At last, I’ve put up a gallery of pictures my nephew, Andrew MacDonald, took at my wedding.

I’ve been wrestling with getting this post up, partly because I feel like I should try to describe the day, or share our ceremony and vows.

But I’m not going to. It was a space, a moment. And it was ours. Lots of people I love couldn’t be there, but the Internet can’t fix that.

My mum, on the other hand, stayed up late a night or two after it was all over and wrote a wee diary about the event. This is just one more giant feather in her cap, because she’s the one who organised the whole event. I could never thank her enough for the perfect day we had.

So, without further ado, here’s a link to the photos:

And here’s my mum’s account of the story:

Joan’s Journal of Hamish & Craig’s Wedding
December 28, 2010

It was too bad the weather turned so nasty yesterday as the day went on — which had Craig commenting that at least it made it “a white wedding”! Ian delivered Hamish & Craig to the Inns on Great George around 1 p.m., where they took their overnight things and changed into their wedding clothes — new hand-made MacDonald and Cameron kilts and “all the “go-withs” — and met up with us at The Loft at 2:30 p.m. We then hooked the laptop up to Skype to include Craig’s family members who had gathered together in Stirling (Scotland) to see the ceremony. Before the formal ceremony, Craig and Hamish had us share a drink of prosecco — like champagne but with a bit more fizz and a nicer flavour.

Everything went without a hitch and the soft lighting and dozens of little candles lit the place perfectly. Seven covered chairs with dark fabric and burgundy chiffon ribbons around them were set up in a semi-circle in the far corner of the room facing where the ceremony took place. Hamish had also made what looked like a little program booklet for everyone, but was lovely romantic readings. The “service” (non-religious) and vows were written by Hamish and Craig, other than the required words for the marriage vows, and they exchanged silver wedding bands they had hand-crafted for each other. Both of them and Ian and Ellen, who read quotes from relevant pieces of their own choice, got a bit choked up and I think we were all a bit weepy when it was over (including our only non-family guests and best friends, Rob and Jean Robinson).

After the ceremony, we went downstairs to 42nd Street Lounge for some picture-taking and a toast, with the grooms drinking out of the quaich cup I had bought them for that purpose. We toasted with a dram of single malt scotch with a splash of water — I always said I hated whiskey, but it was actually quite nice. Then we went back upstairs for a fantastic dinner, with more wine and toasts. Then back down to 42nd Street Lounge while they dismantled the dinner table, etc., for the Open House. We started dinner about 4:45 p.m. with the idea we would be finished 6 p.m. — wrong, we were just finishing up around 7 p.m., the time the Open House was planned to begin.

Fortunately, there were no patrons in the Lounge, and about 7:10 p.m. Hamish’s oldest friend here — Tina Mill (the person assigned to show him around school his first day in January 1982) and her sister Lana arrived, immediately followed by our whole Trivia gang en masse, which pretty well filled the Lounge. With drinks in hand, very shortly after we went back upstairs to The Loft and the party began with most people coming and staying for the evening — we finally got everyone out by about midnight — by then it was mostly the friends from Ian’s teen-age years, who are a bit like our trivia gang, hang out together any chance they can, especially since some of them are just home for the holidays, and with whom Hamish has become friends over the years too.

It really was a totally magic day, full of emotion and love — the room added to the magic with the candles and very dim, soft, lighting, and Hamish and Craig had put together a CD of appropriate music for the occasion — which soon faded away as the conversation level rose.

Regardless of the dreadful weather, the room was soon filled with people who didn’t seem to have trouble interacting among themselves and with “the grooms” and everyone seemed so happy to be sharing the event — some meeting Craig for the first time, and some meeting Ian and Ellen and Andrew (grandson/photographer) for the first time also.

The tartan trimmed wedding cake was lovely — also trimmed with edible dark red roses that we thought at first were real, they were so perfect. The top tier was taken off before they cut the cake, for the boys to take back to Craig’s family in Stirling, where they will be staying over New Year’s en route back to Wick. The cake was dark, rum-soaked(!) fruit cake with marzipan in the middle and covered with smooth fondant icing and everyone commented on how delicious it was.

Also commented on was the table centrepiece of purple and white heather, thistles, evergreens, holly, and three lovely yellow roses, with two tall white candles in the middle. The men’s boutonnieres were small sprigs of thistle and heather and Ellen and I had a white and pink orchid with sprig of white heather.

