I just realized that, as of yesterday, I have attended one wedding per year for the past three years: Lynn and Zephyr in 2023; Gabriel and Lea in 2024; Tammy and Erin in 2025. Side note: these three couples could not possibly be more different from each other. Well, among White Americans, anyway. Prior to 2023, I hadn't been to a wedding since Britni and David's in 2019, and not only are those two already divorced, Britni is now engaged to Carlos. To be fair, there were no weddings at all for a couple of years there because of covid; it's fairly likely there'd be one or two more I've attended without a pandemic occurring.

Tammy is my paternal cousin. Aunt Penny is my dad's sister, the fourth-born out of five where my dad was the youngest. Tammy is the only child Aunt Penny ever had, and she was born in 1974, if I recall correctly. My memory is that she was two years older than me. And when we were kids, for a couple of years there I declared Tammy my favorite cousin, before Jennifer overtook that spot and ever left it. Tammy and I are Facebook friends, and we see each other at family events—she and Erin come to family holidays at Dad and Sherri's now more than they even used to, especially things like the New Year's Day gathering that they extend to the extended family. In our adult lives, though, Tammy and I have hardly ever been close.

But! We've still been around each other once or twice a year for most of our adult lives. And Erin is an interesting figure, a really tall, huge guy who would be easy to stereotype as some kind of redneck buffoon on sight—he doesn't even have teeth. He literally went through the ceremony yesterday without teeth in his mouth (as did Aunt Penny, who, back when she did bother wearing her false teeth, used to suck them in and out of her mouth just to gross me out). But Erin in particular really challenges stereotypes, particularly of the uneducated working class. Erin, having married into a family (as in, my extended family) that is broadly very conservative, has been wildly outspoken against President Fuckwit on social media, constantly posted in support of Kamala Harris and how important it was to vote for her, and not only has been nothing but incredibly kind and friendly to Shobhit and me, but even outspoken in support of queer rights—he and Tammy came down to Seattle to watch the Pride Parade (we did not meet up). All of this made me feel very supported by them, which was what made it feel important to me that we show up for them, at their wedding. I'm not sure it would have been all that important to me otherwise, just because, as I just illustrated, we simply have never been all that close.

It turns out I was not the only one to feel so supported by them, and thus felt it important to return the support: they asked Valerie (quick recap: Valerie is the late Auntie Rose's daughter, Auntie Rose having been Grandma McQuilkin's sister, making Valerie my dad's first cousin) to take the wedding photos for them. Valerie has far better camera equipment than any of the rest of us put together—which is to say, the rest of us just have our phones; Valerie has a large camera, an adjustable flash on top of it, a tripod, the works. I must say, she worked harder than anyone else at that wedding yesterday, and was truly on top of it when it came to getting requisite wedding photos. She was so busy it was exhausting just watching her; I think I saw her take a break only briefly once, to sit for a few minutes at our table to have some food.

It was kind of hard to tell how Erin and Tammy thought the whole day went. Erin spent a lot of time helping put things together before the ceremony, as they were clearly relying on friends and family to put this all on—it was a low-key affair compared to most weddings, no readily identifiable hired professionals (Valerie was the one who kind of stood out on that front, and I would bet she did it on a volunteer basis). Tammy was in a room behind a closed door until the ceremony started, of course, although the door was often open and I could see Valerie just inside it, taking tons of pictures of Tammy who was around the corner behind the wall and out of sight. When she did finally come out, her gown actually was quite beautiful.

Anyway, it's pretty clear Tammy and Erin love each other very much—they've actually been together ten years, and they got married the first time in April of 2015. I overheard Aunt Penny later, saying that the first wedding was "more for friends and less for family." But, within a couple of years they legally divorced for no reason other than being married barely put them over the threshold for getting state medical coverage for the medical condition Erin has. (I forget what it is, but he posts every once in a while about infusion appointments, I think maybe in some way cancer related. I should ask him to clarify sometime; I'm certain he'd happily tell me.) It seems they both have relatively decent jobs now, and I suppose that must mean they can get health insurance as a married couple, because being in a better financial position again is what made them decide to get remarried, and this time have a bigger wedding ceremony.

It sounds like Erin works for a towing company. A coworker friend was there, I forget his name, but it turned out he was the one driving the tow truck ahead of us as Shobhit and I were driving up the road toward Floral Hall in Forest Park, in Everett—which we had driven to from Mimi and Steve's house in Mount Vernon yesterday morning. We had no idea the tow truck was actually a wedding guest. When we saw it, I joked, "Maybe Tammy's getting towed!"

