Location! Location! Location!

Deciding where to get married was not a difficult decision. The Prop 8 issues in California had made it very clear that any of the states who had recently approved gay marriage could potentially become an issue and the last thing we wanted was for our marriage to be part of something like that. The first legal same-sex wedding in the US took place in Massachusetts back in 2004 and logic said that if the voters of Massachusetts had wanted to overturn it they would have done so years ago.

I had been to New England once as a child but barely remembered and Karen had never been so planning our wedding quickly turned into planning a great adventure.

To fulfill our mutual love of history we would need to spend time in Boston. We also wanted to see Salem and learn more about the Witch Trials. We wanted to go to King Arthur Flour in Vermont because we both love to bake and my friend Mindy had been telling me about it for years.

I had recently reconnected with an old friend through Facebook and realized she lived in Salem so I asked for information along with the name of a JP.

We decided Salem sounded like the perfect place and knowing we had a friend there really helped but we still had to decide where in Salem. A beach wedding sounded so romantic and our Florida trip last spring had given us a love for lighthouses so I started to research with that in mind. I quickly learned that New England has more lighthouses that one could imagine and Salem had three. I looked at a few pictures on the net and Winter Island Maritime Park looked like it was exactly what we wanted.

 

Our first day in Salem we were pretty exhausted from traveling the night before so we decided to take the trolley tour and as part of the ride get a look at “our” lighthouse. There were people everywhere at Winter Island and the overcast skies didn’t help because everything seemed somewhat blah. I have to tell you that on first look we had doubts and actually went back to our hotel to research options.

Fortunately, we had dinner that night with my friend Becky and a few of her local peeps and they convinced us to go back and actually walk the trails and take a second look.

Saturday was a beautiful day to explore. The Trolley was a nice ride but it wasn’t enough to do justice to this beautiful place. To appreciate all that was there we had to do a little hiking and once we got off the concrete we found exactly what we had imagined as the perfect place for a wedding.

We were a little concerned about everyone getting down to the beach so when we picked Mom up at the Airport we took her to the park and did a test run of the trail in her flip flops.

 Needless to say the trial run went fine and on our wedding day I wondered why we ever doubted.