We had booked a room for the newly-weds at The Inns on Great George last night and when they arrived, they found it had been upgraded to a two-level suite with king-size bed, jacuzzi and all the trimmings. Our friend, Rob, had arranged for a bottle of champagne to be waiting for them, so they got the royal treatment.

After we picked them up today, we all went to the Merchantman for lunch and a nice family time together. Since everyone arrived last week, Ian and Ellen have been up west to take her Dad and brother out for dinner and a visit, shopping, and gadding about with their buddies, so we haven’t spent a lot of time all home together.

Hamish and Craig leave Thursday, December 30th, and Ian and Ellen will be here until January 2nd.

Apart from a jump in the household from 3 to 7 and normal routine turned completely upside down, it has been a dream-filled time that we will treasure forever. It is very obvious that Hamish and Craig intend to spend the rest of their lives together and we couldn’t ask for a more loving, sensitive son-in-law. We used to feel sad that Hamish would never be allowed the opportunity for the married life Bryson and I have shared together — and now it has happened.

That’s my wedding planner/mother of the groom/mother-in-law of the groom wedding day epistle for any friends who might be wondering how things went. Hope you can feel some of the excitement and joy of the event our family and friends here shared.

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A key part of my working process, I’ve come to realise, is setting the stage — creating structures around getting things done. So starting 2011 was difficult when I knew I was missing a key organisational element: my day-planner!

While, yes, I realise these can be bought for about 95p, crafting these things for myself is an important step. Happily, I’d made something like this for my brother’s Christmas present, so I already had the page templates done. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the number of pages, so it’s an orca of a thing which, it turns out, has enough pages for two years. Ah well!

Calendar pages:

Pages for ideas (there are also pages for things to follow up on):

And, of course, pages for project design:

Let the year begin!

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One of my commitments for this year is to blog regularly, rather than simply peeing my thoughts away on Facebook and Twitter.

To that end, I am stepping over the sleeping rhino in the room, which is the obligatory description of my wedding, along with a photo gallery of same. This will come, but at the moment it’s occurring in my mind as a big task, and big tasks are easy to put off in the face of more pressing, immediate demands.

So, for now, a few stray thoughts related to the wedding:

Being married is not a compromise, not “settling,” not being boring and conformist. It’s an adventure that takes maturity, commitment, and true resolve — not the silly, flitty “hat over the fence” kind of impulses of my youth, but a true desire to make a good life.

This morning I went to see a doctor here for the first time (nothing serious.) I mention her because she, like everyone else I’ve encountered here, was so kind and open-minded when the specifics of my “lifestyle” came out.

Craig, too, said he’d “outed” himself to several people at work when they asked if he’d been anywhere or done anything interesting over the holidays; he felt it would be wrong not to answer the question truthfully. In a few cases, telling others about the wedding created a new level of openness with that person, who then shared specifics about their life.

I’m not so naïve as to assume there’s no one in this town who would object, but when I look at my own experience (versus the hate-baiting that happens in the news), I’ve never directly encountered nastiness about this in my adult life. So at what point do we stop projecting distrust onto others and start assuming the best of them?

My mum asked who carried whom over the threshold. In answer, no one, because Craig wouldn’t let me!

P.S. Completing my registration yesterday for the medical practice here, I had my first opportunity to fill in the status “Married”. I smiled to myself at that.

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A lot of people are excitedly claiming that e-books will spell the death of paper books. I think they’re wrong — and hope they’re wrong, for the sake of our culture.

One of my readers regularly sends me articles about e-books and on-screen reading, and at least once a week I see an article claiming that paper books are dying and will go away.

The link he sent me today was to an article about a “new species of book” — an iPad app from publisher Canongate. Ironically, the piece contained a Flash-based demonstration of the book that I couldn’t see on my iOS device.

This book app is referred to as a random-access “argument.” Essentially, it’s a collection of articles whose inline graphics just happen to be animated or virtually tiltable. Of course, though, this was heralded as a revolution that will change everything about books and publishing forever! And paper books will die!

Speaking of death, I downloaded The Book of the Dead yesterday as research for something I’m thinking of writing. The Book of the Dead is a long and rambling text; there’s no way I want to read it on-screen. That’s not me being philosophical or political; I just find it really difficult to concentrate on on-screen text, and it wearies my eyes.

The folks who write these “Books will die!” pieces are like sailors justifying why it’s good they’re navigating toward the sirens’ song. Personally, I’m sick to bloody death of how frail these gadgets are, how quickly their batteries get depleted, and how very rapidly they’re obsoleted by their manufacturers.

