Rocker Kristen Henderson and magazine executive Sarah Ellis had started to think marriage just wasn't in their future. That's because the couple, who met in Manhattan in 2005, live in a state where same sex marriage wasn't legal. Or at least it wasn't until last June.
The two women watched in frustration in 2009 as the state senate voted down a bill that would give LGBT citizens the right to marry.
By the time the senate had another opportunity to legalize gay marriage, in June 2011, Sarah and Kristen had two more reasons to hope the bill passed: their two-year-old children, Thomas and Kate. In a June 15th blog post on The Huffington Post, Sarah wrote that the thought of the Marriage Equality Act not passing left her "heartbroken, for my children. With all of the countless precautions I take to nurture and protect my children, I cannot guard them against the deep ramifications the non-passage of this bill would have on them."
Then on June 24th, 2011 the bill passed.
Sarah and Kristen, who now live in Seacliff, New York with their kids, told the story of their road to motherhood in their memoir "Times Two: Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made" published in April 2011, but we wanted to tell the story of their road to marriage.
In the video above, the first of three chronicling that journey, you'll catch Kristen and Sarah as they recall how they met and begin, at last, to plan the wedding they've always wanted.
On Tuesday, look for Part 2, in which the couple recall their first attempt to marry and how their quest for a legal union intersected with their path to parenthood. (Pregnant on the same day? really?)
And Part 3, live Wednesday, follows Kristen and Sarah from the Senate's vote in June to the October evening just a few weeks ago that they waited for so long.
Some of the music featured in this video was provided by Kristen Henderson's band, Antigone Rising. Their new album, 23 Red, is available online.