March 18, 2009

Themed

 So here's what's going on. Since Casey is unemployed, and his former employers are being TOTAL dicks (which I will not go into here, for his sake), he has no health insurance. I do, through work, but because I work for a GLBT friendly company (I do not say this as a bad thing!!!),  health insurance benefits only apply to a partner who is not a spouse if they are the same sex. 

 His prescriptions are not a huge problem, he found out today how much they will cost, and it is do-able. What if something else happens? A car accident that exceeds any Personal Injury Protection or Medical payments he might have, a lump somewhere, any sort of sickness?
 So, at an unpredictable time for job seekers, what do we do? I am going to encourage him to look other places, like Humana One, to see if he can find affordable health insurance, but tonight he said, very seriously (I know because he sounded wounded when I laughed), "Why don't we just go to the JP and elope? We can still have our big ceremony later. We don't even have to tell anyone."
 I have a couple of problems with this, even though I see where he is coming from, and it does seem like an affordable solution. First, I don't want to keep our marriage from people. It would just hurt them. If we were to elope, I would want my family there, and his as well. Second, Casey mentioned that there would probably be push-back from my family if we did this, and he's right. Probably his family, too. Third, if we did elope, I wouldn't want to wait a year and a half to celebrate our marriage. We had chosen 10.10.10 because we loved the date, and thought it would be easy to remember. If that won't actually be our anniversary, fine, but if I get married I want to party pretty immediately. Fourth, I just want to point out that though my mother understood me not wanting to get married in the Catholic church, she did make it very clear to me that she thought it was very important to have someone with a religious affiliation officiate the marriage. I want to respect that. Finally, I don't think I can plan a big, fun, party for all of my friends and family on short notice. I know my sister did it, but I can't even wash my dishes in a timely manner.  And I don't have enough vacation time left to get hitched AND go to San Francisco this summer. It seems trivial, but this is a trip that has been in the works for a long time, and my aunt would be crushed if I bailed. 
 So what do we do? How long do we wait for a job to come along? How do we even breach this topic (except with you, Dad), if it seems to be one of our only options? I don't even know how I might respond to family objections, and there isn't a whole lot of help I could find online. I feel like I may be sort of jumping into the "oh-noes!" of it, but if Casey is serious, I am going to take it seriously while we look at our other options. Is this a horrible idea?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A wedding is what you make of it. You can just get married on paper right now and get Casey covered insurance wise and then have a WEDDING later on.

It doesn't have to be a secret you just say "We entered into the government institution of marriage and will do the emotional/religious stuff in a year."

Something the girls on Offbeat Bride refer to as "getting weddinged"

Lauren said...

Shit, I haven't had insurance in over 5 years.

The Q said...

Turns out, he can get insurance on his own for a reasonable amount. I don't know if he will, but it seems easier than going to get a marriage license. However, my neighbors, who are getting married this weekend, pointed out that we only have to wait 72 hours after picking up the license, and they have a friend in town who is official and could do it for free on Sunday :)

jes said...

do it.

it's just a piece of paper that legally binds you to each other - a marriage is what you make it not what is written on a legal document.