Lovers of e-reading have Stockholm Syndrome.

Personally, I’m happy to have the real-world ability to turn these texts into physical books. Take away all the technological aides in some kind of End Times scenario, and I’d still be able to print and draw and bind a book. I’m proud of this, but it’s also not that difficult a task, versus being beholden to giant media/hardware corporations that get to shape and control what’s said and how you get to experience it.

New inventions are exciting. I can understand why people want e-books to wipe out books: it somehow justifies their interest in this new form, like a born-again friend who can’t simply rest in his faith; he needs everybody else to be converted, too. It’s unnecessarily binary, dualistic thinking.

Leave me alone with my books. When your iThingy has particles of dust glowing under its screen (because every one of my pocket devices over the last decade has had this flaw), or when it gets scratched or cracked and can’t carry out the digital gymnastics this quarter’s new model does, you won’t be so happy to have your facts and stories trapped inside it.

Fans of the digital random access model, or of community co-creation, are being wilfully ignorant of the quality of coherent thought and authorship. Here’s an exercise:

• Choose a project you want to work on.
• First use the web. Browse around for ideas about the topic and how to get this project done.
• Then turn off all your tech, take out a piece of paper, and ask yourself what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you could do it.

I’ll bet you a donut that the first method leaves you feeling informed, but frazzled, disjointed, unsure. You may even decide not to do it after all (“There’s too much involved”, “Somebody else has already done something like it”, &c.).

With the second method, though, you gain access to your mind, your imagination, your values, and your skills.

Lord, it’s like people are queueing up to sell every part of themselves to the machine.

Toys are fun, but they can break or be taken away…

Unless you know how to make your own toys.

Gosh, time is running out: I leave for Canada next week.

I’ve been off work since Tuesday, trying to use up my leftover vacation time for this year, but I’ve spent the whole whole week working, just on different stuff. I’m scrambling to get things made, because I need to have a stash of wee gifties when I travel at Christmas — in case I get ambushed with surprise gifts.

I know, that sounds crappy, but I find it stressy, this externally mandated giving-time. I prefer to give things all year long as ideas and people connect in my brain. I wish we used Christmas as an occasion to just be with each other, which is far more important.

I’d love to show you what I’ve made, but… they’re gifts.

In related news, the fella and I triumphed at jewellery-making class last night: We made our wedding rings!

This is a breakthrough, because, while I’ve been enjoying the class, the things I’ve produced in it so far have been a cavalcade of horrors.

This is unusual for me, because I’m accustomed to being able to think of something and, most of the time, create it.

But jewellery-making involves blowing torches, melting metals, and talc-like glass powder that has to be melted in an 800-degree oven, so it’s much harder to get the right hands-on result.

So, phew, one more piece falls into place for the wedding. And I’m excited about the idea that we didn’t buy these, we made them for each other. (I also referred to this when writing our ceremony, so, like I said, phew!)

Right. I’ve got a complicated book to make. The last present.

A look at what’s involved in creating a website — to serve as a platform for you as an author and your books.

Phew! I finished writing the first draft of my wedding ceremony yesterday. This piece was a real challenge for several reasons:

• My partner is Scottish, and Scots are not big on “American”-style cheese. Oh, sure, X-Factor and dancing shows and drama in the news — that’s all fine. But they don’t go for the gooshy stuff in real life. So I had to fully express the right sentiments, but keep someone else’s very finely attuned cheese-o-meter in mind, too.
• “Oh, but you’re a writer.” Yeah, that’s actually a problem. Writers seize up when they start thinking about impressing people. That’s not what this was about. Also, in writing for a public event (even if it’s just family), it’s nearly impossible to not get preoccupied with “What will they think?”, which I contend is the question behind every instance of writer’s block.

So I endeavoured to keep remembering what the purpose of this was, yet still be true to what I wanted it to be about — which, happily, Craig agreed with.

In the end, I think it’s pretty natural and straightforward, which is consistent with who we are, and hopefully leaves room for it to be a relaxed event about what it’s about, rather than exploding into some trying-too-hard magical Cinderella production number.

Unless, of course, my family forego doing readings and decide to burst into song and dance. Which is fine; I’d like to see that.

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Craig and I did some grocery-shopping this morning, took the recycling to the tip, then came home and had a nice afternoon breakfast.

