A Cutler kid finally marries Jewish.
jusky asked: I want you to imagine I am the worst kind of unsentimental asshole. I say to you, cutlerish, we live in an age of easy divorce, you can basically divorced at will and you can have kids without being married and you can obviously have a committed relationship without getting married and not only that but if the whole world was like Washington DC you could declare someone your domestic partner and be entitled to all the same rights and privileges of marriage without being married. If that’s the case what exactly does marriage mean? What does it mean to you? Why get married today? What really changed once you became married and did you really need to get married in order for those changes to happen?
If people can get divorces at a corner shop when they go out to pick up milk, does it devalue the institution of marriage? I don’t think so. Sure, I think it devalues that person’s concept of commitment, but not the institution.
I don’t think that the higher rate of divorce is necessarily a bad thing. I think it points to a trend that we have not, as a society, come fully to grips with, yet. Only a few decades ago, divorcing a partner you didn’t feel you could live with or who didn’t always respect your individuality was significantly less common. Nowadays, the divorce rate points to the double facts that young (and older) people still make quick decisions about love, but also that many people respect themselves enough to know when to separate. I would much rather a two-fold increase in the number of divorces than an increase in the number of unhappy couples in the world.
What does it say, then, when a couple marries and remains so? Maybe not happily all the time—striving for such a state is probably insane—but remaining together because of a mutual recognition that it is, at the very least, better most of the time to be together than apart. Amid a significant divorce rate, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a couple’s sense of commitment is stronger. Because, it may only mean that this couple does not have to sacrifice individuality for their relationship. That’s just it, though, isn’t it? Remaining married while other people drift apart does not mean you are better at commitment, but it may mean that you can love and care for another person and be warmed by their personal growth.
I don’t mean to suggest that being in a common law partnership is less significant. For some people, this is an ideal option. Marriage is, after all, an institution. It has a history. For some, that is linked to religion, or to old concepts of legal possession of women. Many people will take understandable issue with that history. I don’t undervalue the connection of two people in a common law partnership simply because there is no contract. They are still a couple, they most likely pay bills together, work apart and come home to each other.
It is only your opinion as to the meaning of marriage that matters when you, yourself, choose to formalize within that contract. For me, I think our wedding was a public ceremony with our family and friends that felt like a declaration, both a public one and a private one I made to her. An expensive declaration, sure, but a declaration nonetheless:
This is the woman I cannot live without. When either of us are worried, sick or scared, this is who we will turn to for comfort, support and the energy to strive on. I hope that one day she will bear our children. I hope to live with her until we are old and gray.
Did I really need a wedding to make that statement? No, not really. However, I am a fan of big gestures. Though I try to reiterate these feelings to her as often as I can without seeming weird, doing so in front of our community feels more binding and more meaningful.
Very little has changed since we got married. Very little in the way of obvious transitions in our relationship. We had lived together for a few years before we were wed. According to the laws of Canada, we were already in a common law partnership. What has changed has been under the surface. As much as I felt that I was connected to her before, I now am more so. My triumphs are hers, also, and hers are mine. Her sorrows deepen my resolve to win happiness for her.
If I had been forced to choose between staying with her, unmarried, and losing her completely, I would not have taken the space of a heartbeat to choose. Marriage is only a contract when you get down to it. It is the relationship it is built around that is the point. If she had been unwilling to marry, I would still be taking that commute home to spend the evening with the woman I wish to spend my life with.
I am going to stop writing, as I have begun to ramble. I may not have presented a convincing case for marriage in this world, but that was never my intention. If it were something that carries meaning for you, then it should continue to do so. If it was something you were against, being satisfied with common law partnerships, then I support you. Perhaps it may highlight some of the reasons some of us still choose to step before a rabbi, a priest, a JOP or what have you and participate in that institution of marriage.
I’m looking through all my SD cards as a semi-productive way to stall on post-processing my photos from London.
I found this one on a 2GB card which apparently has P&S shots from my wedding reception in China, October 2010 (among other stuff).
