The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story [Hardcover]

Douglas Wythe (Author), Andrew Merling (Author), Roslyn Merling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2000

Two people meet and fall in love. Over time, their relationship grows and they decide to spend the rest of their lives together. They plan a wedding, a formal binding into a permanent relationship with family and friends on hand as witnesses to solemn but beautiful vows. It's an occasion people dream about for most of their lives, though it is often joked that the wedding is more for the parents than the children.

But what if they're gay?

Andrew Merling was a graduate student in clinical psychology when he met Doug Wythe, a television promotion director. Their relationship continued for three-and-a-half years before Doug formally proposed marriage to Andrew. Together, they agreed to have a traditional affair for family and friends.

While Doug was not as close to his extended family, Andrew came from large, tight-knit Jewish family in Montreal. When he announced his engagement and the couple's plans for a traditional Jewish ceremony and a festive celebration, it was then that previously unacknowledged prejudices and hidden concerns suddenly reared their contentious heads.

Typical wedding conflicts over money and manners paled next to worries over whether Andrew's parents would find themselves ostracized by their conservative community. Then, just two months before the big day, the family had to decide if they were ready to perform the ultimate act of "coming out," when ABC-TV News asked to profile them as part of an episode on Turning Point, and bring national attention to their personal struggle.

The first book to speak to both sides of a controversy that is altering our society, this fascinating chronicle follows Doug, Andrew, and his parents Sheldon and Roslyn on the rocky road from engagement to understanding. With the impending wedding as a catalyst, they embark on a painful, joyful odyssey of discovery, struggling both to be heard and to find acceptance from each other, their friends and communities. Their four distinct voices blend to create a unique depiction of one family coming to grips with the reality of being a gay couple in today's world.Two people meet and fall in love. Over time, their relationship grows and they decide to spend the rest of their lives together. They plan a wedding, a formal binding into a permanent relationship with family and friends on hand as witnesses to solemn but beautiful vows. It's an occasion people dream about for most of their lives, though it is often joked that the wedding is more for the parents than the children.

But what if they're gay?

Andrew Merling was a graduate student in clinical psychology when he met Doug Wythe, a television promotion director. Their relationship continued for three-and-a-half years before Doug formally proposed marriage to Andrew. Together, they agreed to have a traditional affair for family and friends.

While Doug was not as close to his extended family, Andrew came from large, tight-knit Jewish family in Montreal. When he announced his engagement and the couple's plans for a traditional Jewish ceremony and a festive celebration, it was then that previously unacknowledged prejudices and hidden concerns suddenly reared their contentious heads.

Two people meet and fall in love.Over time, their relationship grows and they decide to spend the rest of their lives together. They plan a wedding, a formal binding into a permanent relationship with family and friends on hand as witnesses to solemn but beautiful vows. It's an occasion people dream about for most of their lives, though it is often joked that the wedding is more for the parents than the children.

But what if they're gay?

Andrew Merling was a graduate student in clinical psychology when he met Doug Wythe, a television promotion director. Their relationship continued for three-and-a-half years before Doug formally proposed marriage to Andrew. Together, they agreed to have a traditional affair for family and friends.

While Doug was not as close to his extended family, Andrew came from large, tight-knit Jewish family in Montreal. When he announced his engagement and the couple's plans for a traditional Jewish ceremony and a festive celebration, it was then that previously unacknowledged prejudices and hidden concerns suddenly reared their contentious heads.

Typical wedding conflicts over money and manners paled next to worries over whether Andrew's parents would find themselves ostracized by their conservative community. Then, just two months before the big day, the family had to decide if they were ready to perform the ultimate act of "coming out," when ABC-TV News asked to profile them as part of an episode on Turning Point, and bring national attention to their personal struggle.

The first book to speak to both sides of a controversy that is altering our society, this fascinating chronicle follows Doug, Andrew, and his parents Sheldon and Roslyn on the rocky road from engagement to understanding. With the impending wedding as a catalyst, they embark on a painful, joyful odyssey of discovery, struggling both to be heard and to find acceptance from each other, their friends and communities. Their four distinct vo

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It took something like a village to write this unusual book. Meet the Merlings: upstanding members of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Montreal. Sheldon (a real estate lawyer) and Roslyn (a social worker) have a loving marriage and four grown children. Meet their son Andrew: a psychologist living in New York City. He is in love--with a TV producer named Doug Wythe. Andrew loves his parents and his parents adore him right back, but when he and Doug decide to get hitched (the old-fashioned way--in front of hundreds of invited guests and a professional photographer), the Merlings, liberal and loving though they are, freak out. Told in chatty, rotating, first-person narrative chunks, this collaborative memoir recounts, with surprising candor, the events and emotions leading up to Andrew and Doug's wedding. Sheldon explains how he went from being the Bad Guy (who opposed the idea of a public ceremony) to bankrolling the lavish affair; Roslyn, the tear-jerking star of the book, writes poignantly of her die-hard support for her gay son; and Andrew and Doug take us through the world of gay wedding planning--from choosing a rabbi to registering at Bloomingdale's. Straightforward and even-handed, this four-way confessional case study makes an interesting addition to the growing literature on gay marriage. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Weddings are rarely simple, and Doug Wythe's to Andrew Merling was no exception. Andrew yearned for the kind of big, formal, traditional, ultralavish ceremony that was bestowed upon his sisters, complete with the long processional including family members, the standing together under the traditional Jewish chuppah, the breaking of the ceremonial glass, and the festive celebration afterwards. His liberal-minded parents, especially his sex-educator mother, Roslyn, had problems with all that, part of which was their reluctance to confront having misgivings, never mind prejudice--please! With Sheldon Wythe repeatedly questioning his son's need for such a large (meaning public) commitment ceremony (wedding), even the wording on the invitations to Montreal's close-knit Jewish community became an issue. For the Wythes and the couple, the attendant coming-out was a process, and each of the four addresses his or her thoughts on the stages of that process directly to readers, which makes for maximum impact. With gay-lesbian marriage rights much in the news, there should be plenty of readers, straight and gay, for their testimony. Whitney Scott

