marriage

“A Song A Week” Challenge: Monthly Recap 10 of 12

Kate Sloan

Song 41/52: “Go Deeper”

Lyrics:

Breathe in some fresh air and breathe out all your cares and keep breathing
And notice the thoughts that are passing, arising, repeating
And let them all go, because deep down, you know that you’re safe
And inside your mind, you can certainly find a nice place

Let your eyes fall closed if they want to
Feel your spine – it’s strong and it’s got you
Feel your mind melting as it tries not to

Chorus:
Go deeper now
Doesn’t matter how
Just go deeper now
Let your thoughts drift away like a cloud

And if it feels good, then maybe you should let it take you
It’s easier, so just give in and let go of what ails you
Your arms getting heavy, along with your legs and your chest
And if you relax, it is simply a fact that you’ll rest

Who knows where your mind disappears to?
If you call it back, it’ll hear you
But we both know you’re really just here to…

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

I was deep in trance during a hypnokink scene when the idea entered my mind that I should write a song that is a hypnotic induction. It felt like such an important idea that I said it out loud to my spouse through the fuzzy fogginess of trance, so that I might remember the idea later on. And I did!

Incidentally, a few days before that, I had watched this video about a chord progression that’s apparently super popular in Japanese music but isn’t widely used in Western music (although, notably, both of Rick Astley’s best-known songs – “Together Forever” and the infamous “Never Gonna Give You Up” – use this progression, as does the Silk Sonic banger “Leave the Door Open”). I’d made a note of it incase I wanted to use it for a song at some point. I thought it made sense to use it for this hypnotic song because it’s a progression that never resolves to the home chord of the key, which gives it this strange feeling of perpetual unfinishedness and driftiness, like being in trance.

I wrote some lyrics for the first verse and prechorus, and then sang them over the progression – and then I improvised the chorus after that, and liked how it came out so I kept it.

Song 42/52: “I’d Marry You Again”

Lyrics:

I’d marry you again
Just say when, just say when
Walk down another aisle
Hey, why not? It’s been a while

No need to have it catered
Don’t need a decorator
And tell our friends and family that we’ll see ya later

Just wanna say those vows
We already know how

I’d marry you once more
And meet you out on the dance floor
I’d throw a bright bouquet
Just like I did back on that day

There’s no RSVPing
It’s all about the feeling
Don’t mean to be repetitive, but it is worth repeating:

I’d marry you again
Just say when, just say when

 

Songwriting diary:

I had tweeted a few days before writing this song about how I still regularly have the momentary thought that I’d like to marry my partner before remembering we already did that. I just love them so much, and wanted to marry them so much before we did it, that my mind evidently still clings onto that as a beloved goal even though it’s already happened. It’s nice.

So, with that in mind, I started improvising words while plucking a minimalistic little ukulele part, and the beginning of this song came out. I built it from there, pulling from online lists of wedding-related tropes and traditions to fill out the rest of the lyrics. It’s a pretty short song (actually it’s the shortest one I’ve done for this challenge), but that’s nice sometimes!

Song 43/52: “Every Morning”

Lyrics:

Is love hard, or has love just been hard before?
My guard is up, but I don’t wanna be guarded anymore

Chorus:
Every morning, you say “I love you”
And every morning, I say “I love you too”
That’s just what we do

My dream love never quite looked the way this does
But my dream, love, was a dream for who I thought I was

(repeat chorus)

Back then, my heart would stop and start
Hot and cold, highs and lows
Then you came ’round; I’m safe and sound
In the now, ’cause I know:

(repeat chorus)

Every morning that I’m in your arms
Is a morning when I thank my lucky stars

 

Songwriting diary:

I was very frustrated this week at my apparent lack of success in writing a song. It was Friday night and I’d polished up 2-3 songs I’d been writing over the past few weeks, but didn’t really like any of them (one was about tattoos, one about gender and one about impostor syndrome). I wrote in a song earlier this year that “the songs never have to be good; they just have to get done,” and while that’s true, there have definitely been several songs this year that I’ve ostensibly finished but haven’t felt good enough about to include as part of this challenge. I always wanted to push myself to write something better instead, which is what happened this week.

