the thing is, when you’re a little girl getting married is the Ultimate Goal. it happens to every single one of your idols, Cinderella, Ariel, even princess Jasmine who so adamantly didn’t want to get married, ended up getting married. its unavoidable and its the end of the movie, the end of the road, the happy ending we all strive for. when you’re a little girl, you’re taught that getting married to prince charming is it. that’s what life is about. when you’re a little girl your family asks you if there’s any boys you like at school. when you say yes they ask you when you’re going to get married, and chances are you’ve already thought about it. when you’re a little girl, chances are by the time you’re twelve you’ve heard a song you want your first dance to be to, or you’ve watched Say Yes to the Dress and fallen in love with a dress, or driven by your town’s local wedding shop with your nose pressed to the glass. when you’re a little girl, you go to sleepovers and talk about the kind of sex you’re going to have on your wedding night. when you’re a little girl you imagine all the exotic places you’re going to spend your honey moon. most of all, when you’re a little girl you imagine your husband.
he’s going to be tall, and handsome, and funny. he’ll treat you nicely and appreciate everything you have to say. he’ll like your writing. he’ll sing off-key with you. he wont make fun of your music taste. he’ll wake up late. he’ll do some of the cooking. he’ll hug you from behind a lot. you’ll wear his sweaters and drown in them. you’ll have his last name.
when you’re a little girl, you make your prince charming and you make up your cinderella wedding and that’s your life for 15 years.
and then sometimes, when you’re a little girl, you realize that you don’t really want a prince charming. maybe you want a princess charming. and now this fantasy, this wedding you began creating as soon as you could comprehend what a wedding was, is just fucking shattered.
and that fantasy is just so deeply rooted in your mind you just cant pull it out you can’t change the black tie to a white dress. you can’t give them breasts and hips or feminine features or their father walking them down the aisle too and you can’t reimagine your first dance with someone who might not tower over you, someone who might not be hard and strong, someone who might have longer hair and eyeshadow. no matter how hard you try and however many other sexual fantasies you’ve made in your head around women, your wedding night always involves a man. on a beach. his tux is somewhere across the room. he carries you over the threshold.
when you’re a little girl, no one gives you the option to like other little girls. no one tells you how you would go about marrying another little girl. who proposes? does she dance with your dad instead of your mom? do you walk down the aisle at the same time? do you both wear dresses? do you both throw the bouquet? bachelorette parties, you probably share the same friends, what then? can you get married in a church? do you have separate bridesmaids?
there’s all these rules for weddings- white dress, black tux, bridesmaids, groomsmen, first dance, he dances with your mom, you dance with his dad, woman, man. but there’s no code, no unspoken truth, no common knowledge, on how to marry a girl.
around the time i began to realize that i want to marry a girl, the wedding dress store in my town burned to the ground.
