I went to watch the first couple be married in Manhattan. I remember hearing the city clerk say, “By the power vested in me by the laws of the State of New York, I marry you.” But for the first time the clerk was saying it for two women, two elderly women who had been together for more than twenty years. One was in a wheelchair with a neck brace. She got out of her wheelchair with her walker, and the other woman helped her, and it was just so lovely. They were lovely, and they had waited decades, and one of the most moving things about them was that the one who was just as old as the other was helping her stand up. Mike McSweeney, who had been a Tom Manton protégé, was the city clerk, and he got to marry them. I later learned that the woman outside who had breast cancer was his college best friend—she had come down so he could marry her.
And then there were two guys in Brooklyn. When the judge said, “Do you have rings?” they couldn’t get their rings off, because they had been wearing them for so long. The judge said, “Let’s not break any bones here, guys.” In Queens I took pictures of a newly married couple, and all their kids were dressed in white tuxedoes and white dresses. The Daily News sponsored a wedding at the Old Homestead. A couple of women won the prize, an all-expenses-paid wedding party. But one of their parents had died recently. It made me realize that the delay from 2009 meant a big difference because some people’s family members didn’t get to see their weddings.
That day I went to Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, and I ended the day at Gracie Mansion, where the mayor presided over the marriage of his criminal justice coordinator and a commissioner. What a day!
This wonderful day was of course tinged with sadness and loss. I was overwhelmed with joy, but at the same time I remembered all those who weren’t with us. We do a disservice to people when, after a bad thing occurs in their lives, we promote the belief that they will one day be wholly free of grief and sadness. The truth is, grief will always be with you. It does not have to be crippling or even a bad thing; it is part of you and your life and your world. At times it will feel uncomfortable or even painful and horrible, and at times it will be useful or even powerful. It will work for you if it enhances your capacity to be empathetic or fuels your desire to make the world a better, safer, and healthier place, or if it helps you seize each day. You just have to let yourself feel the bad stuff and cry your eyes out, then fix your makeup and get on with it.
CHAPTER 13
Light and Shadow
I never expected to get married. That wasn’t in the cards for me—I had given up on that part of life. I enjoyed leafing through bridal magazines, but only as an observer. My world changed gradually. First, Kim and I found each other, which meant that love—deep and abiding love—would be part of my life’s portion. Then the law changed, and holding a wedding in our city, with our friends and our family, was going to happen. I thought about the waiter at Moonstruck who comforted us the day after marriage equality lost in Albany and predicted that our fathers would walk us down the aisle. How right he was. Kim and I pinched ourselves because it was still hard to believe that we actually could get married. Since we had been together so long and had only ten months to plan our gala wedding, we agreed to skip the formal engagement and get on with arranging it.
Kim had other plans. One evening after we came home from a party, Kim put on a song that we had played constantly when we first met. I guessed she wanted me to consider using it for the wedding or for the rehearsal dinner, and I said, “That’s nice.”
“Turn off the TV,” she said.
“I really want to see this segment.” I didn’t look away from the screen.
Next she brought out a mug, which was a special gift from one of our early Valentine’s Days together—it has a heart and the word Forever on it, and it has a lot of meaning for us.
I took the mug from her and said, “Yeah, that’s great,” and put it down on the coffee table.
Finally Kim said, “Will you turn off the damn TV and look?!?”
I looked inside the mug and found a receipt from Bowlmor Lanes in Greenwich Village, where we had had our second date. I had written my phone number on the back of it. Unbeknownst to me, Kim had kept it all those years.
“Turn it over.”
On the other side she’d written, “Will you marry me?”
I don’t know if I was laughing or crying at this point or both, but I managed to say, “Of course I’m going to marry you!”
I looked inside the mug again and found a small box and opened it.
“This is your mom’s ring, right?”
Kim loved her mother. She hadn’t given me just any ring—it was her mother’s ring, and I knew how much it meant to her. The week after the marriage equality bill passed, she had taken her mother’s engagement ring and gone to see our favorite jewelers, the Doyle sisters on the Lower East Side, to get it spruced up. She debated adding emeralds because they’re green (me being Irish) or sapphires, the birthstone of the month we met. She decided on sapphires.
The next weekend when Kim’s dad visited our house, we told him we wanted to show him something. I held out my hand, and he looked at the ring. “Is that Mom’s?” he asked Kim.
She said yes, and he started to cry. Kim’s parents had been very much in love. Her father had never remarried after Kim’s mom died. Kim’s mother was the love of his life.
Over lunch with Kim’s sister, Debbie, and her husband and Kim’s brother Anthony, Kim’s father told us about the ring. He had bought it from a jeweler in Newark for eight hundred dollars, which was a lot of money at the time, and had proposed to Kim’s mother under the cherry blossom trees in Branch Brook Park during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Newark. That gave us an idea for how to decorate the wedding hall, because our wedding was to be in the spring, right around cherry blossom time.
I had no experience planning a wedding. There hadn’t been a Quinn family wedding since my sister got married the September after our mother died, and it had been a small one. The important thing for both of us was that our wedding be personal, that it reflect who we are, and that it not be a political event. The personal issue was key—and that guided us throughout the planning.