I was messing around with my favorite voicing of the Fmajor7 chord on the ukulele and found a rhythmic way of finger-picking it that was very evocative to me, and so I started improvising a vocal line over it. I had just guested on my spouse’s podcast earlier that day, and one of the things we talked about was how I always imagined I’d end up with a writer, actor, visual artist, or other artsy type when I got older, but mb’s personality and brain are creatively oriented even though they’re not in one of those conventionally artsy fields. (Software development definitely involves a lot of creativity!) So I guess I was in a mood to marvel at how our love story turned out so different from what I’d envisioned all those years and is somehow nonetheless exactly what I needed.

Song 44/52: “Grandmaster”

Lyrics:

I don’t know how you bring out the best in us
There’s people like you, and then there’s the rest of us
I take your thoughts as gifts and as gospel truth
Though my family worries that I might be wasting my youth

But it’s not a waste
To follow you anyplace
And I’ll follow you home, ’cause you’re the only home I know

Chorus:
‘Cause you’re my grandmaster
And I’m falling faster
Than I ever thought I could
And though they insult what they call a cult
I know that your heart is good
I know that your heart is good

I thought I knew myself before I met you
But all that I knew was the lens I’d been looking through
My world is shifting as I absorb your words
You never listen, but somehow I still feel heard

But that’s just your way
And of course, I am glad to pay
For the privilege of being a prisoner you’re freeing now

(repeat chorus)

If sometimes I question some of your lessons
I’m sorry if I’m out of turn
If I understood it, I’d know that you’re good at
Helping us learn what we need to learn

(repeat chorus)

I think that your heart is good

 

Songwriting diary:

Months ago, the first two lines of this song randomly occurred to me (“I don’t know how you bring out the best in us/ There’s people like you, and then there’s the rest of us“) and I wrote them down in the music folder of my notes app, not really sure what they were about or when I’d ever be able to use them.

At some point I started watching season 2 of The Vow, which is a show about a New York-based cult called NXIVM that I’ve been fascinated by for a while – I’ve seen a couple of documentary series on it and read a book about it. It occurred to me that those lines sounded like something that one of the cult leader Keith Raniere’s followers might have said about him, and then I decided I wanted to write a song from their perspective. It was partly inspired by “Unworthy of Your Love” from the musical Assassins, specifically the part sung by Squeaky Fromme to her hero and lover Charles Manson, and the way she is clearly so brainwashed and taken in by him. “Grandmaster” is one of the names that Keith Raniere’s followers called him, along with “Vanguard.”

I’m honestly not that happy with this song and it feels like one of the only ones I’ve kind of “phoned in,” but I’m also glad I wrote it and I think there’s some good lines in it. Besides which: the entire point of a challenge like this is to generate new songs, some of which I’m gonna like and some I’m not. It’s a useful lesson in releasing perfectionism and just doing what I can do, every single week.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 2 Fears Defeated

Kate Sloan

We all do scary things all the time, whether we consciously notice it or not. Hell, even getting out of bed each morning when the world is so chaotic is a brave-ass thing to do.

Each year I write here about 2 major fears I conquered over the course of the year, as a reminder to myself and to others that (as Glennon Doyle says) we can do hard things. There’s always more to learn, more hurdles to jump, and more courage to call upon. Here are the 2 big fears I defeated in 2020…

 

Cutting my hair short

All the way back to middle school, I read a lot of magazines aimed at women and girls. This had some upsides – allowing me to explore nascent interests in sex and fashion, for instance – but a lot of downsides, one of which was that I grew very self-conscious about so-called “flaws” like my pear-shaped body or my large forehead. The proliferation of these types of “teachings” may have been reduced in recent years due to the body-positivity movement (not to mention the many many fat babes who spearhead it), but the damage was done. I and many other women had come to view fundamental parts of our physical selves as something to be covered up and worked around.

Because I have a round face and a big forehead, the conventional wisdom is that my hair should be shaped a certain way to de-emphasize those traits. For a long time I wore it long, with sideswept bangs, to conceal the true contours of my face. But who was I kidding? And, more importantly: why did I care so much?

