lowquality.net

Mar­ried.

So there’s a lot that has been going on and I’ve blogged almost none of it. To start, Kim and I got mar­ried this last week­end. The weather was great the com­pany was excep­tional and the cake was eff­ing deli­cious. Maybe Kim thinks dif­fer­ently, but the wed­ding, for me, wasn’t so impor­tant. I wanted us to get mar­ried, I’m ecsta­tic for us to be mar­ried but whether or not we had a cer­e­mony wasn’t a big deal. We’d orig­i­nally planned to sim­ply have a party with only our clos­est friends and fam­ily present but that grew slightly and we had a small cer­e­mony in the gar­den at the Pagoda (where the recep­tion was also held).

Even though Kim’s par­ents, sis­ter, and my par­ents all pitched in for the wed­ding expenses, we still didn’t spend a whole lot. Some brides pay as much for their wed­ding gowns as we did for the whole day. I think we got a lot of value out of what was spent, too. It is com­pletely pos­si­ble to have an inex­pen­sive wed­ding with­out being tacky or trashy. We accom­plished it almost with­out try­ing. I’m proud of us.

Some­thing that was really great about this wed­ding was that I was able to have some of my clos­est friends all in one place. I have always been the type to have friends in dif­fer­ent cir­cles and I was the one who’d move freely between them.  As a teenager, I was used to this prac­tice, but it became less of an issue in col­lege where every­one was basi­cally aware of one another and, com­pared to a typ­i­cal high school, Berklee isn’t really that cliquey. Still, this merg­ing of dif­fer­ent peo­ple with dif­fer­ent eth­nic, geo­graph­i­cal, social and dietary (sic) back­grounds was one of the only sources of stress I had as the wed­ding date approached. I kept won­der­ing if my Berklee friends were going to fit in with Kim’s fam­ily, if they would feel out of place and keep to them­selves in a cor­ner some­where leav­ing me to float between Kim’s fam­ily, my fam­ily, my friends and the one or two strays that I hadn’t even met before. Hon­estly, if they had felt out of place I wouldn’t have been sur­prised or put off by it, the Kabuti can be com­pletely over­whelm­ing at first to non-Filipinos (and often to other Fil­ipinos because they are so cliquey). They are com­pletely insane and it can come off as endear­ing or totally over-the-top crazy and it might take sev­eral vis­its to really feel com­fort­able. I think it took me a few.

At any rate, this wasn’t an issue and every­one fit in perfectly.

Joe took a lot of fan­tas­tic pic­tures of us

Of course, I wasn’t wor­ried about Joe. In the past few years, it has become a reg­u­lar occur­rence for Joe to make Kab Kid appear­ances, to the point where there isn’t even a fuss when he shows up. You know you are “in” when you walk into a Fil­ipino house­hold and no one tram­ples you with hos­pi­tal­ity. Every­one says “hey Joe!” and ges­tures to the table of food and that’s that. None of the usual “you’re a stranger so we have to wait on you hand and foot so you feel com­fort­able” stuff. At this point, Joe is prac­ti­cally a Kab Kid him­self (which would be amaz­ing since he’d be the only white guy to join the club with­out hav­ing to “marry in”).

It was so amaz­ing to see Tom and Tiff scream­ing and howl­ing along to a game of LCR (which Joe won the sec­ond round of) and Brett throw­ing up the metal horns while he got his first tastes of pancit can­ton (he didn’t actu­ally do that, but let’s pre­tend he did.. but he really did love the pancit). This visit com­bined with the last cou­ple of vis­its Chris has made to Nor­folk (though he was absent for the wed­ding due to his extreme gay­ness) kind of com­bined into one real­iza­tion that a lot of my gen­eral unhap­pi­ness since grad­u­at­ing col­lege has been due to feel­ing so dis­tant from a num­ber of peo­ple I used to see every day of my life. And here they are, fit­ting in per­fectly with my this new insane mob of cousins, uncles, aunts and nephews. It’s nice to feel reas­sured that you’re mak­ing the right deci­sions every now and then, you know?

Mar­cie, Brett, Tom, Tiff, Kim and Me.

While I am on the topic: I have to say that Kim and I are blessed in that we get along really well with each other’s fam­ily. So few peo­ple have that lux­ury. I decided a long time ago that I would never involve myself with some­one who’s par­ents I did not like, but some­times you just can’t con­trol those sit­u­a­tions. But, all things being equal, I think mar­ry­ing some­one whose fam­ily sucks is a path to true mis­ery and I’d advise against it com­pletely. A note to dudes: It’s a typ­i­cal male thing to put off the meet­ing of the par­ents for as long as pos­si­ble, to avoid “get­ting seri­ous.”  Really,  the “get­ting seri­ous” could hap­pen no mat­ter how long you post­pone meet­ing her fam­ily. You may as well meet the folks as early as you can and get the hell out of there if they turn out to be kooks. That’s my free advice to you.

Kim and I get­ting mar­ried was a tes­ti­mony the last 5 years of our rela­tion­ship, but the wed­ding itself was an expres­sion of the near-arrogance we can’t help but feel when we see how many incred­i­bly awe­some peo­ple we know and attract with­out try­ing. Peo­ple who’d never meet each other under nor­mal cir­cum­stances are sud­denly con­verg­ing because of us. Cool.