Like a horse and carriage?

Hello, dear raccoon sisters. Today, in what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, my stepsister Sara is getting married. It's in a really cute little outdoor place with a brick path, peony beds, and a white gazebo all overlooking a still pond (mosquitos aaah!). Grace and I are providing the accompanying music, both for entertainment and (separately) to sanctify the occasion. As far as the traditional wedding music goes, she's playing the Pachelbel Canon in D, bridal march, and wedding march on saxophone along with a pianist and bassist while I am singing a corny wedding song ("Yours, Mine and Ours") to accompany the lighting of the "unity candle" during the ceremony. Then Grace and I sing a special duet that we wrote (I wrote lyrics, she wrote music) which is also a goopy wedding song, after the exchanging of rings and before the wedding march. It's a pretty good song for a wedding song, though, so Dad's going to get it listed on some kind of wedding song catalogue and maybe people will use it and then Grace and I will get paid! Something like that.

So of course, being this closely connected to a wedding (the fourth wedding Grace and I have gone to and the second we've participated in, incidentally) is stirring thoughts of my own somewhat-impending day of matrimony in my poor little head. I have slightly mixed feelings about the whole institution of marriage, first of all. Why was marriage invented (I've heard it was just so people would be accountable for all the bastard children running around, way back when)? Who/what gives marriage its legal, cultural, and emotional power? Does the traditional meaning of marriage change in light of gay marriage and civil unions? Why would my junior year history teacher, a man I highly respect, choose to live with and have children with - but not marry - his female partner? Does getting married inevitably doom a once joyful and exciting relationship to everlasting dullness? Would infidelity hurt more if you and your partner were married or not married but living together for a long time? With so much talk of marriage being a "unity" and "making two people one," how does a married couple find a balance between acting as a single unit and facing the physical reality of being two separate people with different abilities, thoughts, and experiences?

I also just read a Time article claiming, among other things, that children have an overall slightly negative impact on their parents' happiness instead of being the amazing boon it is assumed to be (the article concludes, however, that when placed in context, this is something to be celebrated). AAAAAAAAAH! But I'm so not going to go into my insecurities regarding having kids.


The way things are going, I'm going to be married within 6 years and have a kid within 10. I really hope I'm ready by then.

Gloominess aside, it's a fine day for a wedding!

P.S. - Wad, are you going to be home the last week of July (24-31)?