It’s taken me literal decades to get to a place of relative comfort with my appearance, and even that still comes and goes depending on the day. One decision I’m proudest of in that realm is cutting my hair to chin-length last December. I was sick and tired of my long frizzy curls, which had felt more cumbersome than joyful for a while. I also wanted a haircut that said something about who I am, rather than just allowing me to blend into the background. I used to dress unremarkably when my social anxiety was at its height, because I didn’t want anyone to look at me or notice me – but that was no longer the case! Now I wanted to be seen – and not only that, but to be seen for who I really am: a queer, kinky, feminist, clever, accomplished, professional, foxy lady.

My long-time hairdresser Paul at Avalon Hair Design looked at the reference images I’d collected for him and knew exactly what to do. He gave me a short, asymmetrical haircut that’s a bit longer in the front; it’s modern, unusual, and works well with my natural curls. I’ve loved it all year, and have felt much more visible since getting it, both as a queer person and just as a person. Thanks, Paul!

Photo by Ashe of Rose Glass Photography

Getting engaged + married

I can think of few other things in life that have simultaneously attracted me and terrified me the way the idea of marriage does/did. I’m a huge introvert so I had trouble conceiving of a life where there would always be another person around – but, more pressingly than that, I worried I didn’t have what it took to be loved in the long-term. My past relationships had often fizzled when I or the other person lost interest and ended things, and it seemed risky as hell to make a public, legal commitment to stay in a relationship when there’s a chance it could fall apart at any time.

But in multiple chats with both my therapist and my now-spouse, I uncovered the ways in which these fears were largely based on my own insecurities and traumas, and were therefore not super relevant to my current (healthy, communicative, loving) relationship. Sure, it’s normal to want to tread carefully when making a big life decision like getting married, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad decision.

Getting married to Matt was actually one of the easiest and most right-feeling things I’ve ever done, once I managed to set aside the trauma-borne negativity that nagged at me when we first started discussing it. I’ve never met anyone else I felt as compatible with in a long-term kind of way, nor have I ever felt this unconditionally, unendingly loved in a relationship before. I have no doubt that there will be struggles and setbacks in our married life, of the kind that every couple encounters, but I know with certainty that I am with someone who will patiently face those struggles with me and do what it takes to work through them.

It’s wild to be writing this here. I wonder what my teenage self would think if she could read this. Starting this blog at age 19, I don’t think I ever even considered the possibility that I would one day chronicle my engagement and marriage here. But it makes sense that I would: Matt and I met through the sex-blogosphere, and our relationship has blossomed in the public eye. It’s been so wonderful to get to share my happy news with you during this hell-year; thank you so much, as ever, for your support and positivity, and for celebrating our joys with us. ❤️

 

What fears did you conquer this year? (I’m proud of you!!)

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Ages ago, I read an article which mentioned that donating personal journals to historical archives can be really helpful to historians of the future, because it gives them a sense of what daily life was like for average people during a given timeframe. I thought about that almost every time I put pen to paper this year, because 2020 will certainly be written about in history books (to the extent that history books are still a thing in the future!).

Here are 6 entries I pulled from my journals this year. Hopefully next year we’ll have many more cheerful things to write about!

Jan. 31

Matt asked me recently to what degree I want to be surprised with a proposal. I said, “I don’t want to know exactly when it’s going to happen, but I do want to know when we are entering a period of life in which a proposal might occur.” They said, “So you want to know when I have a ring,” and I said yes. I love that we have, and have always had, these meta-conversations about important relationship milestones – it’s so different from the traditional Cosmopolitan model of relationships where you never talk about anything and always have to guess what your partner is thinking and feeling.

March 3rd

Everything is really scary right now because a pandemic called the coronavirus is spreading globally and there’s no vaccine for it yet. That sounds so dramatic and crazy but that is what’s happening. People are stockpiling flu meds and face masks and hand sanitizer, and some affected people are self-quarantining for weeks at a time. My immune system sucks so I feel like I will probably get it, but who knows. Currently I am coping by leaving the house as little as possible, washing my hands a lot, distracting myself with podcasts and movies, and drinking homemade martinis.

