As close as she thought she'd ever get to a wedding gown.

In May 2009, my partner Eileen and I, after 28 years of ‘shacking up,’ had a ‘civil union’ in Montclair. Before the private family ceremony in our living room, I went to the Montclair Municipal Building to pick up the certificate. A delightful woman named Anne with the loveliest Irish brogue came to the counter. I explained what I needed. She went over to a desk. On it sat two big binders. She brought one to the counter. She began to look, first under G for Garry and then under O for Opatut. She was puzzled. “ It doesn’t seem to be here ,”she told me. She double checked that she was looking in the “civil union” binder. She was. “Perhaps it’s in the marriage binder,” she said. Retrieving that binder, she quickly found our certificate. “It appears you were misfiled,” she said with that lilt that made me want to sip a draft ale. “It would not be the first time that it was just simply not clear what to do with me,” I said with not a scent of snark. She seemed to understand. “You know,” she said. “I really don’t understand why we just don’t have one binder.”

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