For the most part we wanted a traditional ceremony, and for a while we considered including a religious element—we’re both Catholic—like having a priest give a blessing at the end. But we were sure the priest would get in trouble and it would wind up in the newspapers. How to deal with the press was something we struggled with. We didn’t want to be seen as exploiting the wedding for political reasons, but we also didn’t want to seem like we were embarrassed or ashamed and trying to hide anything. It was challenging to find a balance, especially since Kim does not do interviews, a policy that she was not going to change for the wedding. In the end we decided to give certain advance information to the press, and we provided photos afterward, but we didn’t want any press at the wedding itself. That would have been incredibly intrusive and would have made public something that was very personal to us.
The press got wind of our engagement, and Kim’s dad was quoted as saying that I was “a great catch” and that he was “very happy when Kim told me that she and Chris were getting married.” He went on, “The whole family got to know Chris well, and we thought the world of her. I knew how much she meant to Kim and that they loved each other very much.” My father responded in typical form: “It’s nice that [Christine] found a pal to share her life with.” Referring to the change in his thinking since I’d first told him I was gay, he said, “There’s been an evolution.” I was proud of him for the distance he’d come over those years and for saying so to the reporter. Both our fathers were pleased to be able to walk us down the aisle.
After the wedding friends sent us a three-page spread from a newspaper in Norway. Another friend saw something about it in India. Kim’s old college roommate from New Jersey, who made the cake (a five-tiered chocolate chip cake with chocolate custard and buttercream frosting), wound up on the local evening news. And in Ne
w York it was on the front page of every newspaper. But to us, from beginning to end, it was our wedding, and we did everything we could to make it a personal celebration, from the invitations, the guest list, and the decorations, to the readings and our vows.
I’d figured that planning a wedding would be a lot of work, but it turned out to be an even more humongous job than I imagined. Because of my work, it was almost instantaneously clear that it would be impossible for me to take the lead. Fortunately Kim (with her sister Debbie’s constant assistance) picked up the ball and ran with it. I did the best I could to help. We were smart enough to hire a wedding planner. But we still had a ton of decisions to make and details to review.
While Kim was doing the heavy lifting, there were things that had to be done quickly that I couldn’t leave to her alone, like getting a wedding dress for me and helping her find an outfit.
I wanted to wear a wedding dress—that was never a question. But I didn’t want it to be some kind of princess dress—I’m in my midforties, and I wanted it to be age-appropriate. I was open to either a short dress or a long dress. I wanted it to be pretty and classy but not silly. I didn’t want to shop for it alone. So I went out with a whole crew of five to ten people: Kim’s sister, Debbie; my friend Emily; her wife, Annie; Amy and Meghan (who work with me); and a few others. Not everybody was there every time, but a lot of them were there most of the time. I didn’t want Kim going with me to look for a dress, and I don’t think she was sorry to be left out of that process.
The first place we went was Vera Wang, where I found a dress I loved. That night I Googled it to show Kim—and found out that Khloe Kardashian had been married in that very dress, at a high-profile wedding, so there was no way I could wear it. I was devastated because that was my dress! How could they have not told me that a Kardashian had already worn it? I overreacted wildly, and dramatically took to the bathtub and wouldn’t talk to Kim. Clearly the pressure of finding the right dress was getting to me, and now I had to start all over again.
So we went on the typical wedding dress store tour. Everywhere we went we saw lovely dresses and the people helping us were very nice. But at Carolina Herrera the dresses were exceptional and the people weren’t just very nice, they were very, very nice.
At each place I tried on more dresses than I really thought possible, just because they were there. It was fun. It was like being a little girl playing dress-up, except that when I was a little girl, I never got to play dress-up. I’d try on a dress, and the group would decide if we’d keep it for round two. Then I tried it on for round two, and we decided whether it would stay for round three. Then from there we’d cast votes and narrow it down to the finalists.
Over the course of several dress-shopping trips, I gained insight into all my helpers and what their personal preferences and biases were. With Annie, you couldn’t have enough bling. Emily thought every dress was the dress and the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and every time I came out in a new dress, she wept. Debbie, who was essentially Kim’s emissary, was like the adult in the room. She’d say I ran the whole thing like a meeting, asking one person for her opinion and then the next. But Debbie really ran the show. For each dress, she’d start by asking if it was within our budget. Then she’d say, “Let’s turn around. Let’s look at that.” She’d put her eyeglasses on and then take them off and say “Let’s think about this” or “Let’s think about that.” Thank God for Debbie.
After eight or so shopping trips, the choice finally came down to two Carolina Herrera dresses, and I just liked one better than the other.
But that wasn’t the end of it—then came the fittings. Seamstresses stick pins into the dress so they know where to adjust this or adjust that so it will fit perfectly. Since it was a fitted dress, I wanted it to fit perfectly. I’d tell them to make it tighter, since I planned to lose weight before the wedding, but they’d say, “It’s going to be too tight!” and I’d say, “No, tighter!” My friend Wayne didn’t come for any of the shopping trips, but he came for one of the fittings, and when I stepped out of the dressing room, he wept. He thought I looked beautiful. I thought I looked nice. Not beautiful, but nice.