March 15

Existing in a pandemic reminds me of a feeling I get in the days and weeks following a really brutal breakup. You walk through the world in this daze, unable yet to process that your entire reality has shifted on its axis. Periodically you find minutes or hours of respite in the form of distraction, or perspective, or positive social connection, or just a random feeling of unusual optimism and shrugging resignation – but always, at some point, your mind skids squeakily like a record being scratched as the remembrance of your true situation hits you afresh. Being alive through COVID-19 is like that, except everyone is going through it now, all the time.

It’s fucking surreal how fast everything has changed. No aspect of life can be the same now. Nine days ago I saw fit to go to a crowded karaoke bar. Today I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. We are staying home and moving all our appointments online, or canceling them. We are afraid even to walk around the block or pick up groceries. We don’t know how long it’ll be until we can safely gather in crowds again.

May 13

I’m having a lot of episodes of… feeling triggered/having a trauma response/having an extreme nervous system response/not sure what else to call it… lately. Mostly triggered by stressful things in my relationship (we worked some things out yesterday so it’s okay now) but sometimes basically random. I’ve noticed that I often go into a shut-down dissociative mode when I feel like I’ve disappointed or upset someone I care about – the world slows down like I’ve done a lot of drugs, and the inside of my mind and body feel helplessly, scarily sluggish – and I think this must be related to all the many times my dad yelled at me until I cried, for both justifiable and unjustifiable reasons, when I was a kid/teen/young adult. I remember feeling so frustrated and sad that I could never seem to articulate myself well enough to provide a decent rebuttal to whatever he was bellowing at me – but of course I couldn’t; my nervous system was under attack and I was essentially paralyzed, with nothing to do but stand there and take it. Often I wouldn’t even be allowed to go to my room and cry in private to feel safe and calm again, because that would be perceived by him as “sulking” and he hated that. I think he mostly just hated the guilt of knowing he had upset me that much, after his obvious glee in hurting me had faded.

I asked Matt why they think all these trauma feelings and emotional flashbacks have been coming up so much for me lately – mostly ex-boyfriend stuff and dad stuff, I think – and they said it’s likely due to the stress of living through a global pandemic. Which, yes, that is true. I reached out to several therapists who specialize in trauma/PTSD as well as non-monogamy, because that is really what I’ve needed for years, I just haven’t been able to afford it. But now I finally can, and I want to work on myself and my dumb brain.

May 29th

Increasingly I feel like human civilization as I know it will end within my lifetime. Increasingly I find that tuning out the news and the world for periods of time is the only way I can even function. Increasingly I worry that dismantling capitalism is both the only solution to our major problems as a species and one of the only things we will never do.

July 17th

Matt went back home a couple days ago after living with me for 4 months of coronavirus lockdown. It was really hard for both of us. I cried a lot and they told me that my deep emotionality is a catch-22 because it makes the hard things extra hard but it also makes the good things extra good.

My days now are much more quiet, still, and unstructured without them here. I guess this is what quarantining alone would have been like. I’m not sure it’s all that great for my mental health but it’s also an opportunity to pursue any projects I feel like, read a lot of books, and play a lot of video games. I miss Matt but I like being alone, too. And I’m very very privileged and lucky to be able to do so safely, in such a hellish year.

I’m Engaged!!! Here’s the Story…

Kate Sloan
All the photos in this post are by the wonderful Ashe of Rose Glass Photography, who you should definitely hire for any and all romantic or boudoir photos if you can!

I’ve gone back and forth over the years about whether or not I want to get married. At times, I’ve thought marriage was a pointless patriarchal relic, or at least a bureaucratic process that sought to legitimize love through paperwork and ceremonies – none of which sounded very appealing to me. But as I’ve continued to grow, learn, and change, I’ve come to realize that – like many other modern-day traditions – weddings and marriage largely mean a very different thing now than they did at their inception, and that’s a good thing. Creating our own meanings for age-old rituals is one of the most powerful skills I’ve picked up from being a queer feminist.

Matt and I started talking about marriage a little over a year ago. I remember we were in a dimly-lit French restaurant, eating dinner at the bar, and they said something like: “Last week I was chatting with the woman next to me at the Gramercy Tavern, and I told her that my girlfriend lives in Canada, and she said, ‘Why don’t you just get married? It’ll make immigration easier.’ And I thought, why don’t we just get married?”

