As should be expected with anything involving the couple, this is not going to be your typical wedding. The guest list is limited a a few close friends and family members and the venue is, shall we say, somewhat nontraditional....

Faire gates open at 11 a.m. the day of the wedding (Saturday, September 25). Our ceremony is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. (This means we'll be in a frantic panic of preparation until around 4:15 and should recover from our emotional breakdowns in time to begin around 4:30 or so.)

We expect our guests may be unfamiliar with elements of the "formal" nuptials : a Handfasting and self-solemnizing ceremony. Our choice of venue was more than just a random ethanol-influenced lark... Not much more, to be honest, but a little bit. We felt that the sheer nerdiness... queerness... of a carefully choreographed and manipulated anachronism - a world of professional LARPers and rabid period enthusiasts so dedicated to Method Acting that they are case studies for unhealthy levels of personal dissociation - was as close as it gets to finding "our people". Meanwhile, nerds, geeks, and other Queer Folk mix and mingle... Their independent spirit (read: mild antisocial tendencies) provides a steady, yet ineffable randomness - a subversive, farcical element clawing at the Fourth Wall. These are the Quixotic champions who, much like Tamarians and 4Chan Kiddies, speak in memes and metaphors.

But, we digress...

This is a very long way of saying that our nuptials are drawn from a rich cultural and political history. There will be no officiant at the ceremony as we are holding what is known as a Self Solemnizing Ceremony. Everything about our union - everything about our relationship - has been unexpected. It is unique (in a knowing, non-clichéd way)... And, as people who have been disillusioned by the Institution of Marriage, we decided to flip the script. Now the patients are in charge of this Institution.

Back to the History Lesson: If you're looking through the historical record for groups that consistently (and respectfully) rejected the pervasive influences of the status quo... Those folks who were labeled as militant anti fascists before the days of Fox News and Newsmax... Well, there's a lot to be said about some of Pennsylvania's first colonists: Members of the Religious Society of Friends: The Quakers.

For the uninitiated, Quakers have little to do with oatmeal or industrial lubricants. They're most notable for their cultural and religious rites - if one is to refer to them as such. Known as the Religious Society of Friends, adherents do not attend formal churches, at least as such are known within the Western Judeo-Christian conventions. Meetings are held in members' homes or, more rarely, centrally Meeting Houses. All religious practices are facilitated by the laity (on a rotating basis, promoting their egalitarian ethos) and therefore religious rites would be administered by the adherents themselves.

This creates a problem when religious rites begin to transcend that brittle Theological Divide - the Separation of Church & State. As government began to wade in to the murkiness surrounding property rights - particularly inheritances, taxes, duties, and the like - it became necessary to create rules for the establishment and annulment of legal institutions that affected the validity of such rights. Thus, Government further developed the concept of Synthetic Personhood: the creation of the Marital Estate.

This was problematic for Pennsylvania's earliest colonists. American Colonies were established under English Common Law which respects the establishment of state-sponsored religion (as anyone familiar with the trials and travails of Henry VIII should well know). So, when government began to create a secular legal construct (the Marital Estate) for what is an inherently ephemeral cultural phenomenon, they pushed the Easy Button. The rules for who could be married, how those marriages were to be performed, and the verification of the events were taken verbatim from prevailing religious doctrine. The Kingdom of England codified the matrimonial dogma of the Church of England (and, among divorce attorneys, there was much rejoicing).

This didn't fly in Pennsylvania. The Province-cum-Commonwealth owes its very existence to a personal vendetta based upon war; a lot of debt, some greed for flavor and a heaping helping a skulduggery. King Charles II made a shrewd maneuver when he deeded vast swaths of other people's land to William Penn. The King owed a small fortune to the Penn family thanks to the loyalty of Sir William Penn (a valued admiral and father to the beatnik revolutionary who founded the Commonwealth). Unfortunately, the younger Penn proved to be a far less valuable ally. A devoted Quaker and social activist, Penn would be imprisoned at the Tower of London multiple times. He authored a treatise on religious liberty and the need for secular government: No Cross. No Crown.

Giving Penn title to what would become Pennsylvania and Delaware solved several of Charles' problems: he showed that the Sovereign honored his debts, got rid of a political agitator, and provided a relief valve for removing politically unwanted individuals and groups. Penn got to play around with such revolutionary concepts as "religious liberty" and "equality" and Pennsylvania developed a mechanism to respect common law and the needs of these 17th Century Hippies: Self Solemnizing Marriage.

To this day, Pennsylvania is one of three states to recognize marriages performed without an officiant. The Marriage License is issued in a special format that recognizes the authority of two witnesses to affirm that the parties agreed to be bound in matrimony. That's it. No judges. No mayors. No pastors, priests, or rabbis. (See 23 Pa. C.S. § 1502, et seq.)

The people who matter at this ceremony will be the People Who Matter: Those we love.