This shot taken after I “obtained” Maggie from her parents’ house (which is silly, since that’s where I was staying, too) and we arrived at the Hyatt Regency overlooking West Lake in Hangzhou.
Our Wedding Video
We just picked our wedding video(s) yesterday afternoon! For those of you joining this blog already in progress, I got married on February 20, 2011 at Graydon Hall Manor in Toronto, Canada.
This is the medium-length version, for your enjoyment. It’s just shy of 15 minutes long, so you’ve been warned!
Reblogging for those who didn’t see it on the weekend.
Our Wedding Video
We just picked our wedding video(s) yesterday afternoon! For those of you joining this blog already in progress, I got married on February 20, 2011 at Graydon Hall Manor in Toronto, Canada.
This is the medium-length version, for your enjoyment. It’s just shy of 15 minutes long, so you’ve been warned!
In lieu of actual new content and while I work, please enjoy reminisces.
The Proposal
So, the year before I proposed, Maggie and I went on a group trip to the Blue Mountain ski resort in Collingwood, Ontario. She asked me to teach her how to ski. I did my best to explain things to her on the bunny hill. However, she never really listens to me. The only instruction she actually took to heart was when I told her that if she feels like she’s losing control, that she should make herself fall. Because it’s better that she chooses how and when to fall than her skis.
So she proceeded to fall. A lot. Like upwards of 5 times going down one hill.
So, February of 2009, we made plans to spend the weekend together at the resort. And take lessons from proper instructors. My plan was to wait for her to fall halfway down a hill, I’d pull her to the side and propose to her in the snow. I thought it would be very “us”.
Unfortunately for my plan, she started to learn. She started to manage turns, she stopped falling. I started learning to parallel ski, so the growing pain in my knees gave me my only opportunity to stop on the hill.
We got off the lift, and I asked if we could sit at the top for a few minutes because I was sore. While she looked out at the view, I pulled the ring out of my ski jacket and removed it from the box. I turned to her and asked: “Maggie, will you marry me?”
She turned around, looked at the ring, at me, and said “Oh my god! Did you find that in the snow?” She hadn’t been listening.
I was taken aback for a second. Halfway through her musings on whether there was a lost-and-found at the resort, I reiterated: “No. This is for you. I’m asking you to marry me!”
She looked at me, a little stunned. So I took the ring box out of my jacket to drive the point home. She finally got the point, with a misty-eyed “Yes”.
Fancy dress/suit meme?
BAM! WHITE TUX!
Also, bow ties are cool.
That aisle was far too small for the eyes that devoured every step of her march forward.
Q:So it's time for your question. My first thought was to ask about the way your script/coding or whatever the fuck magic computer inventions have effected tumblr but I'm trying to make my questions as hard as possible and I've thought about it harder than that tech question and here's my new question.
I want you to imagine I am the worst kind of unsentimental asshole. I say to you, cutlerish, we live in an age of easy divorce, you can basically divorced at will and you can have kids without being married and you can obviously have a committed relationship without getting married and not only that but if the whole world was like Washington DC you could declare someone your domestic partner and be entitled to all the same rights and privileges of marriage without being married. If that's the case what exactly does marriage mean? What does it mean to you? Why get married today? What really changed once you became married and did you really need to get married in order for those changes to happen?
Honestly, I might have preferred the tech question.
If people can get divorces at a corner shop when they go out to pick up milk, does it devalue the institution of marriage? I don’t think so. Sure, I think it devalues that person’s concept of commitment, but not the institution.
I don’t think that the higher rate of divorce is necessarily a bad thing. I think it points to a trend that we have not, as a society, come fully to grips with, yet. Only a few decades ago, divorcing a partner you didn’t feel you could live with or who didn’t always respect your individuality was significantly less common. Nowadays, the divorce rate points to the double facts that young (and older) people still make quick decisions about love, but also that many people respect themselves enough to know when to separate. I would much rather a two-fold increase in the number of divorces than an increase in the number of unhappy couples in the world.