I was so surprised that I started literally crying into my food and Matt had to calm me down 😂  It was so affirming to hear this because I’d already basically accepted that me and Matt weren’t ever going to get married or be “life partners,” for a variety of life-circumstance reasons – but in my heart, I felt conflicted and sad about it. Of all the people I’ve dated, Matt seemed like the best long-term partner for me I could possibly imagine: we “get” each other on practically every level, make each other laugh all day every day, support each other when times are tough, and had already proven ourselves capable of working through relationship issues as they came up. Part of me had started to feel like, if I couldn’t marry the person I really wanted to marry, maybe I shouldn’t/wouldn’t marry anyone at all. That made me a bit sad, but also, as a queer non-monogamous kinky feminist, I felt I should probably just accept it, and continue living my unconventional life.

So obviously, I felt a lot of feelings when they brought up marriage as not only something we could do but something they wanted to do. This was also shortly after they came out as nonbinary, and they asked me later that night – tearfully, over tiki cocktails – whether I’d have any problem being spouses/life partners with “a gender-weirdo.” My answer: Of course not. They are the gender-weirdo that I love, and want to be with.

It was unclear for a long time exactly when we’d be able to get engaged and then get married, because of complications involving borders, work, and family, among other things – and then when the coronavirus hit, everything was even more up-in-the-air. Fearing oncoming border closures between our two countries (which did indeed happen), we spent 4 months quarantined together in my tiny Toronto apartment (along with my excellent sweetheart of a roommate and her two adorable cats), and it confirmed for us what we already suspected from shorter stretches of time we’d spent together: that we were indeed a good match, even in close quarters, even under dire circumstances.

Matt went back home in mid-July, and by mid-September we were missing each other so much it hurt. We’d never spent that much time apart in the entire course of our relationship (we’ve been blessed to always live only 500 miles apart, or about a 90-minute flight, which we do not take for granted, knowing that many other long-distance couples are not nearly that lucky). One night, on the phone, Matt said, “I’ve been doing research all day, and I have a romantic plan I’d like to propose. Would you like to hear it?” Their voice shook with nerves. I said yes.

They’d discovered a loophole of sorts in the border closure rules. While they were not allowed to fly up to Toronto, I was for some reason allowed to fly to New York (albeit with all the proper precautions, like pre-flight temperature screening, post-flight quarantining, masks, and contact tracing). They could only visit me if we were legal spouses (although this rule has since been overturned, LOL), so they suggested I fly down to see them and we get married. It would be a tiny, COVID-era wedding – just a few guests, socially distanced, with masks on, in a park somewhere. Sometime in the future, post-pandemic (if such a thing exists), we would have a bigger, more traditional wedding, with friends and family and catering and first dances and tossing the bouquet and so on.

I was nervous at first, and took a couple days to think about it – but upon pondering it more, it just made more and more sense to me. We’d wanted this for ages anyway – why not let the pandemic speed it up a little? Why not look the curveball that was COVID dead in the eye and knock it out of the park?

After I booked my plane tickets, we started plotting and planning. Being queer and progressive, we wanted to look critically at the trappings of marriage and decide which pieces we actually cared about and which we wanted to toss out. We talked about rings – I wanted an aquamarine as the central stone, not a traditional diamond (even though diamonds are, weirdly, my birthstone), both because blue has always been a significant color in our relationship and because I just… like blue. We talked about proposals – Matt wanted to do the asking, and I wanted to be asked, which worked out well. (We joked that they’re a “proposal top” and I’m a “proposal bottom.”) They asked what kind of proposal I ideally wanted – public or private? Surprising, or not at all? Lavish or low-key?

We both sorta disdained the whole “asking for your daughter’s hand in marriage” tradition, but I wanted to check with my parents incase it was important to them. (I know a lot of these way-old traditions feel important even if you know they’re irrational or even in direct conflict with your ethics.) I called them and asked, and they both said they didn’t care about that tradition at all because I am my own woman and I get to make my own choices, but that they adored Matt and knew we’d be happy together.

