Gay couple Mark Reed and Dante Walkup legally tied the knot last month in Texas. Yup. Texas.
The Dallas natives used Skype to have their October 10 nuptials officiated from Washington, D.C., where gay marriage is legally recognized, by Sheila Alexander-Reid, who appeared on a 6-by-8-foot screen behind the couple as they stood hand-in-hand in a conference room at the W Dallas Victory hotel surrounded by friends and family.
“When we walked down the aisle, as soon as we reached the front, she comes on the screen like The Wizard of Oz,” Reed told the Dallas Voice. “It was beautiful. It wasn’t make-believe. It was like she was really there.”
According to the Voice, “It’s called ‘e-marriage,’ and it’s a sort of high-tech version of the proxy wedding traditionally held when one of the parties can’t be physically present—because, for example, they’re in the military stationed overseas.”
“The reason we wanted to do it this way is because we wanted to have a wedding here in Dallas with our family and friends,” Reed told the Voice. “It was very important that all of our family came. It was the first time they actually met, even though we’ve been together 10 years. If we had to go to D.C., there’s no way we could have had the people there who we wanted to be there.”
Though there is nothing in D.C.’s marriage laws that prohibit this type of proxy wedding, Reed acknowledges that the validity of the arrangement might not stand up in court. For that reason, Reed and Walkup are working with legislators in states where marriage equality is the law to ensure that e-marriage can withstand potential legal challenges.
