"Elaine and I walked each other down the aisle," Mignon said. They enjoyed a weekend of activities with their guests, which culminated with a sunset cruise, champagne toast, and a beautiful wedding ceremony on the beach. Then, they went with 40 of their friends and family members to Los Cabos, Mexico, to a resort where they purchased a time share ("We're very impressionable," Mignon laughed). That year, Mignon and Elaine began planning their wedding - a three-part affair that properly suited their ten years of love and commitment.įirst, they traveled to New York City in March 2012 to receive an official marriage license. Let's get married in New York - it's where we grew up. So when marriage became legal in New York in 2011, we said, 'You know what? Even though we live in California, we can't wait for California to do this. But then Proposition 8 happened, and they took the option away. "And we thought we'd have time to think about it. "We wanted to have a wedding associated with our marriage," Mignon said. Mignon and Elaine had just become domestic partners, so they decided to hold off a bit on having a wedding.
In May 2008, the California Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to exclude same-sex couples from marriage, and same-sex couples in the state were finally allowed to marry. In the April 2008, Mignon and Elaine became domestic partners in California - the highest form of legal respect same-sex couples could attain in the state at the time. And we started building a life together in California."
We were going to get married then, but instead, we used the money we wanted to use for our wedding to buy a house. "They made me a job offer that I couldn't refuse," Mignon said. In 2006, Mignon was offered a teaching job at the University of California in Los Angeles. Elaine is a DJ, so she would DJ at the events, and Mignon would serve as hostess. They started dating, and over the next four years, fell in love, moved in together, and began hosting their own weekly social events for women in the Village. Elaine introduced Mignon to the women's community in New York, and the two grew close by attending events for women of color in the city. Although Mignon and Elaine are both native New Yorkers, Mignon had only recently returned to the city, having completed graduate school and beginning her first teaching job at Columbia University. The night of the proposal wasn't only the beginning of the newly engaged couple's journey toward marriage - it also signaled the start of a wonderful relationship between Mignon and Elaine, a relationship that marked 10 years earlier this summer, when the women married in New York and celebrated with a destination wedding to Los Cabos, Mexico.Īfter meeting at the engagement celebration, Mignon and Elaine became fast friends. Earlier that day, Mignon's cousin had proposed to Elaine's sister, and that night, the two families gathered together in celebration of the happy occasion.
In January 2002, Mignon Moore and Elaine Harley met for the very first time at an engagement celebration in New York City. This story was originally published in November 2012. Parry reveals how and why the simple act of "jumping the broom" captivates so many people who, on the surface, appear to have little in common with each other.Jumping the Broom After a Decade of Love Mignon & Elaine Moore-Harley Such innovations have an enduring impact on the descendants of the original practitioners. Drawing from the historical records of enslaved people in the United States, British Romani, Louisiana Cajuns, and many others, Parry discloses how marginalized people found dignity in the face of oppression by innovating and reimagining marriage rituals. His surprising findings shed new light on the complexities of cultural exchange between peoples of African and European descent from the 1700s up to the twenty-first century. Parry untangles the convoluted history of the "broomstick wedding." Popularly associated with African American culture, Parry traces the ritual's origins to marginalized groups in the British Isles and explores how it influenced the marriage traditions of different communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In this definitive history of a unique tradition, Tyler D.