As I prepared for travel, Matt kept dropping inscrutable hints about the plans they were putting into motion. They told me they’d talked to a few jewellers; when they decided on the final ring, they texted photos to several of my friends and sent me screenshots of everyone’s reactions. (My favorite was Brent‘s; he said the ring looked like it had “mythical powers”!) One Saturday, they texted me, “I maybe am standing in the exact spot where I’m gonna propose to you…” I pried for details, but they wouldn’t tell me anything useful. So sneaky!

The day they actually proposed to me was Friday, October 23rd. In the afternoon, we had a Zoom meeting with a New York city clerk, whose job it was to check that we were physically in the same place and had our marriage documentation ready to go. Matt seemed super nervous beforehand, which was very out of character, so I should’ve guessed something was up! The clerk issued us our marriage license over the internet; it was very weird. Then Matt said, “We should go on a date tonight to celebrate! I’ll make some reservations.” Them handling our plans is the norm in our relationship, and part of our D/s dynamic, so it didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me at all that they were planning us a date without asking me for input or telling me where we’d be going.

It also wasn’t out of the ordinary that they picked my outfit. For the Zoom call, they’d put on a nice blue dress shirt that happened to be the same one they were wearing when we met. The dress they chose for me was also the same thing I was wearing on our first date… Again, I should have known something was going on! They put my collar on me, we applied matching lipstick (Tom Ford’s Cherry Lush, a fave), and then we got in an Uber.

I was a bit confused when we pulled up to the High Line, an elevated public park built on an old railway line, because I’d been under the impression we’d be going to a bar or restaurant. “There’s a bar up there,” Matt assured me (reader, there was not). We got into line and there’d been some technical problem with Matt’s reservation (they must’ve been SO freaked out!) but fortunately, the staff let us go up anyway.

The High Line is a special place for us because we hung out there the morning after our 2nd date, chatting, laughing, and basking in New Relationship Energy. At one point we were sitting on a bench and this little girl ran by; pointing at the railway, she asked her parents loudly, “Why are there train tracks?” and we spent a few minutes giggling over the philosophical rabbit hole that that question could be if viewed through a particular lens.

Back in the present, we strolled across the park, holding hands and marvelling at art, architecture, and autumn foliage we saw along the way. Eventually we reached a particularly beautiful lookout point, and Matt stopped walking. I stopped too, assuming they just wanted to take a moment to admire the view. (Although, honestly, a little bit of me was like, “Where’s that bar, tho?!”)

They asked if they could take off my mask for a sec, and they took theirs off too; I assumed they wanted a kiss. But then they got down on one knee. “HEY!” I yelled, caught off-guard.

Kneeling in front of me, they said, “I don’t know why there are train tracks, but I’m glad they led me to you, and to this moment. I’ve got you, I love you, and I want to be with you forever. Kate Sparkle Sloan, will you marry me?” They took out a Tiffany-blue ring box (I remember thinking, “Huh, that’s funny, that jeweller uses the same color as Tiffany’s does,” never once imagining the ring might actually be by Tiffany’s!) and showed me the ring. It was so completely stunning that I gasped. A vivid ice-blue aquamarine, surrounded by two sparkling diamond halos, set on a shining platinum band. Wow! I started crying, obviously. That’s a lot of information to process at once – that the love of your life not only wants to marry you but also bought you the most beautiful piece of jewelry you’ve ever seen!

Memories of this magnitude are really strange in the way the brain encodes them. I felt simultaneously like the entire image would be burned into my brain forever and like I was missing so many important details because I was just too gobsmacked to process anything properly. It’s funny how, even though I already knew they planned on proposing at some point, the actual event still felt shocking and exciting like it had been a total surprise.

I said yes (of course!!), and they tried to slip the ring onto my right hand, so I said, “Doesn’t it go on the other hand?” and we had a funny moment of confusion until we got it right. They stood up and we hugged and kissed. “Bex and Ashe are here somewhere, but I think they got a bit turned around,” Matt said. Indeed, my best friend Bex and his partner Ashe – who is also a pal of ours and happens to be a professional photographer with a lot of proposals/weddings in their portfolio – had come to surprise me! The plan had been for Ashe to photograph the actual proposal, but the High Line is a super confusing place so they hadn’t actually made it there in time. But, by some ridiculous stroke of luck, a woman who happened to be walking by had snapped a few shots of the proposal on her phone, and came up to us a couple minutes afterward to ask if we’d like to have them. She AirDropped them to me and I was so grateful for her kindness!

