I just wanted to get married

I met Melissa in Dec. of 2007. She was everything I had been looking for. She is my other half. We got pretty serious, and July 30th, 2008, right in our front yard, she gave me a diamond ring and asked me to marry her. Friends and family were just as happy as we were. I wanted to tell the world how excited I was. I wanted a nice ceremony, a place to celebrate, my dad to give me away, and be able to choose where and when we would be exchanging vows. As the planning started I realized these small things that are taken for granted by the straight community, I could not do. The first thing was that I was warned not to place any type of engagement photo in the Titusville Herald because of what had happened when you put your announcement in the Derrick. The last thing we wanted was to stir anything up. Although my friends and family supported us, we were scared the support would no longer be there if there was any type of negative feedback. We were already hearing things like.. "You know, this isn't a REAL wedding", and "Watch what you tell people, there are protesters out there", "Don't make it too big, you don't want to draw attention to yourself", and my personal favorite, "You realize this is not legal". I was well aware that my marital status was still going to be single in Pennsylvania's eyes, I didn't need to hear it from anyone I cared about. When I started to find a place to rent for the ceremony, I got lucky. We were told by others not to say what we needed the hall for, so we didn't. I thought we had a date in April and place to celebrate in stone. Got the invitations printed, things were bought, plans were made. But, sadly, do to money issues, we had to let that one go. That is where things got bad. I did not get the best response when we tried to find another spot. One place told me that they couldn't let us have the room because they didn't want any "instances" ! Many places were telling me that they would "get back" to me, but never did.. Finally I found a little meeting room that belonged to a local church. It was the first bite I had, so we took it. We would have to changed the date.. but at least it was a place. We redid the invitations, and within 3 weeks...certain people found out the location, we were forced to change it, because it was against the catholic church. I was back to square 1.. no place... my mom asked me what i thought about an outside wedding.. maybe at a pavilion. It was too cold in PA to have an outside wedding in April... So we changed the date for 3rd time. This time it was going to be May 16, 2009. We again lied about why we needed the pavilion. We told them it was an anniversary party for my parents. We redid the invitations for the 3rd time.. changed everything around, all to keep from being "outed" to the anti-gays around here. It was complete bullshit. After all the stress and tears, we had our day.. it was beautiful and we had a lot of support show up!!! Although it may not look like much here on paper, it was very sad and unnecessary to have to fight so hard just for us to have our day !!! I hope this helps at least one person!!!