Woman will get married to herself on a seaside in Mexico – ‘I’m by no means going to cheat on me’
“I’d had a very hard few years, to the point where I thought: ‘Well, if you only live to 45 at least you don’t have to worry about things anymore’
The sun was setting over a Mexican beach when Kim Adams said ‘I do’ on the Day of the Dead this year. She had everything: the vows, the flowers, the beautiful white dress and her nearest and dearest. She just didn’t have a groom.
It was an omission by design. Kim woke up one morning and decided to marry herself. And her boyfriend Eduardo didn’t mind one bit. “I’d had a very hard few years, to the point where I thought: ‘Well, if you only live to 45 at least you don’t have to worry about things anymore’.
It wasn’t suicidal, “more hope that the awful period wouldn’t stretch on forever,” she says. And it didn’t. Kim, having extricated herself from doomed and abusive relationships, decided that on her 45th Birthday – 1 November this year – she would get married to herself.
“Dia De Los Muertos felt poignant. It was like that part of me died and I’m becoming someone else,” Kim, who runs a marketing business, explains.
So she sent a few invites to her loved ones and asked them to join her in her home of Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, as she made the ultimate commitment to herself.
“I’d never wanted to be married. Everyone I saw getting married kind of screwed it up. I have so many divorced friends and they’d say don’t get the legal system involved in your romantic life,” says Kim, originally from California.
“One partner I’d been with for years said he was going to marry me. I told him: ‘Please don’t’. And that was the end of that.”
For Kim, marrying herself was about making a public promise to herself that she would live life on her own terms and make decisions that help her become her best self.
When she told her partner Eduardo about the nuptials something was lost in translation.
“Later I said I’d bought my wedding dress and he asked: “Whose wedding are you going to?’ I told him mine, and he said that sounded great. (He was married once. He didn’t want to be. His perception of marriage isn’t good.)
“I asked if he wanted to come, he said ‘I already have it on my calendar’ and was so supportive.”
Kim’s friends were equally on board, but one family member was stunned by her decision.
“She was shocked. She’s traditional. I think it challenged her idea of marriage. Like I wasn’t taking it seriously.” People asked, ‘how can you marry yourself? Does that mean you wouldn’t marry someone else?’ No. It just means I am committing to myself.”
Friends flew from the States for the ceremony that saw Kim standing inside a circle of petals and flowers as her friends dressed in white read out her vows. Eduardo and another male friend stood outside the circle as “male protectors”.
She promised she would step into her power, release old burdens, trust ease rather than defense, honour her own needs, protect her own joy and treat her life as precious.
Her ring bearer then handed her a diamond solitaire which had been her mother’s.
No-one knows who gave it to her, though it wasn’t Kim’s father. This was another deliberate choice. Her parents did not have a happy marriage and since they have both passed it seemed time to give the ring a new purpose, Kim says. “It is a symbol of possibilities.”
She now wears her wedding on her middle finger as a reminder to herself of her vows and as an “F.U to tradition”, she says.
After the wedding was over, everyone cheered and hugged Kim and then they went out dancing in Puerto Vallarta.
In the days after the ceremony, Kim felt joy. “I’m never going to cheat on me,” she says.
“And I am never going to divorce myself. I’m committed. I’m done. When I need to make a decision, I look down at my ring and ask myself: Is this choice for you, or is it for someone else, or is it just the easiest path?”
Kim says she has never wanted children and doesn’t need to be married to a man.
“I’m in a loving relationship and that’s not something he wants. I have money, a career, a business. I don’t know that it’s even logical anymore for people to marry unless they have or want children. I don’t see it going well.”
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