Truth be told, we had been walking around for months already referring to ourselves as married…in French. It was just easier–and “fiancé(e)” sounds pretentious enough in English. In French it’s really just unbearable.
Besides, the minister kept telling us that the whole wedding thing was just confirming the relationship we already had. So I think it’s fairly understandable that we didn’t expect much to change.
And much hasn’t…exactly. But that’s not all of it.
I’ve heard a lot about marriage and non-marriage lately, obviously. Like, about couples who have lived together for decades, having decided early on that the convention of marriage was unnecessary. And then, more to the point, about one such couple who decided to get married after all.
“It can’t have been a huge change,” my mother teased the groom.
“Honestly,” he said, “I was incredibly nervous.”
Even changing your name is a pain in the neck without a marriage license (although I suppose that couples intent on ignoring convention probably don’t care so much). It’s freakishly easy with one–time-consuming, sure, but easy. Apparently, all I need is…the marriage license. I don’t have to fill anything out, swear to anything, explain anything; there’s no form. I just send the license off to the passport office, then take it and/or the new passport around to the bank, the French government–you know. Wherever. It’s just…shouldn’t there be a form?
There is something different now, although it’s hard to put my finger on it. For one thing, throwing around “husband” and “wife” in English is not the same as doing it in French. “Mari” and “femme” are just words to us; they don’t have any cultural weight behind them. But then Nick walked in from an errand and called out his usual greeting: “Hi puppy! Hi fiancée!” And we blinked at each other for a few seconds until he tried it again: “Hi…wife!”
Crazy.
It’s not so much that our relationship–I mean the part really between us–has changed, but it feels like we occupy a different place in society now. Not one of those annoying, smug, “So when are you going to finally settle down?” places, like something out of a thirty-something-single-woman-trying-to-learn-to-love-herself-type novel (not yet, anyway). More like, it was bizarre to realize that we never have to worry about anyone’s objections to our sleeping arrangements again. Not that Nick ever worried that much, but it’s been a thing now and then. We are unquestionably legitimate as a couple, which is a subtle but distinct shift in perceptions.
Really, it’s rather nice.