Now that the dress was taken care of, I decided I had to do some work on my arms. I’d had no intention of buying a sleeveless or strapless dress, because I do not like my arms, but I wound up buying a sleeveless dress, and so I was in a panic. To get my arms in shape, I began doing arm exercises with two-pound hand weights—even in the middle of meetings. It was crazy, but I’m not rational about my arms. Then it got even crazier. I began using dumbbells while I was being driven around during my workday. I wound up throwing out my shoulder. I learned my lesson: it’s not a good idea to lift hand weights while being driven in an SUV on the streets of New York—while on a conference call!
I gave up on doing exercises in the car, but in the end the weights worked. My arms weren’t perfect, but over the course of a couple of months, they were better. My one disappointment was that I hadn’t been able to lose weight. I’d hoped that in the final six weeks I’d lose a ton of weight and that at the final fitting we’d have to take in everything. That didn’t happen at all—I didn’t even lose a pound. So at the final fitting there was nothing to do.
When you wear a fitted wedding gown, you also need to wear “undergarments” to hold everything up and together. As fun as it was to shop for the wedding dress, shopping for the undergarments was definitely not fun, especially since I waited until the last minute. At the first place we went—a French boutique on the Upper East Side—all the salespeople were the size of my pinky. I should have known better. The killer came when the salesperson said, “We just don’t make it that big.” The last thing I needed to hear the week before my wedding was that I was too big. I was finished shopping for undergarments and walked out of the store, with Kim right behind me. I wanted to call it a day, but she persuaded me to go to a second place on the Upper East Side called Wolford, and the people were lovely. Not only did they have everything I needed, but they told me I needed a size “small”! I could have hugged them all! Kim remembers me saying, “I will love all of you forever!” to the salesclerks. I’m not sure I said that, but that’s certainly how I felt.
Shopping for Kim wasn’t easy either, but it was nothing compared with shopping for my undergarments. It had to be a pantsuit because she doesn’t wear dresses, and it had to be understated because she hates calling attention to herself. She made clear that she wanted me to be the focus of attention that day, at least from a fashion perspective.
So we set out to find a cream-colored pantsuit that would work with my dress. But we couldn’t find anything that worked because it was late February and early March, and almost no white pantsuits were in the stores yet. So without telling Kim, I called one of my friends in the fashion industry to ask her advice. She suggested using a New York designer like Ralph Lauren. So we went to his store on Madison Avenue. This is not the kind of place where Kim and I normally shop, and we made assumptions that the salespeople would be “perfect” and standoffish. But they were lovely! Mary, Cecilia, and Victoria were Kim’s Ralph Lauren posse. They were totally normal and nice, so sweet, and enormously helpful.
It was me, Kim, our friend Emily, and Kim’s sister, Debbie, at the Ralph Lauren store. Kim was nervous that she wasn’t going to find anything, and that even if she found something, it wouldn’t be special. But we found a cream-colored suit that worked—the jacket had satin lapels—and to make it even more special, Victoria sewed a gorgeous gold appliqué onto the vest. It was beautiful. Kim bought a pair of sparkly-silver Jimmy Choo shoes with heels (which she wore to the ceremony) and a goldish pair with a lower heel (which she wore for the reception).
We gave ourselves time to decide on our rings. We quickly settled on getting fancy and everyday wedding rings. The fancy rings are simple bands with diamonds all around—I wear mine almost every day. The metal ones are platinum, and that’s what Kim wears every day.
I
wanted to have a couple of my mother’s favorite pins made into hair combs that I would wear to the wedding. They’re decorated with white enamel pansies with little diamonds in the middle. The inspiration for using them came from my wedding dress, which had crystals on the midsection, which if you looked really closely were flowers. Also, the pansies fit with our flower theme and color scheme. My mother wore the pins a lot when I was growing up, and wearing one of them was a way of having her memory with me in a happy way on my wedding day.
We had a bit of drama around finding someone to make the pins into hair combs. The first jeweler we tried couldn’t get the pins to look like what I had hoped for, but after a last-minute search—and with time running out—we found a jeweler that could. I asked my father to pick them up from the first jeweler and bring them to me. We were having a serious press conference with immigration advocates who were protesting the federal immigration authorities’ use of fingerprint records from the New York Police Department to round up undocumented immigrants. It’s not usually an occasion for levity. But in the middle of the press conference, my father happened to walk by, plowed through the crowd, and handed me the package with the pins, and I couldn’t help but laugh. He knew how important they were to me and was determined to get them to me. So at the press conference I thanked my father and explained to the press that there’d been a problem with the hair combs for the wedding and that we were getting them redone. I noted that my father had picked them up from the jeweler for me, and then added, “So let the record reflect, my father is helping. He wants credit for helping.” How could you not love the guy?
With Patience and Fortitude: A Memoir Page 15