Flip through any women's magazine and I'm sure you'll find at least one section of an advice column that deals with inviting significant others to weddings. There's a lot of debate and a lot of debacle over when it's appropriate to use your plus one. Everyone seems to have their own opinions on the matter. These columnists will ask how long you've been dating, whether or not they've met your family and other hit-or-miss questions. Then the journalist will likely offer a multitude of rules, manners and etiquette examples to follow, like how much money the two of you should spend on a gift, how to navigate introducing your SO to the newlyweds and how to go to a wedding together without feeling pressured to get engaged. All of these advice columns seem to lack one common tactic that worked very well for me last weekend and that is to just have fun with it.
When neither of my parents could attend my youngest cousin's wedding, I called up the bride and asked if I could bring along my girlfriend, of exactly one year, as a date. When she gleefully agreed, the two of us gleefully began planning.
There was no "What if they don't like me?" or "I don't know them too wel," or "We haven't been together long enough." All we could do was imagine what we were going to wear and gush over visiting the South for the first time. But the most important part was that we were doing it together. (Yes, I took my girlfriend to a Southern Catholic wedding. And we weren't the only gays in attendance either. Times are changing, I guess.)
Upon arriving to the South, any fleeting doubt or anxiety we had over bringing a romantic newbie to a family wedding was eradicated almost instantly. We were invited up to the bridal suite the moment our plane touched the ground and spent the next two hours laughing and mingling with my family as if Marysol had been a part of it for a decade. Then we danced and drank with my cousins at the reception until we nearly fell asleep on the shuttle back to the hotel (where we promptly joined the afterparty for more shenanigans). Not once were we made to feel even a smidgen uncomfortable.
Milestones can be fun achievements to chase with your partner, but I don't understand attaching any unnecessary stress to them. We've spent one hundred dollars in one trip on groceries, but we haven't moved in together. We've gone to a family wedding together, but neither of us has pooped with the other in the room. These things should happen naturally and whenever they feel appropriate for each individual pairing of people, with no time restrictions or social pressures working against you.
Do we feel like a proposal is the next step for us now that we've attended a wedding together? Of course not. It was a night to drink, dance and celebrate love in the life of someone very important to me. We found that the people around us were much more concerned with this "big milestone" than we were.
In the end, we loved our matching outfits, made new friends and let my family know that my partner is going to be around for a while. We went to have a fun night and that's what we did. To anyone nervous about introducing their significant other to their family, inviting them to a family function or using them as their plus one to a wedding, I'd say this: Do you want to have a good time? Does your partner make you happy? Does your family like to laugh? Then go for it. Do what will ensure you a great night and show the world who's been making you smile lately.
