Withering Glance: Gay marriage, Minnesota style

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: Gay marriage in Minnesota. Yea that, but I do worry that once my long-stymied friends go all Groomzilla, I won't have a free weekend till sometime in 2015.

RN: The news to come out of the House of Cass Gilbert is, of course, elating, but now I find myself envisioning several of my control-freak gay male acquaintances going into full-on meltdown mode as they plan their nuptials. I smell a ratings-busting reality TV series coming on.

CP: Totally. With celebrity judges to include Tom Ford and Isaac Mizrahi. Maybe Rosie O'Donnell.

RN: Hosted by Mario Cantone. He was so good at playing a high-strung wedding planner on "Sex and the City."

CP: No pressure or anything, but isn't it high time for you and Robert to put a ring on it?

RN: He has been hinting that I take his last name. Sweet. But, no. When I asked if he'd take mine, the answer was: "Do I look like a Nelson?"

RN: I think that, regardless of their sexual orientation, when the couple is over 50, they're on their own when it comes to the tab, and should consider themselves fortunate if their parents are still among us and can show up.

CP: What about the new pressure, both peer and parental, to tie the knot, now that it's legal? Honestly, it's enough to make me glad I'm a singleton. Or, as they say in the Broadway play "The Nance," a "lifelong bachelor."

RN: After 13 years of shacking up, and never thinking that the whole till-death-do-us-part thing was on the table, it's actually quite lovely to be asked if we're going to book a justice of the peace. That's a pushiness I'm only too happy to encounter.

CP: I'm glad that in the Minnesota bill, the word "marriage" was retained, even if modified in a last-minute compromise as "civil marriage."

RN: If only compromise would come to the lockout at Orchestra Hall, which, by the by, is shaping up to be a primo I-take-thee venue, thanks to its soon-to-open $50 million addition. It would be great to hear the house band play Mendelssohn's "Wedding March."

RN: I hear she does a wicked "We've Only Just Begun" — although I've always pictured you as more of a "You Light Up My Life" kind of groom.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com