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (March 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380976919
• ISBN-13: 978-0380976911
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,228,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is this really necessary?, June 3, 2000

By 

B. Kirk "thurberdog" (Missouri) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story (Hardcover)

That's the ongoing question that confronts two of the authors of this fresh and insightful book as they progress through their plans to be married. The issue, of course, is that these same authors, Doug and Andrew, happen to be two gay men trying to pull off a wedding in a society that either doesn't recognize or simply doesn't know what to make of same-sex marriage. From the point they decide to become engaged, to the night of their wedding, Doug and Andrew find themselves constantly confronted by family and friends (including gay friends) who can't understand why they feel a need to have a wedding or what they are trying to prove by having one.

What makes this book such a good read is that it it is formatted as a dialogue between Doug, Andrew, and Andrew's conservative Jewish parents, Roslyn and Sheldon. The story is told from these four points of view, each often offering conflicting or significantly different interpretations of the same events leading up to Doug and Andrew's wedding. It is this approach that enables the book to be more than a simple advocacy of gay marriage -- by enabling the reader to see through the eyes of people on different sides of this issue, the book shows the many emotional and oftentimes humorous effects such a decision can have on a family. Ultimately, a compelling read that reinforces faith in the strength and love that one often finds in the best of families in the toughest of situations.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The political is wedded to the personal, November 13, 2002

By 

Rochelle Hollander Schwab "author of A Depart... - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story (Hardcover)

I'm the author of a novel about a Jewish mother whose lesbian daughter wants a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, so when I came on this true life account of a gay Jewish wedding, I had to read it. I was drawn to it also because I have a gay child myself, and am active in Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), an organization which offers support, education and advocacy for equal rights. I've seen even the most "accepting" parents draw back in dismay when their son or daughter desired a same-sex wedding ceremony.

As the book description notes, this story of one such wedding is told from four different viewpoints, the two halves of the gay couple, Douglas Wythe and Andrew Merling, and Andrew's parents, Roslyn and Sheldon Merling. Though the four viewpoints are presented as a dialog, alternating with one another, the narrative is blended into a coherent whole by a skilled editorial hand.

The Merlings consider themselves accepting of their gay children. (Andrew's older brother is also gay.) Roslyn, a social worker, helped found a synagogue-affiliated support group for parents of gays and lesbians. And Sheldon states over and over that he has no objection to a small, private "commitment ceremony" between Andrew and Doug. It's the vision of a big public affair that takes him aback. That, and the fact that both Doug and Andrew want to be married under a chuppah (canopy), an essential part of all Jewish weddings, and follow the other traditions that mark a Jewish wedding ceremony. Most of all, Sheldon adds, he wants to avoid having whatever ceremony is held turn into a political statement.

By the day of the wedding, it is clear to the other three, if not to Sheldon himself, that this is impossible. Like any other wedding, a wedding between a same-sex couple is a personal affirmation of love and commitment. But dignifying same-sex ceremonies with the term wedding, as opposed to commitment ceremony or holy union, seems upsetting to both homophobes and to those who believe themselves to be free of prejudice. This account by Doug, Andrew and Andrew's parents is both honest and moving as they describe both the conflicts that arise between them and their own internal struggles with the vestiges of homophobia and of concern with their wider community's reaction. Nor are these limited to the parents, as both young men describe their own struggles with self-acceptance. (As an example of the latter, the two decide against dancing with each other in a "first dance" at their wedding reception.)

With the aid of an understanding family therapist, both generations gain a greater understanding of the other's viewpoint. The parents overcome their initial shock to reach the point of walking their son down the aisle together (another Jewish tradition). It is this emotional journey that is the heart and strength of this book. So it's not giving anything away to say that yes, Andrew and Doug do have the blowout wedding of their dreams. Or to add that the somewhat scandalized congregation at their wedding gains a new appreciation both of their love for one another and of the rightness of their having a wedding to celebrate it. (As members of a close-knit Jewish community, Sheldon and Roslyn attended the weddings of the children of their many friends, and were obliged to return the favor with their own invitations to Andrew's ceremony.)

Toward the end of the book, Doug writes that when gay people are "not expending energy on hiding the fact, every moment is potentially political." This account underscores not only that fact, but the costs of being less than totally honest. One of the most poignant stories in the book for me was when Doug writes a letter to his parents, formally "coming out" to them. As he had brought Andrew home for several holiday dinners, he assumed that his parents understood that he was gay, without his ever having put it in words before. As it turns out, both his mother and father had separately made this assumption, but each, fearing the other could not bear to know it, had kept it to themselves, creating an unnecessary wall of silence in their marriage. It would seem (as PFLAG stresses in support groups) that honesty is not only the best cure for homophobia, but for strengthening family relationships as well.

I recommend this book wholeheartedly. About the only criticism I can make is that it would have been nice to have a few photos of the wedding, rather than just painting the elegant setting with words.