Sections The Washington Post Deeply conservative Oklahoma adjusts to sudden arrival of same-sex marriage ____________________ (BUTTON) Sign In -- National Deeply conservative Oklahoma adjusts to sudden arrival of same-sex marriage Share on Facebook -- By Monica Hesse January 24 at 5:12 PM Follow @MonicaHesse [SameSexMarriage0151420742834.jpg?uuid=2JrY8pdmEeSDhYZikzIsLw] Tracy Curtis leans against her wife, Kathryn Frazier, at a friend's home in Norman, Okla., this month. The two were married Oct. 7, the day after same-sex marriage became legal in Oklahoma, but decided that they were not satisfied with a two-minute ceremony that felt like checking something off a list. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) The “polite gays,” was how Tracy and Kathryn described themselves. Not political or loud, not obvious or overt, but understated, in keeping with their Oklahoma surroundings. Never asking anyone to think too hard or talk too much about the fact that they were gay at all. Except now they were about to ask everyone they knew to think about it, because they’d decided to have a wedding. -- They were at this restaurant because in October the Supreme Court decided to let several lower court marriage rulings stand, which made same-sex unions legal in some of the country’s reddest states, including theirs. The next day, Tracy and Kathryn picked up a marriage license on the advice of a lawyer friend who told them to hurry before this suddenly opened window closed. But after a two-minute ceremony, Kathryn, 39, went to work and Tracy, 44, went to a doctor’s appointment, and then went home and cried because what they’d just experienced felt like checking something off a list, not like getting married. And so now, in November, they were at the Hideaway to plan an actual wedding, to take place in a state where 62 percent of people in a recent poll said they didn’t approve of same-sex marriage — and 52 percent said they felt that way strongly. One friend suggested that the reception could have a casino night theme. A teenager at the table wondered why the couple hadn’t chosen their outfits a long time ago — “Because, honey, we didn’t think we could ever get married in Oklahoma,” Kathryn explained — and someone else started ticking off venues. Tracy had a vision of guests holding candles. But centerpieces? Flowers? Music? Thinking of it all made them feel overwhelmed, especially when it came to one question above all: Who would come to this wedding? -- A few weeks before the wedding, Tracy’s parents arrived from South Carolina, where they’d moved several years before. On their first night in town, her father came into the kitchen while Tracy and Kathryn were washing dishes. He told them he had a question he felt a little awkward about asking. Bill Curtis was politically conservative. A retired technical sergeant with the Air National Guard, he thought that things might have been easier before the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, when someone would know another person was gay but not talk about it. He questioned news polls that said that the majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage. People on the coasts might, he thought, but he wasn’t sure about people in the middle of the country. He also thought that his daughter was a good person who deserved to be happy, with the same rights as everyone else, and so he had packed a gray suit and a selection of ties and driven 17 hours with Diana to be at the ceremony.