Blogs

Who could've guessed that the wedding we'd spent the last year saving and planning for would be cancelled because some guy in China ate a bat? I mean what were the chances! According to our insurance company, quite high as they're not giving us a penny.

So with no wedding and no money what were two gorgeous lesbians supposed to do on the special date that we'd already had engraved on our wedding rings? Host an unofficial wedding in our living room and live stream it online of course.

We decided to do this to a) show our love for each other, b) keep our family and friends' spirits up and c) morally not have to give back the cordless Dyson that we received as an early wedding present. Seriously, it's our favorite thing in our house besides our guinea pigs. We love it so much that we've even come close to using the actual thing.

Our living room was full of wedding sweets and decorations that we had bought, made and acquired, but now they mocked us while we watched Carole Baskin and her big kitty kat rescue. NO MORE! We stuffed all the decorations into the storage cupboard and slammed the door before gravity could take over.

The day had finally arrived, our lounge looked lovely and we were all set to go live at 2 p.m. Now just to sort out what the hell we have to do to go live on Facebook and make sure that my mum was watching the right thing and not just staring at a picture of me from 12 years ago.

"Mum, can you see Suz waving in front of the camera?"

"Which camera?"

"On Facebook, Mum. Are you watching it? Suz is waving to see if you can see it."

"Oh"

"..."

"Yes, I can see someone waving."

"GREAT! Now don't move or touch anything."

With three minutes to go the anxiety and emotions had set in, but we were keeping composed. Well, we were until Suz's parents sent us a picture of them in their wedding outfits with glasses of bubbly ready for the ceremony that they'd somehow managed to get on their TV. I gave an emotional Suz a hug while also quickly texting my own parents to make sure that my dad had his pants on and Mum had her teeth in.

Three, two, one and we were live. The ceremony was beautiful, fun and also really quick - seven minutes in total and we had over 150 people watching, which was more than we had invited to the real ceremony because at 57 per head we had to decide whether we loved Uncle Robert and his three children enough or whether they could just come to the evening bit.

Once the ceremony was over we gathered our tech-savvy family members and friends on Zoom, and our best friend from Australia read out his speech. We all toasted our new unofficial marriage, got drunk and said goodbye so Suz and I could go and consummate the marriage. And by consummate the marriage I mean take a two-hour nap and then play with her VR set on the Play Station until 2 a.m.

Our proper ceremony will be in Scotland where we can enjoy the gorgeous views, the adorable highland cows and my cockney South London father in a kilt. But for now, I will enjoy the self-isolation with my unofficial wife while vacuuming every floor surface in my flat. Perfect.

- Jenna Wimshurst

Jenna is a writer and performer of humorous blogs, videos, essays and books about travel, comedy and lesbian culture. She also likes dogs, the Dixie Chicks and referring to herself in the third person.