This weekend marks many good things for us. First, the major news on the Supreme Court ruling is one that we cannot simply pass by. While those of us in the State of Washington have been able to marry for many years now (since Dominic was a mere 3 weeks old), the hard work and sacrifices of many dedicated people have brought equality to the US. Not too long ago, it would have been unthinkable for Andy and I to be adopting children and expanding our family. Today, families like ours are rapidly becoming...normal. Even though that makes life a little less exciting, it's a great step forward.
This ruling also coincides well with Pride weekend here in Seattle. While we didn't spray paint Dominic's short-lived mohawk into a rainbow (we're terrible parents!), it is great to realize that Dominic will be growing up in a world where Pride will an occasion of celebration and fun rather than a struggle for basic human rights and recognition.
Now, on to the lighter stuff as this is a blog all about our adoption! Today marks Day 387 in the waiting pool. It also marks the day where we've submitted updates for all of our outward facing adoption materials!
Sneak Preview - Pg 1 of our New Family Book
Back in April, we began the semi-herculean effort to update our family book, letter, and online photos from scratch. Technically, we could just throw some things together and call it good. However, I'm an OCD engineer and I nit pick on every single detail, sentence, layout, and photo.
As part of our process, we've had one photo shoot with our amazing friendtographer Amy, dug through literally thousands of other photos from the past few years, and then written and rewritten content over countless evenings, nights, bus rides, plane flights, and random musings in the shower. (You know those times when you shake yourself out of your thoughts and realize you've been standing there in the shower doing nothing for 15 minutes?) Suffice it to say, this is a big milestone and I'm thrilled to be at this point.
Pretty soon, we'll have a new update to post once OA&FS makes the content update to the website official. Not quite the same as an announcement of being chosen, but it's still a pretty cool accomplishment given that I'm really digging our new formatting!
First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes baby in a baby carriage!
... oh, right. How about this one:
First comes love,
Then comes baby,
Then comes marriage in a state-sanctioned ceremony?
In general, Brian and I have tried to stay away from posting too much about political topics here, preferring instead to focus on adoption and how we're creating our family. But the events of this past weekend deserve at least a passing mention! Back in February, Brian wrote about how our governor signed a marriage equality bill into law, meaning that we might soon be able to get married. And this weekend, on December 9, 2012, we did just that!
We got married!
Taking a step back, I should say that marriage equality has been quite the journey in Washington state. After our legislature passed the law and the governor signed it in February, a signature drive ensured that the law would actually go up for a popular vote in the November election. The ensuing months were nerve-wracking, especially since no marriage equality measures in the US had ever passed in a vote before. But after an unprecedented amount of success on November 6, we finally had an answer: our home state was ready to recognize that our relationship is just as valid as any other!
Laws passed by referenda in Washington take effect 30 days after the election, so marriage equality became official on December 6. And so down we went to the King County Administrative Building to get our licenses, just about as soon as we could! They opened at 12:01am that morning, and stayed open until 6:30pm - the previous record of 212 licenses issued in a day was already shattered in the first three hours. All told, there were 489 couples issued a license that first day. Amazing!
We wanted to try to avoid the rush, especially since we had to take care of Dominic, so we waited until after he woke us up for a 3am feeding to go downtown. My mom stayed and watched him while we left, and around 3:45 we were couple number 243 in line:
They still gave us a number, even though
there was almost no line at 3:45am.
By this time of the morning, the midnight rush had all but dissipated, and there were only 5 or 6 couples ahead of us in line. We whisked right through it, and before we knew it had a marriage license!
Brian was tired, but waited patiently.
Mission Accomplished!
Despite the thinning out of the crowd, King County Executive Dow Constantine was still there after 4 hours, signing personalized commemorative marriage licenses for any couple who wanted one. And as a symbolic gesture, he was using the same pen that Governor Christine Gregoire used to sign the marriage equality bill into law. I'm still astounded at the level of support from our elected officials; this was just the first of many examples.
Marriage license signed by King County Executive Dow Constantine.
After getting the license, Washington has a mandatory 3-day waiting period for all couples. The first day for weddings, therefore, was December 9, 2012. City Hall had pulled together an all-volunteer wedding day, free for any couple who wanted to come and get married; and somehow, Brian and I managed to RSVP quickly enough to get a spot! We were one of 142 couples scheduled to marry on that first day in Seattle City Hall. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn was on hand, greeting couples as they entered:
With Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, just before our wedding
And how wonderful to have Dominic join us!
Two grooms and a baby!
All the judges were donating their time too.
Brian and I have an absolutely wonderful set of family and friends, and we were pleased to have a small group join us for the ceremony. My parents were able to be there, as well as a couple friends who were in our original wedding party two years ago. And of course Dominic was there, and his birth mom Carly came up from Tacoma to join in the festivities as well.
