Our memento marriage

Order is overrated.

My wife and I exchanged wedding rings at the jewellery counter of Macy’s in San Francisco three days before she was due to fly back to Australia to visit her family. We had a lovely, if somewhat surreal moment putting the rings on each others’ fingers in front of the slightly bemused staff — romance can be found in the strangest of places — but this was hardly the most unconventional thing about our union; by this point, we had already been married for almost a year.

The typical wedding process goes something like this: an engagement ring is acquired, and a proposal made, hopefully accepted. Permission is optionally asked of the father beforehand, if deemed appropriate. An engagement party follows, itself followed at some point in the future by a stag/buck/bull/hen/stagette night depending on your gender and Commonwealth locale. Left unstated in the interim: lots of planning and a fair amount of stress. Then at long last, the happy day surrounded by friends and family, the exchanging of wedding rings and the honeymoon.

Instead, the gestation of our nuptials had the type of fractured chronology that Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino might offer up.

I proposed to Emily Benjamin while sitting on an outcrop of rock below the rim of the Grand Canyon on a sunny day in July 2011, towards the end of an eight month round the world trip that in retrospect would turn out to be our honeymoon. She had just remarked how she now had no job, and very little money, but was happy. Unbidden, and unplanned, the words came to my lips.

You’re poor and you’re a muppet,
but I love you, so will you marry me?

In lieu of an engagement ring, which was precluded by a lack of forethought and the financial demands of world travel sans employment, I tied a piece of grass around Emily’s finger after she accepted. It broke almost immediately, and wasn’t replaced.

I was in the midst of interviewing for jobs in the Bay Area via Skype, and we realised that should I be offered one of them, it would be impossible to stay together without being married. We didn’t want to make the marriage contingent on a job offer as it would have cheapened something we were both very serious about, so we made the decision to marry in San Francisco before my final round of face to face interviews.

We briefly considered not telling anyone beforehand, but instead opted to tell close family members on the proviso that they kept the secret so we could tell our friends in person. Although a wedding is a deeply personal commitment, it is very much a family affair. We would already be denying them the pageantry of a large ceremony to attend, so letting them know was the least we could do.

That evening, I called Emily’s father and asked permission, post facto, for his daughter’s hand. He was very gracious about it, and appreciated being informed before we were actually wed, if not before I had actually proposed.

Six weeks later, still ringless, we were married under the domed roof of San Francisco City Hall, in a simple civil ceremony witnessed by Emily’s friend Nathan, an Australian ex-pat whom I’d met that morning. We celebrated with champagne and called our families. I began my final interviews in the city and was lucky enough to receive an offer that I loved.

Our extended honeymoon finished up a couple of weeks later with our return flight to Australia, where we immediately made preparations to emigrate more permanently to the US a month hence.

By now, close friends knew we were engaged, though not married, and threw bachelor and bachelorette parties for us. In a manner that felt obvious by this point, both of these happened before the engagement party, which was eventually arranged for just a few days before we would depart for the US.

The engagement party was attended by about forty or fifty of our friends. I gave the last speech of the night, where I had the pleasure of revealing for the first time to most of those in attendance that we were already married. The shock on people’s faces was worth the effort to keep the secret for those few months!

Fast forward eleven months and we are in Macy’s, about to be separated for the first time in a long time. A wedding ring to show the family seemed appropriate. A proof of sorts, though none was needed. The commitment had been made, but the symbol was important.

Sometime next year we will have recommitment ceremonies in England and Australia so our families can finally see Emily walk down some sort of aisle in something white. Those few steps will be the culmination of a unordered but happy journey, and the start of something new.

We might mark the occasion with an engagement ring.