Courthouse Wedding Quotes

They tell you that if you're assaulted, there's a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don't have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We'd gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets a conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing. It took the breath out of me. Even worse was looking back down to the bottom of the mountain, where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving cheering, expectantly. What do you see? What does it feel like? What happens when you arrive? What could I tell them? A system does not exist for you. The pain of this process couldn't be worth it. These crimes are not crimes but inconveniences. You can fight and fight and for what? When you are assaulted, run and never look back. This was not one bad sentence. This was the best we could hope for.

It was little things at first. Abby missed a phone call because she had an away game. Then one time Gretchen didn’t write back and never made up for the missing letter. They got busy with SATs and college applications, and even though they both applied to Georgetown, Gretchen didn’t get in, and Abby wound up going to George Washington anyways. At college they went to their computer labs and sent each other emails, sitting in front of black and green CRT screens and pecking them out one letter at a time. And they still wrote, but calling became a once-a-week thing. Gretchen was Abby’s maid of honor at her tiny courthouse wedding, but sometimes a month would go by and they wouldn’t speak. Then two months. Then three. They went through periods when they both made an effort to write more, but after a while that usually faded. It wasn’t anything serious, it was just life. The dance recitals, making the rent, first real jobs, pickups, dropoffs, the fights that seemed so important, the laundry, the promotions, the vacations taken, shoes bought, movies watched, lunches packed. It was a haze of the everyday that blurred the big things and made them feel distant and small.

They tell you that if you’re assaulted, there’s a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don’t have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We’d gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets the conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing.

They tell you that if you're assaulted, there's a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don't have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We'd gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets the conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing. It took the breath out of me.

I’ve found weddings are the event of the world where people will most test your boundaries. If you are not used to drawing lines, you might not be ready to have a wedding. Consider going to a courthouse and calling it a day, because people will TRY YOU during weddings. I don’t know what it is about folks and that day. All types of randoms allasudden feel entitled to everything in your life. From the folks asking if they’re invited (if you have to ask, odds are the answer is a swift NOPE) to the kinfolk who wanna bring plus-four. You got plus-four money? WHO IS PAYING FOR ALL THEM PLATES?!? (Low-key, I know if my grandmother were alive when I got married, she’d have wanted to bring a whole posse of the village plus ten. And I’d have given it to her. I thought about her on my wedding day. She would have had an amazing time. She would have had her own entrance moment, like her church one. She would have worn ALL GOLD EVERYTHING with matching shoes and bag and dripping in at least five gold chains. She would have loved the man I married.)

His office is in the basement of the courthouse,

They tell you that if you’re assaulted, there’s a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don’t have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We’d gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets the conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing. It took the breath out of me. Even worse was looking back down to the bottom of the mountain, where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving, cheering, expectantly. What do you see? What does it feel like? What happens when you arrive? What could I tell them? A system does not exist for you. The pain of this process couldn’t be worth it. These crimes are not crimes but inconveniences. You can fight and fight and for what? When you are assaulted, run and never look back. This was not one bad sentence. This was the best we could hope for.

There’s not much to plan since I’m eloping.” “Excuse me?!” Mom’s ragged breathing has my smile falling. “No, you are not. You’re my one and only baby and I will not let you have some wedding in a back room of a courthouse.”  “What’s wrong with that? That’s the way I got married.” Nana actually sounds offended.  “Exactly my point, Mother,” Mom says.  “The location was convenient. I took my newlywed ass to Bourbon Street, and your father and I made a night of it.” “I’m well aware of the day I was conceived. No need to rehash that story.

It seemed like Leo had flown all of his family over from Ivory Coast. Why, I didn’t know. It wasn’t like they were even close. These same people I hadn’t seen since our little faux wedding two years ago, not even at our little courthouse ceremony a few months ago. The whole thing felt like some kind of three-ring circus act as opposed to genuine interest in Leo’s celebratory event.

Share this post with twenty people on your friends list or . . . you’re not really my friend. SERIOUSLY?? Never mind that we grew up together, that I held your hair back in college while you puked, was the maid of honor in your wedding, held your hand while you pushed out that giant baby of yours, wet-nursed your daughter and drove you to the courthouse to get a divorce. Never mind all that. If I share this post—THAT’S how you’ll know we’re friends. Makes total sense.

But even as I settled back into the slow daily labor of writing, I thought often of the work that was happening back there, invisible to many, and of how in the courthouse every Monday a dozen men and women stood up and repeated their lines, players in a performance we’d somehow agreed to call justice.

There are nineteen such wedding chapels in Las Vegas, intensely competitive, each offering better, faster, and, by implication, more sincere services than the next: Our Photos Best Anywhere, Your Wedding on A Phonograph Record, Candlelight with Your Ceremony, Honeymoon Accommodations, Free Transportation from Your Motel to Courthouse to Chapel and Return to Motel, Religious or Civil Ceremonies, Dressing Rooms, Flowers, Rings, Announcements, Witnesses Available, and Ample Parking. All of these services, like most others in Las Vegas (sauna baths, payroll-check cashing, chinchilla coats for sale or rent) are offered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, presumably on the premise that marriage, like craps, is a game to be played when the table seems hot.

Excuse me?!” Mom’s ragged breathing has my smile falling. “No, you are not. You’re my one and only baby and I will not let you have some wedding in a back room of a courthouse.”  “What’s wrong with that? That’s the way I got married.” Nana actually sounds offended.  “Exactly my point, Mother,” Mom says.  “The location was convenient. I took my newlywed ass to Bourbon Street, and your father and I made a night of it.” “I’m well aware of the day I was conceived. No need to rehash that story.”  I’m not sure how these two live under the same roof without me mediating anymore.