What a wonderful, joy-filled day. Getting married ourselves was exciting, of course, but seeing so many happy couples everywhere was one of the most heart-warming feelings ever. Every few minutes there'd be a fresh round of cheers from some new couple getting married, just adding to the joy.
As we left City Hall, we got to make an exit down the grand staircase to a crowd of cheering people - talk about surreal! Dominic made the trek with us, and it was captured by a few different folks:
I love watching all the happy couples come down the stairs!
We're at about the 1:35 mark.
So now we're an "official" family! Brian and I have considered ourselves a married couple since our wedding in July 2010, but it's still an absolutely momentous day when the state recognizes us as the same. Congrats to all the other happy couples as well!
For those of you that have read most of our posts, you might remember how Andy and I decided on a single family last name back in August. That post touched on each option we looked at and how we went with Magee. However, we also decided not to start the name change right away. In our home state of Washington, marriage is up for a vote in the November election. With polling looking favorable, Andy and I thought that we'd celebrate being officially married (rather than in a domestic partnership) by doing the name change after the election. Of course, recent events have certainly changed that timeline since we want the adoption to reflect our joint last name!
It hasn't even been two full weeks since got the call, but it's been a
busy time for us. After expecting a wait much closer to 2 full years, we've
been crunching a lot of things into a short time frame! One thing on my
end has been the name change...and wow. I never knew it would be
so involved, or maybe I was just in denial. The latter might be more
accurate :)
Changing your name is both surprisingly easy and also really, really hard. Going through the process of filing with the court and then sitting in a court hearing for your 60 seconds of glory with the judge - easy. Chasing down all of the following - hard:
> Drivers license, social security, vehicle registration, voter registration, insurance, bank accounts, work information, utilities, email accounts, passport, etc.
After meandering my way through part of the process, here's some tips that I'd pass on to any of you that might consider a name change in the future:
Give yourself a timeline (I'd procrastinate for weeks if not for the adoption)
If you have to file in court, never assume a court time of 1:05pm means your hearing will actually be at 1:05pm. Taking War & Peace to read while you wait your turn is entirely appropriate.
Never change your name the week of a voter registration deadline
Time your process to avoid airline flights. I'm traveling on Friday and am waiting for TSA to hate on me.
Think ahead about all of your accounts for email, twitter, skype, etc. If your accounts all have your old last name, decide if you want to keep them or switch to new ones.
Practice signing your new name before you look incredibly incompetent as you sign your brand new drivers license that will stay with you for years.
Note: Moving your old last name to your middle name is great as you can smoothly transition from signing your old name into just signing your new full name.
Make a list of everything you need to update no matter how small. Otherwise things are guaranteed to fall through the cracks.
With all of that, I'm not done with the process, but I'm far enough along that I'm going to switch to my new name in the most official place possible: Facebook! Ok, maybe not the most legally official place, but just roll with it :)
With current events this past week, I wanted to use this weekend's
post to delve into their importance for us. On Monday, our governor
signed into law a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington.
Shortly afterwards, New Jersey's legislature voted to approve same-sex
marriage as well. Friday, Maryland took a leap forward with an
unexpected vote in support of marriage too. While all of this is
momentous, I'm going to try to sidestep the political element of these
events because this is actually an adoption blog. (Crazy!)
Naturally,
we are on the path to adoption because we, as two men, can not have
kids on our own. However, I really believe that it is important for our
family to represent what all families strive to be, a loving,
stable, and happy family. When people love each other in our society,
they get married. We think it's important to be married because it
shows our commitment to each other and our children. Marriage is a
lifelong commitment - just like adoption.
In
July of 2010, Andy and I got married. While we use the
term "married," we have technically been in a domestic partnership. As
we tend to forge our own path a lot of times, using the term marriage
felt right. We also knew that there would be a time in the future when
marriage equality would become a reality for us. With some luck, our
first child will be able to be welcomed into a household with married
parents which is truly exciting!
This weekend marks many good things for us. First, the major news on the Supreme Court ruling is one that we cannot simply pass by. While those of us in the State of Washington have been able to marry for many years now (since Dominic was a mere 3 weeks old), the hard work and sacrifices of many dedicated people have brought equality to the US. Not too long ago, it would have been unthinkable for Andy and I to be adopting children and expanding our family. Today, families like ours are rapidly becoming...normal. Even though that makes life a little less exciting, it's a great step forward.
This ruling also coincides well with Pride weekend here in Seattle. While we didn't spray paint Dominic's short-lived mohawk into a rainbow (we're terrible parents!), it is great to realize that Dominic will be growing up in a world where Pride will an occasion of celebration and fun rather than a struggle for basic human rights and recognition.
