition had spontaneously penned the “to do” list that included my true desires. There wasn’t and never would be a marriage license.

This sudden discovery delighted me. I looked over at my husband-to-be standing next to his mother, and caught that twinkle in his eye, which only  affirmed the choice I was making.

The next day I stood at the altar in my black velvet dress with Ted and my daughters in front of 50 of our closest friends. Kimberly opened the ceremony with Don Henley’s song:

“For my wedding, I will dress in black
And never again will I look back...”

This would not be a traditional marriage, nor would we be lawfully wed, but I would be free within our divine union to love and be loved, to create a new life on our own terms.

Janet Lucy is the author of Moon Mother, Moon Daughter ~ Myths and Rituals that Celebrate a Girl’s Coming of Age (Fair Winds Press 2003).  She lives by the motto, “Rules were meant to be broken.”

~Janet Lucy