"Tonight, on Tabatha's Salon Takeover..."  A gay marriage. "This week, on The Fashion Show..." The designers create wedding looks for same-sex couples.

I have oddly Bravo-centric tastes in television.

I watch other shows on other networks. My TiVo "season passes" include Modern Family, which I love, and artsier PBS fare like Independent Lens and Frontline. I enjoy trash as well, but only the absolute trashiest-of-the-trash and only in small doses, which is why I watch The Soup. I'm also a sucker for Saturday Night Live, even when it's not funny. But Tabatha's Salon Takeover and The Fashion Show are two of my favorites. Tabatha Coffey, the host of Salon Takeover, is a dedicated hairdresser with a no-bullshit attitude towards laziness and incompetence. Her passion for hair reminds me of my own passion for teaching, and I look to her as a role model whenever I'm compelled to call "bullshit" on my laziest students. I watch The Fashion Show more out of necessity than genuine enjoyment. Project Runway is between seasons and I need my fix of reality show contestants making beautiful clothes rather than eating insects or binging and purging at a pie-eating contest.

Tabatha Coffey, who happens to cut hair in my very own state of New Jersey

This week, however, my two favorite shows betrayed me. In the course of making over a salon in Provincetown, MA, Tabatha arranged a "surprise" wedding for the salon owner and his partner of 30 years. (Surely the producers planned this "surprise" with the consent of the owner and his partner. I'm not trying to be cynical, but a reality-show host arranging a surprise marriage? What if the couple gets divorced? I'm assuming the men signed a waver. Otherwise, could Bravo TV be held liable?) Meanwhile, on The Fashion Show, the host, Iman, charged contestants with creating wedding looks for two lesbian couples and two plus-sized, beaming grooms. Gay people were everywhere on Bravo this week (even more so than usual), and the network was showcasing gay marriage for all its fabulous, awww-inducing, "aren't-we-just-as-normal-and-lovable-as-everybody-else?" sweetness.

In the spirit of one of my New Year's resolutions, I'm going to resist my own cynicism and say that I felt happy for each one of the televised couples. In fact, sometime during our fourth year together, Ex and I began planning our own nuptials. Ex bought books about how to plan a gay wedding. We dog-eared pages in a magazine showing beautiful models in expensive designer tuxedos. We met with wedding consultants at potential locations: a nearby hotel (which we nixed) and an outdoor garden (which we loved). I asked Ex's parents' permission to propose to him. Ex and I purchased matching rings at a wedding for one of Ex's high-school friends. The wedding took place in a banquet hall; a jeweler was selling her wares at a table in one of the unoccupied rooms, and Ex and I picked out the ring, had the jeweler size our fingers, and ordered two of them on the spot, one for each of us. The rings arrived the next week by mail. In a sign of things to come, Ex stopped wearing his a few years ago (he said it chaffed his finger). I wore mine until the night he broke up with me. I squeezed it off my finger using generous helpings of lubricant and soap.

Ultimately my dad put the kibosh on our wedding plans. For one thing, he (wisely) pointed out that I was only 22 years old and neither Ex nor I had any money (I was in graduate school, living off a meager stipend; Ex was employed but earning less than me). For another, he (less wisely) objected to the idea of two men getting married. (How could Ex and I call it a "wedding" if it wasn't legal for gay people to wed? Imagine his relatives' confusion if we were to send out invitations for a "gay wedding!"). Finally, he refused to pay for a wedding. This alone was enough to crush our plans. If we couldn't have a fabulous ceremony - a ceremony every bit as fabulous as any straight couple's, only done in better taste - then why bother?

This period of fantasy wedding planning marked the end of "the romantic stage" of our relationship. I've read about this stage; it usually lasts between 16 months and two years, after which the love birds begin to nest and settle into the more mundane, less romantic business of becoming partners. Ex and I enjoyed a full four years of romance (minus a tumultuous few months at the beginning). But as we entered the more pragmatic, "nesting" phase, marriage seemed less and less worth the trouble. We filed for a domestic partnership (mostly so I would be covered by his insurance) but never made a second trip to city hall to convert our partnership into a full-fledged (and newly legalized) civil union.

Recently I began thinking about marriage again. My sister became engaged a few months ago. My father apologized for his former objections to gay marriage by offering his preferred medium of amends: money. He said he would "kick" a few thousand dollars our way, which Ex and I could put towards a wedding. I thought of the expensive designer tuxedos. I recalled images of our fantasy wedding that I hadn't thought about in years. Bridesmaids dressed in charcoal, full-length slip dresses, each carrying a single, purple orchid. Ex and I parading down the isle in a garden like two Adams dressed in head-to-toe, tailored fig-leaves, courtesy of Calvin Klein.

I thought about our fairytale wedding as I watched the gay couples on TV. Tabatha's Salon Takeover is one of Ex's favorite shows, too, and I thought about our wedding again as I watched this week's episode for a second time and Ex watched it for the first. Reflecting on the salon owner's 30-year relationship, I turned to Ex and muttered sarcastically, "Imagine how it would feel to be together for 30 years." Ex responded, "You still have time to be with someone for 30 years." The old Ex would have smiled and said, "I'll let you know when we get there."