Ashe and Bex finally caught up with us, and I cried even more when I saw them. Ashe, who is super professional, skilled, and brilliant, directed us through a re-creation of the proposal, which fortunately we were able to pull off pretty well, perhaps because of both having grown up doing theatre…! Then we strolled along the rest of the High Line doing an impromptu engagement photoshoot (well, I guess it was only impromptu from my perspective), Ashe directing us the whole way and making us feel cute as hell.

At some point, a random man came up to us (wearing a mask) and yelled, “Congratulations!!! …from six feet away, of course.” It was so funny. I love New Yorkers.

After that, the four of us went to La Bain – the rooftop bar on top of the Standard High Line hotel, where we stayed on our second date – and got celebratory drinks and snacks. (Matt had champagne, I had a dirty martini, we split some oysters, yummm.) I carefully crafted an Instagram post announcing the engagement, and it immediately started to get a lot of, um, engagement. We both called our parents and told them the good news. I also talked to my brother, who told me Matt had showed him the ring a while back and that he’d thought it was perfect for me. (It is!)

After drinks, we said good night to our pals and made our way to Upland, the glowy golden restaurant where we had dinner on our second date. It was so special and magical to revisit a place that has taken on such massive mythological meaning in my mind over the years. I felt just as nervous and excited as I did on that date, just in altogether different ways. We spent much of our meal giggling over proposal logistics and swilling champagne that the restaurant thoughtfully brought over for us.

The whole night made me feel incredibly loved and valued – by Matt, and by our friends and family. It was such a wonderful evening of closeness and joy in a year that has otherwise been defined (for me and for everyone) by distance and worry. I’m overcome with gratitude to Matt for loving me this much and showing me their love so tangibly and frequently. I’m excited I get to spend forever showing them my love too! ❤️

My Top 10 Favorite Songs About Marriage

Kate Sloan
The closest thing I have to a photo of me in a wedding dress.

I’m a romantic sap and I don’t care who knows it. I cry at Hallmark cards, I sob whenever I watch the episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married, and I certainly weep profusely at real-life weddings. What can I say?

I once briefly dated someone who edited wedding videos for a living, and he frequently lamented how boring certain songs get after a while. (You would not believe how many millennials want Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life” to feature prominently in their nuptials. Or maybe you would.) That said, wedding-related songs still get me all choked up pretty much whenever I listen to them, whether they’re about beautiful brides for marriage, or offbeat vows, or an oddly-romantic desire not to get married. Here are 10 of my faves…

The Magnetic Fields – It’s Only Time

Why would I stop loving you a hundred years from now?/ It’s only time/ What could stop this beating heart once it’s made a vow?/ It’s only time

This is my #1, play-this-at-my-wedding, first-dance-contender, most romantic song ever. I once sang it and played it on the ukulele in Malta while my cousin walked down the aisle; she hadn’t heard the song before I presented it as an option, but she quickly fell in love with it, as did basically the entire wedding party. Stephin Merritt is a brilliant songwriter, blessed with the ability to write lyrics that are quirky and quixotic sometimes, and utterly classic and simple at other times. This song is of the latter type – it feels, somehow, like it has always existed, since the birth of love.

Rosie Thomas – Wedding Day

I’m gonna stop at every bar/ And flirt with the cowboys in front of their girlfriends/ It’s gonna be so great/ It’s gonna be just like my wedding day

This isn’t actually about a wedding – it’s kind of about a rejection of romance and an embracing of self-love instead, with Rosie sweetly breathing lines like “I’ve had enough of love; it feels good to give up, so good to be good to myself.” But your relationship with yourself is so deeply rooted, so permanent and important, that it may as well be a marriage, am I right?