What does it say, then, when a couple marries and remains so? Maybe not happily all the time—striving for such a state is probably insane—but remaining together because of a mutual recognition that it is, at the very least, better most of the time to be together than apart. Amid a significant divorce rate, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a couple’s sense of commitment is stronger. Because, it may only mean that this couple does not have to sacrifice individuality for their relationship. That’s just it, though, isn’t it? Remaining married while other people drift apart does not mean you are better at commitment, but it may mean that you can love and care for another person and be warmed by their personal growth.
I don’t mean to suggest that being in a common law partnership is less significant. For some people, this is an ideal option. Marriage is, after all, an institution. It has a history. For some, that is linked to religion, or to old concepts of legal possession of women. Many people will take understandable issue with that history. I don’t undervalue the connection of two people in a common law partnership simply because there is no contract. They are still a couple, they most likely pay bills together, work apart and come home to each other.
It is only your opinion as to the meaning of marriage that matters when you, yourself, choose to formalize within that contract. For me, I think our wedding was a public ceremony with our family and friends that felt like a declaration, both a public one and a private one I made to her. An expensive declaration, sure, but a declaration nonetheless:
This is the woman I cannot live without. When either of us are worried, sick or scared, this is who we will turn to for comfort, support and the energy to strive on. I hope that one day she will bear our children. I hope to live with her until we are old and gray.
Did I really need a wedding to make that statement? No, not really. However, I am a fan of big gestures. Though I try to reiterate these feelings to her as often as I can without seeming weird, doing so in front of our community feels more binding and more meaningful.
Very little has changed since we got married. Very little in the way of obvious transitions in our relationship. We had lived together for a few years before we were wed. According to the laws of Canada, we were already in a common law partnership. What has changed has been under the surface. As much as I felt that I was connected to her before, I now am more so. My triumphs are hers, also, and hers are mine. Her sorrows deepen my resolve to win happiness for her.
If I had been forced to choose between staying with her, unmarried, and losing her completely, I would not have taken the space of a heartbeat to choose. Marriage is only a contract when you get down to it. It is the relationship it is built around that is the point. If she had been unwilling to marry, I would still be taking that commute home to spend the evening with the woman I wish to spend my life with.
I am going to stop writing, as I have begun to ramble. I may not have presented a convincing case for marriage in this world, but that was never my intention. If it were something that carries meaning for you, then it should continue to do so. If it was something you were against, being satisfied with common law partnerships, then I support you. Perhaps it may highlight some of the reasons some of us still choose to step before a rabbi, a priest, a JOP or what have you and participate in that institution of marriage.
I CAN REBLOG MY WEDDING PHOTOS IF I WANT TO! WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT? NOTHING, THAT’S WHAT!
The last wedding picture.
She’s a brain.
She’s a beauty.
She thinks conversations with subtext are a waste of time.
She looks cute solving differential equations.
She calls me out when I’m being manipulative.
She watches sci-fi and reads SciAm while sitting on the floor in front of the couch.
She plays Nancy Drew video games on her laptop.
She has stuffed animals with very uncreative names like: “dog” and “tiger”.
She drives me up the wall with questions during movies that she doesn’t really want the answer to.
She argues loudly.
She thinks “buttface” is a perfectly acceptable pet name for me.I married the woman I love.
Of all of the mezuzot (plural of mezuzah) on the doorways of our house, this is my favourite.
Not because of its looks (because it ain’t that pretty). My mom bought it for us in Jerusalem a year ago. Inside, surrounding the carefully-wrapped scroll on which the Shema (prayer: Hear O Israel) is written, is the glass I broke as part of our wedding ceremony.
That, and I got to smash it a lot more with a hammer later, so we could fit the pieces into the mezuzah.
You can tell I was brought up Ashkenazi by the way it’s tilted.
Do you see the *many* reasons why I love the Manchurian-style dress?
Also, why it was so much trouble for her to fit into a dress “traditionally” cut for “typical” Asian women.
HNNG
Yes, I am talking about her ass.
Please ignore the look on my face.
And this appeared to be your favourite.
I’ve been catching up on my dash. So now I can’t resist re-posting a wedding photo or two.
I mean, it was only two months ago.