Something else I learned yesterday is that apparently Aunt Penny is living with Tammy and Erin—and, apparently, Tammy and Erin don't get along very well. Sherri kind of amused herself by baiting Aunt Penny into complaining about him, which appeared to be very easy to do.

Shortly after the cutting of the cake, Aunt Penny came up to me and said, "Handsome husband!" I wasn't certain who she was talking about, and I said, "Who?" She pointed to Shobhit and said, "Him!" I laughed. "Oh, thanks."

But then I added: "I wasn't sure if you were talking about him or Erin." Aunt Penny immediately said, "Oh god no! He's a pain in the ass!" I'm not sure what being a pain in the ass has to do with whether or not someone is handsome—and of course at a wedding, it's pretty typical for such talk to be about the groom—but it still cracked me up. To be fair, Shobhit was wearing a tie and a suit jacket, making him probably the most formally dressed of all the wedding guests.

Earlier, I had a conversation with Dad and Sherri about how Tammy had married her first husband on the beach during the 2009 Family Reunion. Dad and Sherri were misremembering, thinking it was then that Tammy had married Erin, but as already noted, there was no extended family at Tammy and Erin's first wedding, which was ten years ago. The wedding to the first guy, which clearly did not last long, was 16 years ago. And I figured out from my Flickr tags that the first husband, who I remembered was much older than Tammy, was named Ed. Aunt Penny confirmed this, and then said, "He was an idiot!"

Okay, then. Ed was an idiot and Erin is a pain in the ass. Got it!

We also met Erin's two young sons, apparently from different mothers (neither of them Tammy, who has no children), I forget their names but you could sure see from their faces they were related to Erin. Ditto his sister, who went out of her way to show Shobhit and me a wedding photo on her phone of her lesbian daughter's wedding. It was a little bit of that typical thing of someone saying "Oh you're gay, I also know a gay person!"—but, it was also sweet, especially as it was one of her own children, and she was clearly very proud of her. She also was apparently just happy that her daughter found someone who makes her after a marriage to a husband who apparently sucked.

I expected the ceremony to be brief, as Valerie had told me they were supposed to be out of the venue by 3:00—and the ceremony started at 1:00. And the ceremony was indeed brief, as was just about everything else. We were sitting to eat by around 2:00, and Dad and Sherri and Shobhit and I were all called outside in the middle of that by Valerie when she was ready to get photos of Tammy with the bride's side of the family—Aunt Penny, Dad, Sherri, Shobhit and me being the only ones of whom who made it. I had expected to see Jennifer there but she told me she "didn't RSVP soon enough" and so was going to visit Matthew's parents on Anderson Island instead. This made me think the wedding guest list had been all booked up, but it appears Jennier just used that as an excuse to do this other thing instead, largely because she usually has to say no to that invite due to having other plans. But, There couldn't have been more than 50 guests, and there was a lot of empty chairs. Shobhit and I helped collapse them and stack them to return to the venue shortly after 3:00.

In fact, at some point during the ceremony, someone decided the front row of chairs was too close to the podium, and picked up all the front-row chairs and moved them to the back. This was clearly unbeknownst to the wedding party, who had hidden the rings under two chairs, one on each side of the aisle, for someone to find and become an impromptu "wedding bearer" during the ceremony. Someone found the ring on the other side pretty quickly, but it took a couple of minutes for the one on our side to be found. It got to a point where we were told the ring should be in the second row, which was where Dad, Sherri, Shobhit and I were all sitting. We lifted up all the chairs and there was no ring. But then Dad lifted the chair in front of him—which was right next to where Aunt Penny was sitting, the only one in that row—and it was there. It was actually now in the first row, because people had previously moved the front row to the back.

Anyway, this was why Dad got up and handed Erin the box with the ring in it, which is what you see happening in the photo at the top of this post.

As for the food, this was a little bit tricky too: prepared sandwiches as well as platters with meat slices, cheese and grapes were set out, and I helped in setting out some of them. All of them had meat, so Shobhit didn't touch any of them. I took some of the cheese cubes and grapes, just taking some that hadn't touched meat. Having meat anywhere on the tray makes it a no-go for Shobhit. They also had tamales, though, which had been getting heated in the kitchen ovens; Shobhit helped take those out. There were three kinds of those: chicken, pork, and cheese. So, Shobhit and I did have cheese and vegetable tamales to eat. I had three of them and Shobhit had four. They were from a local bakery (it seemed odd that a bakery would be making tamales) and they were quite good, probably better than any of the few other tamales I have ever had.

