By Leah Cox
Sometimes, life doesn’t follow the path we set forth for ourselves. No matter how much we bullet journal and function executively, life has its way of…life-ing. In the moment, we may feel doomed. But what may seem like our present “forever,” isn’t always forever. Our doom can blossom—maybe even in the form of holy matrimony.
As a student, I know very little about teacher’s personal lives, so I was surprised to learn about two faculty marriages in the past year. While the average age of marriage in the United States is 30.5 for men and 28.6 for women, Dr. Butts and Ms. McLeavy found their partners just a bit later. At first, I felt uneasy to interview Dr. Butts and Ms. McLeavy about the happiest day of their lives. However, I got over that feeling fairly quickly and interviewed both teachers.
Dr. Butts was working in the math department office when I knocked on the door (per the directions on the door). She suggested that we sit in the nearest alcove. I followed her and asked for permission to record the interview on Voice Memos.
I began by asking Dr. Butts to describe her special day. “It happened this summer, on Saturday, June 17th…in Vinings. The ceremony and reception were the most special part. Not only was I marrying the man that I love and that treats me well, but my father was able to attend.” Dr. Butts’ father has since passed. And she explained this to me through glossy eyes. “I had waited and waited and waited and looked and looked and looked, and finally found Mr. Right at 55.”
“It has paid off to wait,” she said. How did it feel to wait this long? “I’ve been a bridesmaid so many times and watching them meet their special person…It does make you sort of question yourself. Like, what’s wrong with me?” she said. Her description of the waiting process reminded me of 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy in which Katherine Heigl’s character has been a bridesmaid for 27 weddings—none of which, of course, were for her wedding. Even if it took some time, both Jane Nichols, from the movie, and Dr. Butts finally got to wear the white dress.
What I learned from Dr. Butts was that one’s willingness to remain steadfast and patient with life’s plan can be rewarding. While she would not describe herself as a very religious person, Dr. Butts said that all that has happened with her love life was part of “God’s plan.”
“It’s hard when you may have a mental image of how you think your life’s going to go,” she said. “I thought I would meet somebody and then have a family…sometimes you just have to break that picture, that image, and you have to create a different one or just have to be able to change.”
Dr. Butts’ wedding was a crossover of sorts. Many of Lovett’s faculty attended, including: Ms. Penland, Dr. Sanders (former head of the math department), Ms. Graham, Ms. Brackett, Ms. Wilson, Ms. Watson, and Rev. Allen. In fact, Rev. Allen was the wedding’s officiant! Dr. Butts expressed how “very loved and supported” she felt with her faculty and friends there.
So, how did she know her husband was the one for her? Well, “it was just easy. It wasn’t a struggle…I felt like I fit in nicely with his family, and he felt the same about mine.” Dr. Butts’ “methodical math brain” certainly impacts her perspective on relationships and romance. She leads with both her head and heart, but primarily the head. In her years of dating, she never really sought to “force a square peg in a round hole.”
Maybe the coolest non-traditional detail of her wedding was the dress she wore. Long dresses—whatever the type—are definitely the most popular selection for brides. Instead, she “found a lovely short lace dress” that she and other people thought was “so me.”
The second of the newlyweds I interviewed was Ms. McLeavy. We met in her first-floor classroom, and there was a particularly important person sitting next to her, her wife, Ms. Laura Peaden. I’d seen her before as a substitute teacher, but never been introduced to her.
September 30, 2023 was Ms. McLeavy’s special day. As she explained it, the day was “especailly meaningful because I was 64 and I was getting married for the first time. There were a couple of reasons for that. One, it took me a while to find the person that I would think about spending the rest of my life with. Secondly, in my lifetime, as a gay woman marriage was not even legal or accepted until just a few years ago.”
She’s talking about the Marriage Equality Act, which struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage and required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses. That act went into effect less than a decade ago, in 2015, a milestone that was incredibly significant for Ms. McLeavy, a proud and openly gay woman.
Her wedding was “a really magical day…probably the happiest day of [her] life because [she] had friends and family from [Atlanta] and Charleston there.” The entire day signified that “love is love” no matter what. “It was just really nice to to get married with the acceptance of family, friends and the legal system,” she said.
Ms. McLeavy met her wife through mutual friends who played a variation of Cupid. It wasn’t a blind date, but it also wasn’t not a blind date. These days “you can’t really have blind dates anymore beyond the world of Instagram and Facebook. Since it was a long-distance relationship, me in one city and her in another, it was texting and seeing each other as frequently as possible. We will both be living in Charleston upon my retirement this May.”
At the time they met, Ms. Peaden had been widowed for a couple of years. During a 30-year marriage, Ms. Peaden and her wife had three children.
People debate whether or not “love at first sight” is true. But for Ms. McLeavy, it was. “I knew the first night just because we had a lot in common…her personality…and she’s very funny,” she said.
When she first came to Lovett, one thing she appreciated was being able to be out as a teacher. Of course, “Being out is a complex,” she said. “Every time a gay person tells someone they risk rejection.” Ms. McLeavy told her Spanish classes that she was getting married. Though she respects the line teachers must maintain in terms of sharing details about her personal life, she wanted to exercise the same freedom straight couples have to announce a marriage.
In terms of the ceremony, Ms. McLeavy and her wife wanted it to reflect who they are as a couple. As Ms. McLeavy described it, they “wanted the ceremony to be authentic.” First of all, they each asked their respective best friends, “the two people responsible for our meeting,” to be the officiants. One of the most symbolic moments was the “hand-fasting, where you take three cords: one for her family, one for my family. The third cord represents the joining our families. You tie an infinity knot.” Several Lovett faculty were there to celebrate their union as well.
On my way out, she asked if she could give me a hug. She seemed so happy to have been able to tell me her story. Of course, I said yes.
For both Dr. Butts and Ms. McLeavy, true love was clearly worth the wait.
