The important questions in life.

According to Tony Pierce, my partner and I should not get married. Sure, we reached the "let's just do it" point, and my partner can cook fine meals (and clean up, too, if it has been one of those days where I have to retreat to under the bed). And although I once came very close to winning my fantasy baseball league, I can never get my head around football. But luckily my partner doesn't care; if he wants to watch football, I either take a nap in front of the TV or else go listen to hiphop, about which he's not all that crazy. In fact, the thing that held me back for about 1.5 years was that it didn't seem right that we could get married, because we happen to be of different genders, but if we happened to have been of the same, forget it.

So now we are coming down to the really important questions, like what to put on top of our wedding cake. We are keeping the design fairly simple--did you know that you can get multi-part cakes with staircases connecting them, which, if you want, you could adorn with plastic people representing your enormous bridal and groomal parties?

I didn't either, but now I am afraid.

So when the baker said that cakes really look kind of plain if there is nothing on top at all, we got to thinking about cake toppers.

Because let me tell you the truth: I love cake. Testing the cake samples has been the highlight of this whole experience. And I love frosting. But I do not love our culture's gender norms that say what brides and grooms are like, how they should act, what they should care about on their wedding day.

Given that I have no intention of wearing a poofy white dress or veil, the traditional cake toppers did not seem to represent what we were doing:

Neither am I hot on the froufrou design of something like this:

And I get terrified by the putti in baroque churches, so I can't put them on my cake.

And even the cake toppers that are supposed to be playful make me want to yack.

While the web presents a number of interesting alternatives, my mother likes to remind me that this is a serious occasion.

I'm just sad that I missed out on the options that were available last summer when I spent about six weeks in the City of Cheap Plastic Statues. On virtually every busy street corner near the big tourist destinations, there were guys selling she-wolves, Davids, Pietas, --you name it.

But the partner says no no no to the Augustus of Prima Porta.

Darn.

We thought that maybe we could find a little plastic statue of that cool Etruscan sarcophagus of the married couple--they look so happy and so in love!--but mom says too morbid, never mind til death do us part.

Don't get me wrong: I do not have anything as radical in mind as statues of Chairman Mao, just something a little more personal than just another dancing couple.

So we'll keep looking. In the meantime, if you have any ideas, I'm all ears.