They're
adorable. There's really no other way to say it.
Heather Matarazzo and Caroline Murphy, who recently
announced their engagement, were here to do the
ribbon-cutting at Same-Sex in the City: The Wedding
Show, a wedding expo for the gays that premiered on August
17 in West Hollywood, then makes its way to the Parker
Hotel in Palm Springs September 7. Posing for
photographers, petite Heather nestled against tall
Caroline like a contented cat.
The Palm Springs
encore boasts special room rates and other perks to lure
Angelenos to the desert. A joint venture of fund-raising and
special events company GBK Productions and event
design firm Rrivre Works, this event brings together
vendors who support us and want our business. Future
brides and grooms can shop for rings, cake, clothing, music,
and more, with a portion of the proceeds donated to
the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.
The WeHo event
was in full swing by the time I caught up with Matarazzo
and Murphy for an Advocate.com interview. They were happily
sampling wedding cake against a perfect gay
soundscape: On one side an all-women string quartet
played "Anything Goes"; on the other a
DJ-for-hire rocked a house beat that shook the Armani
tuxes on their mannequins.
In a slightly
quieter corner, Heather and Caroline were more than eager
to share in their path to the altar, beginning with a little
walk down memory lane of the night they first met --
on New Years Eve, 2006.
"I went
outside to smoke a cigarette, and she came out, and it was
like this very across-the-room, time stopped --
"
"It was
soul-to-soul recognition," Matarazzo added. "I
don't think I'll ever be able to explain
it, but it's fun to try. It was like my soul knew
before my thinking self realized what was going on."
Murphy resumed,
"And I was looking at [Matarazzo's recurring
character] Stacy Merkin from The L Word. And I
was like really upset at some of the choices that that
character had made, in terms of upsetting the
veterinarian woman. So I was thinking, Damn you, Stacy
Merkin! And Heather came up to me and said,
'Do I know you from somewhere?' And I
said [gruffly], 'Possible. Not likely.'
And I walked off! And I took a few steps away and
went, 'What did I just do?'"
Both women
erupted in laughter.
"Then
later, I was coming back from the bathroom with a couple of
drinks in my hands, and I got a call on my cell phone,
and I didn't know what to do, and I was walking
by her in this tight space, and she just took the
drinks as though we'd been married for 50
years," Murphy continued. "And I handed
them off as though we'd been married 50 years. And I
was holding the phone and looking down at my wife. I
called my friends after the party and said. 'I
think I just met the woman I'm going to
marry.'"
Marriage was
already legal in Massachusetts -- if you lived in
Massachusetts.
Murphy said she
never gave the obstacles a thought.
"All of a
sudden my faith in the law righting itself to give us the
rights that are already in the Constitution -- it was a done
deal," she says. "It wasn't like,
'This is my wife, how's that gonna
work?' It was like, 'Oh, that's
my wife -- oh, yeah, the law will change.'"
Each wanted to
propose and be proposed to. Murphy got there first --
Christmas Day in front of the tree.
"I was
shocked," said Matarazzo. "I would playfully
say, 'When are we getting married? Where are
you gonna ask me?' but I still thought it was
down the road. I didn't expect that I would be so
overwhelmed."
"There
were tears," Murphy said.
But if she
expected a quick counterproposal, she was out of luck.
"I
waited...and waited...and waited!" Murphy
griped.
"But
I'll tell you the reason," Matarazzo broke in.
"I wanted to find the perfect ring. I
didn't want to go off and buy some random ring just
to do it."
For weeks she
read books and explored the symbolism of various stones.
"I found a
designer, picked out the stone myself, and had it
made," she said. "And then the day that
I picked it up, I had this big elaborate plan of
either going to the Cloisters or renting out the penthouse
of the Soho Grand and having it magical and stunning
and gorgeous. And I got the ring in my pocket and
it's burning in my pocket, and I'm like,
'I can wait, because I wanted to propose on our
anniversary.' I'm calling everyone I
know, going, 'I can wait, I can do it!'
Right?"
Then they went to
see the Broadway musical Passing Strange.
"The
second act talked about how life was so incredibly short.
And in my very dramatic, creative mind, I was thinking
I could get hit by a bus tomorrow with the ring in my
pocket and never have gotten to do it. So that night
we got home and she's playing the guitar, and the
next thing I knew I was down on my knee,
asking."
"She said,
'Caroline, will you please marry me?' And I
said [growling] 'Dya have a
ring?' Cause it'd been months!" Murphy
protested. "But then I saw it in the corner of my
eye, and as soon as I understood what was happening,
it was the all-time greatest split second of my life.
"'Cause when you're growing up, you
imagine -- you imagine a guy and how he's going
to propose, and you're a little bit having a hard
time even pretending to feel excited, so I
couldn't ever picture what this was going to
be. It was amazing."
Planning to marry
next year, the couple is enjoying all those luxe
details on the way to "I do."
"You get
to go through the process of sampling different cakes and
little finger sandwiches," Matarazzo enthused.
"Fondue!" added Murphy.
"I forgot
about the wedding bands, and that leads me to
'something old, something new, something
borrowed, something blue,'" Matarazzo jumped
in. "You give a gift to the person
you're getting married to. All these things
that I didn't know."
On the other
hand, Matarazzo insisted, "The one thing that I
don't want to do is turn it into something that
either one of us are not. It's still our
wedding."
