By: RICH ARCHBOLD, Press-Telegram – December 14, 2018
He may be mayor of California’s seventh-largest city, but Robert Garcia says he’s as nervous as anyone else about to get married.
“This is a big step in front of a lot of family and friends, and I want everything to be nice and go right,” he told me last week about planning for his marriage to longtime partner Matt Mendez on Saturday, Dec. 22. To be more specific, the number of family and friends invited to the wedding is more than 800. That’s a lot of planning to be anxious about.
Nerves aside, Garcia said he’s really more excited than nervous about his wedding day.
“I’m finding that, as each day gets closer to the wedding, the more I’m falling in love with Matt,” Garcia said at lunch at La Traviata, which is across the street at Third and Cedar from the First Congregational Church, where Garcia and Mendez will exchange vows.
Garcia will be the first mayor to be married while in office in Long Beach history, according to veteran observers. He also is the first Latino and first openly gay mayor in city history.
Garcia said the hardest decision that he and Mendez had to make about the wedding was whether they wanted a small family wedding or a larger one with more guests.
“We finally decided that we wanted to have a celebration with as many people as reasonably possible,” he said. The final number of guests will be somewhere between 800 and 850, he said.
Although that’s a large number, Garcia and Mendez know many more people than that. He said it was very difficult narrowing down the final guest list.
It was easier selecting the church and the date of the wedding, he said.
“First Congregational is a great, historic church in the heart of the city with a wonderful senior minister, Rev. Elena Larssen,” he said. “And our favorite time of the year is Christmas.” There’s also something about holidays that connect Garcia and Mendez.
Garcia said he met Mendez for the first time on July 4, 2008, at The Factory, a gay nightclub in West Hollywood.
It was a serendipitous meeting. Garcia was there by himself. Mendez, who was living in San Jose at the time, was driving to San Diego with a friend when he decided to make a stop at the club.
Was it love at first sight?
“It was just one of those things,” Garcia said. “We caught each other’s eyes and started talking. We ended up dancing and exchanging phone numbers.”
In an earlier interview, Mendez told me, “Robert was very charming and intelligent. He also was very handsome.”
A year after they met, in 2009, Garcia was elected to the Long Beach City Council, becoming the council’s youngest member ever at 31. Five years later, Garcia became the city’s youngest mayor.
Mendez turned out to be Garcia’s unofficial chief political adviser during those long campaigns.
Mendez, 33, is a professor of political science at Cal State Channel Islands and a published researcher.
They live together in a downtown loft. Garcia has called himself and Mendez nerds, having been to more than 10 Comic-Cons together. Garcia favors comics, Superman being his favorite character. Mendez likes “Star Trek” television shows and movies. Their favorite hobbies are going to movies, reading fiction and spending time with family.
Garcia’s mother, Gabriella, who immigrated to the United States from Lima, Peru, 36 years ago with her 5-year-old son, Robert, said she was “so happy for Robert and Matt.”
“They love each other so much and are a perfect match,” she said. “Matt keeps Robert grounded, and they support each other in every way.”
Garcia proposed to Mendez on the Queen Mary on the Fourth of July last year. Mendez, with tears in his eyes, said yes as Garcia slipped a platinum Tiffany’s engagement ring on his finger.
Later, Garcia told me: “After being told all your life that you can’t get married, this really meant a lot. I was all choked up.”
Garcia was referring to bans on same-sex marriage in the United States. In a major victory for the gay-rights movement, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 ruled that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.
In a Facebook statement in October, Garcia said he was grateful to his family and friends “who were so supportive when I came out 15 years ago. I’m thankful that Matt and I have the ability to get married. Hate and fear still exist towards LGBTQ people. We still encounter it. Let’s keep moving forward and support equality love for all.”
After the marriage at First Congregational, guests will go to the Long Beach Museum of Art on Ocean Boulevard for a champagne toast with desserts outside on the museum lawn. Garcia said he and Mendez selected the museum because of its great view of the ocean.
Garcia said guests do not need to bring a gift. He said he and Mendez are following wedding gift guidelines from the Fair Political Practices Commission: They will be publicly reported.
Garcia said any gifts from registered lobbyists, anyone with a business contract with the city of Long Beach or journalists would be returned.
What is this wedding costing Garcia and Mendez?
Garcia said he didn’t want to get into specifics of the cost, other than to say “it’s a lot.” He also said that he and Mendez were paying for the wedding themselves, including rental of the church and the museum.
Garcia said it’s going to be the best Christmas party of the year.
Where will they go on their honeymoon?
Garcia said they will honeymoon for a week on the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean.
The islands are a British Overseas Territory located 575 miles southeast of Miami, south of the Bahamas and east of Cuba, and the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
He said this would be the longest vacation he has taken since he campaigned for mayor.
“I’m really looking forward to the time off and our life together,” Garcia said. He also said he and Mendez plan to have a family of their own and adopt at some point.
I had one last question for Garcia: If male public officials call their wives the First Lady, what is he going to call Mendez?
“I think he will be Long Beach’s First Dude,” he said with a grin.
Source: Press-Telegram
