Weddings at their best are celebrations, a fantastic excuse to get all of your family and friends together for one ginormous, happy party in your honor. They can suck, obviously, but the overwhelming number of them, I think, are wonderful occasions.

Which is all the more reason there should be more opportunities to have as many of them as possible. Support gay marriage!

I think the point of a wedding is to formally cement the union with the witness of your friends and family. Plus, I kinda love a good wedding.

You know, one of the arguments they've pulled out against gay marriage is that it would be a burden on small businesses, with having to provide spousal benefits to the married gay people; one line was somthing about suddenly someone who didn't have a spouse does.

So how would that be different from the old-fashioned kind of marriage?

My 24 year-old self loved the idea/execution of a formal wedding. After all, to this day I still love any excuse to dress up.

However, my 41 year-old self would just as soon run off to some deserted beach with just the beloved. Have a party afterwards for friends that's relaxed and fun.

Lessons learned over time.

suddenly someone who didn't have a spouse does.

And yet companies all over the country are extending benefits to domestic partners.

If marriage didn't exist legally couples could do what polyamorous families have done for years in order to secure the same rights as married folk: form a corporation.

A friend of mine, who's over 40 and getting married for the first time, is having a fancy wedding. She's having it in Florida, on the beach at sunset, with a reception on the hotel terrace afterwards.

Her logic is that, since she's paid up for showers, wedding presents, bridesmaid dresses, and emotional support for the brides for many years and many weddings, now that it's her turn she's going to do it up right.

If I ever got married again I don't think I'd have a big to-do unless my fiance(e)(s) were really into it.

If I ever get married, I'd want something low-key and inexpensive. I mean, why spend $10k or $20k when that money could be used for a down-payment for a house or something?

Wait, which parents are supposed to pay for the wedding?

"This person who wasn't part of my family before IS, now." for all sorts of legal reasons, and I can't see calling that anything but marriage.

See, I'm of the radical thought that all marriages between same sex, different sex, box turtle and vulcan etc etc should be made into domestic partnerships in the eyes of the government. If folks want some kind of religious or spiritual wedding beyond that, then it is their deal, and it's between them and their church, or synagogue, or spaghetti monster, or whatever.

The legal domestic partnership is about the legal rights afforded. The marriage is about whatever spirituality the couple may, or may not want to add onto that.

As an atheist it bugs the crap out of me that religion gets into the middle of a legal partnership.

Wait, which parents are supposed to pay for the wedding?

Traditionally, the bride's parents. I think it might be more common these days to spilt the bill.