The cake was all right. Nice raspberry filling. Shobhit resisted getting a slice because of the points, and when he asked me if it was worth it, I said, "Not really." If it had been amazing, I would have said yes. As it was, it was fine, but nothing to write home about. Better was the design itself: the cake was undeniably very pretty.

Shortly before we left, I signed the wedding guest book—the second guest book I had signed in the same day, actually; as Mimi keeps a guest book in their guest room in Mount Vernon.

Shobhit and I headed out not long after 3:00. It was probably around 3:30, I would guess; getting everyone out of the venue by 3:00 was clearly not happening. The biggest reason we arrived as early as we did was because Valerie had texted to ask, and said she might rope me into helping her with the photography stuff. That never happened, although I also never explicitly asked if she'd like help with anything, which I should have done. I feel a little bad about that. And we could have stayed a bit longer, but Shobhit was ready to go, and for once I kind of was at the same time he was—we're about to see Dad and Sherri again today for Easter anyway. I'll also see Valerie again on Tuesday next week, when we hike up Tiger Mountain for my Birth Week.

The wedding, overall, was lovely. I'm glad we went.

[posted 10:02am]

I love this photo.

Shobhit's and my table was close to the opposite end of Legion Hall from the raised platform where Lynn and Zephyr eventually sat to eat their wedding dinner, and Shobhit was actually the one to suggest I go up to get a picture of them, as it might be my only chance to get a good shot of them together.

He was right, but I also waited a bit while another guy was up there chatting with them. Then, I walked over and stepped up to the platform, saying, "I'm gonna take your picture!" True to form, Zephyr's first instinct was to do something goofy, but I smartly took a second shot—this one—while I laughed at him, and Lynn and Zephyr giggled in turn.

That's what I love about this shot. It's not typically a challenge to get a good photo of Lynn, but Zephyr is much more prone to, I'll call it, "ironic pedantry," which can bleed into his poses for pictures I take. Before this wedding day, I don't think I've ever captured such unguarded, unbridled joy on his face, at least not like this. There's something unusually pure about his expression here, which is a big part of what makes it special—because, clearly, this day was genuinely special to both of them.

Lynn and Zephyr got legally married in a civil ceremony already, actually kind of a while ago: December 2021. She told me this over Facebook Messenger in April 2022 (last year), when she wrote to me, Oh. Next summer, 2023. Solsticxe. Save the date.

These were my responses:

Okay. Why?
Wait
Are you getting married??

She responded, Zephyr and I are doing our handfasting.

It took me a while to get a sense of what "handfasting" really means. And when I asked if it will be the exact date of the solstice, Wednesday June 21, she replied, Probably, because Solstice is important to Zephyr, as he's pagan. So, I immediately marked my calendar.

I had no idea then, of course, that Shobhit would be running for Seattle City Council. I thus had to tell her later that whether he would be joining me was up in the air, and wasn't able to confirm with her until Monday this week that we would indeed be coming together: in the end, Shobhit had the time to go. Barley, but he came. I was very glad, because Lynn and Zephyr both attended our wedding, ten years ago to the month.

Not only was Lynn and Zephyr's wedding yesterday a pagan ceremony, it was also "a big Renaissance Faire party," as indicated by their beautiful wedding invitation. Lynn had told me another time that guests would be encouraged to dress in Renn Fair costumes, although I made it pretty clear I had nothing even remotely close to such clothing.

I mentioned this to Shobhit yesterday morning, and for a bit he acted like I had put him out by waiting until the last minute to tell him about the Renaissance Faire theme. "I could have ordered a costume," he said. I replied, "You would not have done that." He took a beat and said, "You're right."

Besides, although a good quarter or maybe third of the guests (and they definitely had more guests than we did at our wedding, and in a somewhat smaller venue) did wear Renaissance Faire costumes, a lot of people also wore regular clothes, or just something otherwise festive—the couple who played ukuleles who I was later told were Lynn's parents actually wore Hawaiian shirts. What I did was wear my black jeans with a black long-sleeved T-shirt, thinking it was the closest I could find out of my wardrobe as the shirt was all fabric, no adornments, and no buttons. I figured it could evoke priesthood or something. (It did not. Plus, another guy came dressed as a full-on friar.) In any case, we were hardly out of place no matter how we dressed.

I did wear my yellow-leaf earrings just for a small splash of color. At least one person complimented them. (Another person complimented my nails.) Amazingly, I never got any photos of myself yesterday to show them.

