Oh, hey wedding day. (11/26/11).

Our late summer/early fall wedding celebration will be outdoors with lots of our musician friends playing music in the wooden dance hall in the woods. The one where you have to cross over the stream using the small wooden foot bridge. You know, the one right after you walk by the huge private in-ground pool. In our heads, it looks awesome. And the years of planning have payed off.

But then, life always loves to get in the way and switch things up a bit. And that is what happened here.

Now, instead of the above planned scenario, we will be getting married in late fall (next month, actually), on a holiday weekend, at a relative’s house. From there we will have a delicious dinner downtown (oh, hey alliteration, way to sneak in there) with an overnight stay in a nearby hotel. No farm. No friends. No extended family. No pool. No live music.

No worries.

Thanksgiving weekend 2011 will now also be known as the weekend Joey and I got shotgun gay married. After 9 years, the term “shotgun wedding” may not best suit this situation. It may also not best suit this situation because neither of us are pregnant. However, we are unable to wait until the return of warm weather and sunlit evening hours. I am going in for open heart surgery in January to have a valve replaced, and we want to be legally wed when that happens. So, on November 26th, it will finally be official. (UPDATE: Surgery is now planned for late March)

We still plan on having a celebration in the summer/fall. The difference is that we will already be married. But we still want to throw a party for all of our friends and family who won’t be able to join us next month. It may not be the elaborate event we once had planned, but it will still be pretty kick ass. And I don’t feel too bad about the way it has turned out, because one of my closest friends is getting married next year at the venue Joey and I were planning (yes, she asked first, even though she didn’t have to), so I’ll just hijack her wedding day and make it all about me. Plus, I’ll finally be married to a pretty awesome guy.