On the night of the shower for Graciela Braslavsky, Andy Cohen was still working through some of the issues that gay men have when a woman they worship gets married.... Cohen, a thirty-year-old senior producer at CBS News, who was hosting the shower for gay men only in a friend's East Village duplex, ... was feeling other things, too: threatened, even by the bride's "incredibly tolerant" fiancé; concerned that the bride's downtown divadom would be dissolved by what he called her "unfathomable lunge into possible domestic bliss"; and alarmed that she had already moved to the Upper East Side. "This is such a mindblower on so many levels," Cohen said with a sigh. Although he was excited about the upcoming wedding in Vermont, Cohen doesn't normally like weddings. "They depress me," he said as his guests arrived. "I usually end up dancing with my mom." ...Bob Morris, again, in the "Styles" section of the previous day's New York Times:The bride-to-be, an ebullient producer for VH1, arrived with a new Britt Ecklund hairdo.... The lights were dim, the drinks were stiff, the music was loud, and in the bathroom the toilet seat was up all night.... But in most respects it might have been any bridal shower. There were guests who love weddings and guests who hate them, guests in black and guests not in black.... The invitation had specified "no gifts bought above Eighteenth Street or having to do with kitchens or bathroom or china," but the admonishment hardly seemed necessary.....
The bride, who is registered at Bergdorf Goodman and Trash and Vaudeville, looked up and asked, "Hey, who's keeping a list for my thank-you notes?" Nobody, but by then it was too late to worry about anything, even two female gate crashers who had come in around midnight and were getting drinks at the bar. "Should I throw them out?" Cohen asked the guest of honor. "No, I'm open," Braslavsky told him....
Marriage, of course—for Romeo and Juliet, Henry VIII and the Duke of Windsor to Dennis Rodman and Adam Sandler in "The Wedding Singer"—is a frequent source of trauma, and wedding anxiety is a nondiscriminatory phenomenon that crosses religious and sexual lines. But for gay men and women, the quintessential rite of homosexual life presents a unique set of anxieties....
"For gay people, weddings are always a reminder of being outsiders," said Charles Silverstein, an Upper West Side psychologist and the author of several books about homosexuality. "Even when people are welcoming, as they usually are these days, weddings can be extremely alienating experiences. They raise all sorts of ambivalence and take on a meaning far greater than any part ever should."
In modern society, in fact, from Oscar Wilde to Isaac Mizrahi, gay people have often developed senses of humor as defense mechanisms, making them particularly entertaining as hosts and guests. They are often called upon at weddings to serve as toastmasters, or to offer last-minute style tips about the bride's bouquet or the bridegroom's mother's shade of lipstick. "It always seems to be our job to loosen things up and provide a spark," said Ted Krukel, a press agent, who also believes that gay men buy the best presents.... "And of course, we're needed. I often find myself being asked to make a toast that will be a nice tonic to the tedium of the proceedings." ...
Ultimately, for all their resentment and paranoia (not always justified), many gay people know that weddings are a trial that everyone must bear, gay and straight....