I have yet to get this corrobrated from a second source, but I was told the woman who performed the handfasting ceremony was Zephyr's aunt. She had clearly performed this ceremony many times before, as she indicated when she had us all perform in the "spiral dance." This involved everyone leaving the building, single file, and then following her to form a giant circle out on the lawn. After that, she led us further, forming a smaller circle until we became a spiral, until it was too tight to make the spiral any tighter. After that, she told everyone to "walk around the stick" that had been in the center, and then spiral back out again, walking in between the lines of people still headed to the center.

So long as everyone kept their hands held—and this unfortunately meant I could not get any photos or video of the ritual—the line would make its way back out to the larger circle again without any confusion. The woman more than once said things like, "I'll be okay, I promise!" And at one point she said, "I've done this before with 435 people."

When the ceremony itself began—six minutes of which can be seen in the video at the bottom of this post—Lynn's and Zephyr's hands were tied together with ceremonial thin ropes, of different colors with different symbols. And from then on, they had to stay tied together, whatever they did, for the rest of the day. You can't see any of the ropes in the great photo at the top of this post, but although they might very well have beeb holding hands by default anyway, their hands are also together because they are tied (fairly loosely, it's not done uncomfortably) together.

Shobhit and I staked spots at an empty table quite early on, and over time, every other table filled up with more than just one couple before ours did. For a pretty good long while, I thought our table night be the only one with just two people sitting at it.

Then in comes this woman, who recognized me on sight: "Matthew, can we sit with you?"

It wouldn't have mattered who she was, I would have said, "Of course!" But in this case, having been addressed by name, I immediately thought: How do I know this person?

Turns out this is Miriam, the younger of Jim's two daughters—Jim being Lynn's ex-husband (her second). Holy shit! I hadn't seen her in. quite literally, 24 years.

Now remembering her, though, I quickly opened the Flickr app on my phone, did a quick search, and found the two photos I had tagged of her from the late nineties. I found this shot from Lynn and Jim's wedding in Spokane in April 1999, and when I showed it to Miriam, she was immediately impressed that I found such an old photo of her so quickly.

Miriam even brought this up again when we were all sitting with Lynn and Zephyr at their table for a few minutes, and Lynn said, "Matthew's special that way." Indeed I am! If I have a photo of you, among my deeply organized and widely cross-referenced photos on Flickr, in most cases I can find it quickly and tell you the date it was taken.

Anyway, back to the above photo. Miriam said to Lynn that the photo I showed of her was of when she was twelve, which may have been a guess on her part, I don't know—but, if she was 12 in 1999, then she'd be about 36 now. She's married to a man named Mark (my lasting impression of hin was his snazzy haircut) and has two kids now: Violet, age 9 (love that name); and Emmet, age 4.

Here she's posing with Lynn's younger son, Nick—I asked him if he was still in high school: "I don't remember how old you are." He replied, "I'm 22." I said, "Oh. Well, that would be a no!"

Nick and Miriam are half siblings, something I somehow totally forgot: Nick was Jim's youngest, after he came into the picture with Lynn in the mid-nineties with two preteen daughters, Miriam the youngest of the two.

I had left the table to get my food, and when I got back, Nick was in my seat. I just sat at the chair on the other side of Shobhit, and swapped water glasses with Nick: "I drank out of this," I said. He responded, "That's fair," a phrase that proved to be a favorite of his.

So, in the end, our table had seven people at it: Miriam with Mark, Violet and Emmet; Nick; Shobhit and myself. I knew I couldn't miss an opportunity to get a photo of these two together, so I asked and they obliged.

Miriam is apparently now a stay-at-home mom but she has a side hustle making hemp necklaces with hand-painted beads threaded into them—you can see the rainbow-beaded one she was wearing in the photo here. (Her husband, Mark, wore one with all-brown beads in it, and a pendant that was three interwoven infinity signs.) Shobhit really admired it, loved the rainbow beads on Miriam's necklace, and asked her if she sells them.

She said she does, and she had even brought a bag of supplies to ask Lynn and Zephyr what they wanted as a design she would make for them as a wedding gift. (That's what they are all discussing in this photo.) When Shobhit and Miriam had this discussion, Miriam was unsure if she'd get a chance to talk about it with Lynn and Zephyr, particularly early enough for her to make a necklace (or bracelet or whatever they wanted) while actually there. Shobhit asked how much she would charge for one, and Miriam was like, "I don't know, I'm really bad at promoting myself. $25, maybe?"

Shobhit decided he wanted one. In this photo, it's Shobhit's hemp / rainbow beads necklace she is making. She was clearly very practiced at this. She said she likes to use hemp because she has skin sensitivity to nickel, which is in a lot of metals and thus a lot of necklaces. Shobhit doesn't like to wear metal jewelry either (this was how he lost his wedding ring years ago, because he never wore it and kept it in one of his backpack pockets), so that made this even more appealing to him. He also really liked the idea of wearing it over Pride this weekend, and in the Pride Parade.