Tegan and Sara – BWU

All the girls I loved before/ Told me they signed up for more/ Save your first and last chance for me/ ‘Cause I don’t want a white wedding

I have a long-standing theory that Tegan Quin is anxiously attached (to use the parlance of the psychological concept known as attachment theory) while her sister, Sara, is avoidantly attached. You can see the difference easily if you know which T&S songs are written and sung by each sister: Tegan’s songs tend to be desperate “I want you to love me/Why don’t you love me?!” bops, while some of Sara’s greatest hits include lines like “I’m not unfaithful but I’ll stray,” “I swear I tried to leave you at least a hundred times a day,” and – yes – “I don’t want a white wedding.” I admire her level of self-knowledge; I just suuuper don’t want to date someone who approaches relationships the way she does (or the way she seems to in her songs)!

Alvvays – Archie, Marry Me

You’ve expressed explicitly/ Your contempt for matrimony/ You’ve student loans to pay/ And will not risk the alimony

This is a song about a girl trying to convince a boy to marry her. Even though she sounds feminine and sweet, there is something remarkably brash about it. “Hey, hey,” she sings in the chorus, “marry me, Archie.” I admire that level of straightforwardness, and of clarity of desire!

Punch Brothers – Don’t Get Married Without Me

Let’s not fool ourselves/ Taking a break is dragging out a break-up too long/ Help yourself to whatever you like with whomever you like/ But don’t get married without me

The feeling expressed in this song is one I’m sure a lot of us have felt, even if we’re not proud of it: the sense that, even when you’ve broken up with someone, you still have (or want to have) some sense of ownership over them. It’s a shitty monogamy-culture knee-jerk reaction, but what can ya do. I like that this song has a sense of humor about itself; clearly Chris Thile knows how ridiculous it would be to put conditions on the romantic life of someone you’re dumping, but it’s an impulse that comes up nonetheless.

Death Cab For Cutie – Cath…

You said your vows/ And you closed the door/ On so many men/ Who would have loved you more

Ben Gibbard, for some reason, is really good at writing songs about women with romantic regrets. (See also: “Lady Adelaide,” the solo-project track of his that makes me weep for a fictional character.) I find this song relatable even though I’ve never been married; being romantically entangled with “a well-intentioned man” while your “heart is dying fast” is a tough spot to be in, and yet I think a lot of us have experienced some version of that. You want to get out, but you’re worried about what’ll happen if you do.

The Japanese House – Worms

Sharing your house/ Sharing your life/ Sharing your home/ There’s so much pressure not to be alone

I feel this song in the marrow of my bones. It feels like a post-breakup anxiety spiral: “She’s my lullaby and I can’t sleep right,” Amber Bain warbles mournfully, before deep-diving into feelings of large-scale rejection and loneliness. She’s right that our culture is overinvested in pairing people up, and in making single people feel like shit.

Company – Getting Married Today

Listen, everybody/ Look, I don’t know what you’re waiting for/ A wedding? What’s a wedding?/ It’s a prehistoric ritual/ Where everybody promises fidelity forever/ Which is maybe the most horrifying word I’ve ever heard

Just about everything Stephen Sondheim writes is gold, but this is a fave of mine. It’s a nervous breakdown in song form: Amy, a neurotic bride-to-be, has a panic attack the morning of her wedding and enumerates all the reasons she can’t possibly go through with it. I like to think that if I ever get married, I’ll listen to this on the day of, just to bring those last-minute jitters to the surface and exorcize them so I can proceed.

West Side Story – One Hand, One Heart

Make of our hands one hand/ Make of our hearts one heart/ Make of our vows one last vow/ Only death will part us now

On the opposite end of the spectrum, here is a musical theatre song about a wedding gone right. Tony and Maria – based on Romeo and Juliet – sing this beautiful love duet to bind them together. It’s so over-the-top that I think it would actually be too cheesy to be a first-dance song… and yet, I love it.

John Mayer – Home Life

I can tell you this much/ I will marry just once/ And if it doesn’t work out/ Give her half of my stuff/ It’s fine with me/ We said eternity

The J-man has a bit of a reputation as a player, so it’s rare for him to grapple with questions of domesticity and long-term love in his songs, but he does in this one. Mayer has never gotten married as of yet, but has been romantically tied to the likes of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Katy Perry. Guess he didn’t click with any of them enough to have “said eternity” with ’em.

What are your favorite songs about weddings/marriage?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.