Performative Acts, or The Big Gay Wedding

Here's what occurred to me when this prompt was sent-

1. Panic. 
2. Weddings
3. Don't use weddings, that's unimaginative.
4. *radio silence*

So in honor of following my impulses, I did decide to bring in my experience at two of my dear friends' wedding in April of 2013. You can watch the highlights video here (but it won't work on a mobile device) to see what I'm talking about.

The video will take you through some of the rehearsal, behind the scenes and a few clips of the wedding as it was performed. I could talk about the video as a performative act, but I'm focusing on the actual wedding, so stay with me!

If you watched further than the first 30 seconds, you may notice that this isn't a traditional wedding that most religious institutions honor, but a wedding between two women. These women, my friends Chelsea and Whitney, live in Springfield, Missouri. They have been a couple since 2008 and like many couples in love, decided they wanted to celebrate their union with friends and family. Here's the first issue with the performative act of their wedding, however: In Missouri, same-sex unions aren't recognized by the state. The wedding was in Springfield, they had an ordained minister performing the ceremony, they sign a marriage certificate, I can vouch for both parties saying "I do" and I can guarantee they both meant it, so is this performative act infelicitous? I would vehemently argue that everyone involved with the utterances and actions believed in their words and deeds, and all the elements were in place and had licensed professionals in their proper roles to make everything official, so this event would have been deemed a success with one substitution: Chelsea would have to be a different gender. 

That makes me wonder, though, if because Chelsea seems to identify in some way with a more masculine version of self in her gender role, and chose a dress that is indicative of a tuxedo, she could argue that she was the "groom" in this wedding. If her sense of identity is that she identified, based on Butler's standards, as something other than inherently female, if she queered her gender identity and embraced a "traditional male" identity, would that skew the performative act enough to be arguable grounds for this union between two women to be recognized by the state of Missouri?

I'm not saying that is something that either of these women are actually interested in doing. They are both perfectly happy with their ceremony and use hyphenated last names and call one another wife, so this is all hypothetical. But to examine the ceremony a little more clinically in terms of society's expectations of relationships, I do think there's another case for this performative act going against what is "supposed" to be done.

I invite a disagreement here, but my experience observing the general public and reactions to gay relationships is that more frequently than not, same sex couples are expected to have one person who serves to fill the role of "the Man" and one who fills the role of "the Woman". Masculine/feminine, butch/femme, top/bottom, however we want to classify it, there's a classification that same-sex couples seem expected to fill. This is more of a problem of trying to force a norm of something identifiable onto a relationship that should be able to establish its own norm, but I digress- in Chels and Whitney's wedding, Chelsea took on the role of the groom; she walked down the aisle first and she wore black. But she also wore a dress and makeup, she has long hair, she isn't afraid of heels. She doesn't play the role of "the Man" in her relationship because she is a woman, and that is her sense of identity. Which makes me think that her expression of self changes what is expected of her relationship and shows this performative act in another different way.