Miriam had said it would take about half an hour to make, and it probably took her closer to 40 or 45 minutes. As you can see from the photo I linked to, she had some interruptions and distractions, so I'm not sure Shobhit needed to be so worried about how long it was taking her and if she was undercharging him. In the end he gave her two $20 bills for it, which she was taken aback by but accepted. She said she tries to sell them at markets in and around Shelton (where she currently lives) but no one there wants to pay much at all for them.

Shobhit chose the same pendant Mark had, with the three interlocking infinity symbols. After Miriam was finished making it, he asked me to go outside with him to take a picture. The hemp is pretty stiff right now but Miriam said it will loosen over time, and that with hers she showers with it on once a week to help with the process.

Miram had asked me to text her the two old photos of her I had from the late nineties, and she gave me her number to do so; I then also texted her the photo of Shobhit in the necklace she made. She let us know she does have an Instagram account for her hemp jewelry, although she doesn't update it as often as she probably should. She should post the photo of Shobhit!

Overall, the wedding was quite interesting and fun. Lynn and Zephyr were very considerate of all dietary restrictions, right down to the desserts, with some cupcakes being dairy free and others being gluten free. (I don't think any of them were both. Thank god.) I only learned after the fact that the beautiful wedding cake had different flavors depending on the layer, and I wound up with a slice from the layer that had cappucino icing filling. Blech! The bottom layer had raspberry filling which I was bummed to have missed.

Anyway, the caterers had vegetarian options, although they biffed it slightly with the rice pilaf, which was made with beef stock—something Shobhit always knows to ask. However, they also had very well made sauteed vegetables; macaroni and cheese; salad; and even a limited supply of a vegetable tofu dish. This would be why the first called to the buffet was people with dietary restrictions, and thus why I'm glad we decided at our table that being vegetarian counts. (I mean, of course it does. I had to ask though because vegetarianism is not the same as food allergies.) Which is to say, Shobhit and I both had more than enough to eat.

The wedding was a very different from any other, which really brought to mind our own with Shobhit and me. The two wedding ceremonies were very different from each other, aside from being held at a city park banquet hall (ours in Seattle; theirs in Everett), but they were also both decidedly non-Christian, religious ceremonies: ours Hindu; theirs Pagan. Theirs, as I already noted, was also Rennaisance Faire themed, which added another layer to the whole thing. Lynn and Zephyr have a lot of "Renn faire types" in their circle of friends, so it was kind of on-brand, and made it uniquely fun for most of them, I think.

I was really happy to have been able to make it, and to document it in the very way that Lynn noted makes me "special." I have a Flickr album with 71 shots in it, 13 of them video clips, almost certainly more than anyone else got. There's no doubt in my mind that the professional photographer they hired got far better photos (especially as she had no obligation to be part of any ceremonies), but she wasn't taking video, and I don't know that anyone else was either. Or if they did, I would be money I got a lot more footage. Mostly because I am shameless. But sometimes my shamelessness works out for people!

We did not bring a wedding gift. Shobhit was unsure whether we should have. The invitation only said to "bring a libation to share," so we stopped at the Greenlake PCC in the middle of several campaign-related errands we ran on the way up there yesterday afternoon (I took the day off of work), and bought a six-pack of hard cider. Once there, they clearly had more than enough drinks for people, of many varying types. I think I may have been the only one to bring hard cider though! Shobhit and I each had one can.

We clearly could have stayed a few hours more by the time we left, at around 5:30, but Shobhit was ready to go, and I was okay with that. Even I had things to do, and we had the drive back, including a stop at a third Home Depot for the day on the way (between the wedding itself and the many errands, I finished the day yesterday exhausted—to be fair, probably not as exhausted as Lynn and Zephyr!). That allowed me the time to edit and upload the day's photos, and even take a stab at an essay for Shobhit's campaign requested by the Seattle Gay News, which he was far happier with than I necessarily expected—several edits notwithstanding; I expected that anyway.

In other words, I did a lot yesterday. I'm seeing a movie with Tracy tonight, then have three days of Pride Weekend to contend with, including huge commitments Saturday and Sunday to assist with Shobhit's campaign involvement. I expect to continue to be exhausted for the next several days. I'm already looking forward to two weekends from now. But, I should still get lots of really fun pictures this weekend!

[posted 12:44 pm]

Tammy and Erin's Wedding

Renaissance Faire Wedding