I should make dinner soon. Craig keeps teaching me bits of Scottish culture, so tonight I’m going to “treat” him to a North American classic: the chilli-cheese dog.

(In other words, I’m being lazy and adding a veggie-protein tube to some leftovers and dressing it up as a cross-cultural treat.)

But that’s later. For the moment, I suspect we’re both still full, and we’re both working on our own projects.

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I had a huge success this morning: I made a stand for holding a book open so I could take a picture of it. I had no idea how I could do this, then this morning I woke up and just knew how. As soon as I heard Craig was awake and listening to the radio in the next room (and thus it was okay to make noise), I got to work, sawing and hand-drilling.

So thanks, once again, to Dad for buying me a hacksaw, which I used in this project, and which started me on this path of being able to provide exactly what I need for myself rather than having to search around for it — which is particularly helpful now that I live in a small town where there are fewer places to look for things.

And, of course, being able to DIY something you’ve imagined is the best thing of all!

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I was in a bit of a panic yesterday with all the things I wanted to do, but, sure enough, bit by bit they’re getting done — like making this stand so I can take proper pictures of all my hardcover journals and get them back in my website’s bookshop.

Everything doesn’t get done at once like my brain wants it to, but incremental progress kinda turns a fire-hose on my flaming amygdala, at least temporarily.

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So the latest social media meme is to wear purple or turn your profile avatar purple today to support lesbian, gay, and transgender people, or to stop them being bullied, or to campaign against hate-based legislation, or… something.

Thank you — honestly — but I’m not doing it.

I know that seems like ingratitude in the face of massive goodwill. And I, too, feel endless compassion for people who are suffering. But I think this — like so many other Web-based campaigns — is pointless. It makes people feel good, like they’re doing something, but it’s an empty gesture, particularly on the Internet, where daily we face these endless, awful Facebook trends to “spam everyone with this message if you know anyone who’s had [insert dread disease]”. What bloody good does that do? (And don’t get me started on charity consumerism.)

I know the incredible pressure of being hated for being different in school. Those were years of psychological torture. And, like so many young gay people, I went through a period of suicidal depression because of it.

But here I am, and I am not going to be anyone’s victim. It helps no one.

• I survived, and I went on to have a happy, successful adult life. I’m surrounded by bright, open-minded people who love and respect me. Some of these I was blessed to have as my family, but I found the rest.
• I’ve found a wonderful partner whom I love, and I’m going to marry him. That’s the only item in my gay agenda (which has bugger-all to do with anyone else).
• In writing books, I’m trying to create pieces of culture to make people like me visible and relevant — the books I wish I’d had.

This is what I’m doing to make things different. I’m living. I am the person I hoped it was possible to be. When I was younger, I didn’t need pity; I needed to see this.

Focusing on being a victim, on people who hate us, on people who didn’t make it — that entrenches the reality we want to see disappear.

I’m not putting on a costume.

I am me. I am this person every day.

That is my triumph.

If you can be an example, be that. If you can love someone for who they are, do that.

Gradually, like rocks over water, our individual lives will change everything.

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My darling is so patient: Tonight I experimented with a new recipe, a rice bowl with wasabi-dill dressing, snow peas, red pepper, avacado, chopped chives, and toasted pumpkin seeds.

It sounds great. The reality was… crunchy. In a not-good way.

He still said he liked it, and that’s why I love him.

~

Late this afternoon, I sat down to work on the wedding, outlining the different sections that are traditionally included in the ceremony. I got a thumbnail sketch put together, but there was something else going on that I felt I had to get to the bottom of before I went any further.

My heart felt a bit like it was going to explode.

After asking myself some questions, it turned out I was someplace I recognise from my writing — that place where you’re overly concerned with product, with “What will the neighbours think?”, and disconnected from the creation itself.

I probed a bit further, past the worry and the pressure — which of course weren’t doing anything to get the thing planned properly, but just made me fear and avoid it.

On the other side of that I got a glimpse of what the character of this relationship is — surely what this event should be based on, if anything. And that’s play. So much of the time Craig and I are together it just feels like we’re playing.

Two years on (oops, we missed our anniversary!), we’ve still never fought, because we just don’t want to. We’ve been there before in our lives, and it’s just no fun. So why would we, when we have a choice? I’d never want to do anything to hurt him.

I’m not sure “play” that looks like in a ceremony — particularly a very small one (in numbers, though not in importance to me), but that’s my commitment now, to tie the reverential, out-of-the-everyday part of the occasion to a big balloon of play.

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