Planning a Lesbian Wedding: Why I'm Extremely Grateful of Being Able to Get Married

This week gay marriage laws have come into effect around Scotland, allowing same-sex couples across the nation to be able to get married. No, not a civil partnership, a full on, completely equal, legal marriage, and I couldn't be more grateful.
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This week gay marriage laws have come into effect around Scotland, allowing same-sex couples across the nation to be able to get married. No, not a civil partnership, a full on, completely equal, legal marriage, and I couldn't be more grateful.

The fiancée and I have been holding off on our wedding planning, waiting for this new law to come into effect - perhaps even a little subconsciously, anxiously waiting for it to gay marriage to be normalised within our society.

Just last week we endured some casual homophobia at our local A & E. As I'm extremely clumsy, I managed to crack my head open, and the fiancée made the wise decision to take me to hospital - something I quickly agreed to once I saw the blood on the floor.

Now, I don't know if you've ever had a cracked head or concussion but - speaking as the expert as it's not the first time it's happened - you can't really do much for yourself. One hand is holding blood-soaked tissues to the head, and your mind is trying to remember what day of the week it is.

My partner spoke to the reception staff. Explaining to them several times that her partner - whilst gesticulating in my direction - couldn't talk for herself. The staff asked where he was, and the fiancée gesticulated again in my direction. Again they asked where he was. Now, Accident and Emergency on a Saturday night is a busy place; it's loud, it's unpleasant and there are many a character - could the fiancée blamed for trying to be subtle? I think not.

They must have asked four or five times where HE was, until my partner finally cracked and said SHE, and gesticulated again, in my direction. The receptionist found her mistake hilarious, laughing openly in the other half's face. Non stop. Until it got to the point she forced her colleague - also laughing - to take over. All the while, I'm sitting there with a cracked head none the wiser.

I can't complain though - aside from strange events like above, it's rare that we ever experience homophobia. It's been a long time since I've felt shifty on the phone booking a hotel room for me and my partner, or feeling cautious when introducing her to colleagues.

Now that we're moving to planning our wedding, we'll always be thinking - either subconsciously or consciously - of the little things we need to be aware of, whether it be checking that where we book our honeymoon it's okay to be out, or that the venue has held - or is openly advertising - same sex marriages. Even though they have to now fulfill this duty legally if they have been previously holding civil marriages, that isn't a conversation that we'd want to have to have - no matter how good a venue it may be.

Elsewhere in the world, it's an extremely different story.

Currently, only 8% of countries across the world allow same- sex marriages - yet 36% of countries class being homosexuality as an illegal act, some of which using the death penalty as punishment.

With ISIS moving to throwing gay men off buildings to their deaths, and the hero of the Sydney Hostage Crisis - a man who charged the gunman, distracting him and trying to take away his gun as the other hostages fled the scene - dying a second class citizen as his state wouldn't allow him to marry - there is still a lot of work to be done.