Emily Ladau:
Hi, I’m Emily Ladau.

Kyle Khachadurian:
And I’m Kyle Khachadurian.

Emily Ladau:
And you’re listening to another episode of The Accessible Stall.

Kyle Khachadurian:
What are we going to talk about today, Emily?

Emily Ladau:
Okay. So first and foremost, we happen to be recording this at a time when the news has just recently broken that Alice Wong has passed away. And what kind of a disability podcast would we be if we did not take a moment to hold space for that?

Kyle Khachadurian:
A bad one. Alice was one of the giants that we and all the rest of our community stand on the shoulders of. And her loss is unreal, truly.

Emily Ladau:
Her loss is everyone’s loss, I think. And I wanted to make sure that we pointed people in the direction of Alice’s work, the Disability Visibility Project and both of Alice’s anthologies, Disability Visibility and Disability Intimacy. And then also her memoir, Year of the Tiger. Alice has left behind a legacy that I know we can all learn from, that I am still learning from. And so if you are not familiar with Alice’s work or if you haven’t engaged with it in a while, now is the time to visit or revisit it in her honor. So this is one of those, I don’t know how to switch gears after you say something that’s that heavy and sad, but I also genuinely believe that we can hold space for sad things and we can hold space for joyful things and both can be true at once.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I agree.

Emily Ladau:
So what are we going to talk about today, Kyle?

Kyle Khachadurian:
I think you got married.

Emily Ladau:
I did. I got married.

Kyle Khachadurian:
How was that?

Emily Ladau:
Well, you were there. How was it?

Kyle Khachadurian:
I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything through the tears in my eyes.

Emily Ladau:
Gosh, wow. I knew for a while we would podcast about this eventually, and it occurs to me that it’s almost a month after the wedding and I still haven’t really collected my thoughts, but I am a married lady now. I am a person’s wife.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You are a person’s wife. That is so cool.

Emily Ladau:
I did not change my last name. I mean, this is not a disability thing. This is just a human thing.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I mean, you all heard her say that her name was Emily Ladau.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, exactly. The proof is in the intro, but so many people asked me if I was going to change my name. And at this point, I feel like I hate the idea that a person is a brand, but I also feel like my name is my brand and if I change it.

Kyle Khachadurian:
What are you going to do, start over? Come on now.

Emily Ladau:
Right. Exactly. That is a lot of SEO to work on.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I genuinely love that that is a real problem that you have faced. I’m not even kidding. It’s such a real problem for such a tiny amount of people, but that problem is a big one if you’re one of them.

Emily Ladau:
Anyway, and also it’s funny because my sweet husband has a Google alert on his name and the other person who shares his name seems to have a history of DUIs and stuff.

Kyle Khachadurian:
So what you’re saying is he should have taken your last name.

Emily Ladau:
Right. That’s what I’m saying.

Kyle Khachadurian:
This man’s about to be wrongfully arrested.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. We should really have men take women’s last names. That should be a thing.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You just hyphen both of your names and just Frankenstein them together in some monstrosity. I’m of course saying that in the context of my name, which is too long, but …

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, you do have a pretty long last name. I imagine that sometimes you fill out forms and you run out of the little squares.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I do. And sometimes I just give up.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. My name is so convenient because it’s five letters, six letters, five letters. I’m like some form of a haiku.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That’s nice. Mine is four, six, 12. Is there a math thing in that? Someone smarter than me figure that out. It sounds like there should be, but I don’t think there is.

Emily Ladau:
No, but I’m also really not smart enough, which is why my job is words.

Kyle Khachadurian:
My job is also words.

Emily Ladau:
Ken’s job in Barbie is beach. My job is words.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Okay, Emily. So how did you do it?

Emily Ladau:
How did I get married?

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, no. I mean, the wedding, it was a model of accessibility, at least the parts of it that was not structurally built into the physical space.

Emily Ladau:
We spent so long planning and caring very deeply about accessibility. It became our singular mission to make it as accessible as possible. And we just wanted people to feel welcome and feel like they belonged. And I know for a fact, and of course our brains have negative biases, so I can think of the ways in which access went wrong. And those are the things that haunt me, even though they weren’t the things that we could have really planned for or anticipated. I realized that, okay, well, we could have planned for this one, but not really because we wanted people to sit wherever they wanted and we had enough chairs set up for everybody, but then that meant when people came in, they would have to move chairs around so that there would be space for wheelchairs and things like that. No big deal because I think people were able to just sort of move things around as they wanted and there was plenty of assistance there, but I also didn’t want people to just be in the wheelchair section.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. I’m definitely going to have a wheelchair section at my wedding, I think.

Emily Ladau:
Okay, great. Can you put some nice ribbon around it though? Yeah,

Kyle Khachadurian:
It’ll be like the VIP section.

Emily Ladau:
Great. Perfect. I want a red carpet and bottle service.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You’ll get it. I’ll tread your tires with carpet. It’ll be like wherever you go.

Emily Ladau:
That’s so funny. That’s one way to always be on the red carpet. Then the other thing, seriously, nobody told us that there was going to be a guy who was going to do lighting effects at the wedding. We knew that there was a guy who was in charge of heck. Yeah. This maybe might be an oversight on our part because we were told there was going to be a lighting guy, but I literally assumed that that meant a guy who adjusted the lights. I didn’t understand that we were going to have a guy who was doing lighting effects. And so I know that that ended up being a problem for a couple of people, migraines, epilepsy, things like that. So at one point I just had to go and tell him, “You need to lay off it, dude.” So I would’ve for sure prepared people for that if I had thought of that.
And then there was also an issue where we had a couple of tables full of disabled people. I don’t mean that in the disabled section, but we did have-

Kyle Khachadurian:
Well, you definitely put me there. I was very much in the disabled section.

Emily Ladau:
But also sort of, because there was only one other disabled person. We had full tables that were just made up of disabled people, but that’s because they felt like they would all get along or they already knew each other. So I don’t know.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Well, that’s because we all know each other.

Emily Ladau:
Right, exactly. So we had originally worked with the caterer so that the wait staff would go right up to those tables and assist people in getting food because it was buffet style, which is not always the most accessible. And then instead, their table numbers never got called and then we had to sort that out. So there were for sure access snafus and I know it’s like I shouldn’t focus on the negative things first, but I think it’s more like I want to name, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfectly 100% accessible event because something is going to happen. It’s just how you anticipate and fix it in the moment.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. You could moonlight as an accessible wedding planner.

Emily Ladau:
Okay. I told [inaudible 00:10:18] and we should do that. And he was like, “I’m never planning a wedding again in my whole life.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Well, now you’ve given me … I could do the funniest thing in the world right now.

Emily Ladau:
What?

Kyle Khachadurian:
And ask him to plan mine and have him come up with a very, very generous way of saying no.

Emily Ladau:
Can you do that and let me watch while he squirms? He’ll be like, “Of course I want to say yes.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Sure, man. I will do that for you.

Emily Ladau:
No, I say that in just like … But honestly, I do think we’d be a really good duo because he loves a good spreadsheet and doing a ton of research. And I love handling all the phone calls and following up.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Honestly, what a dream.

Emily Ladau:
The dream team. So anyway, but then I feel like there were a lot of really cool positive accessibility moments too. Probably my favorite being some of the ways that I felt that it was more accessible. When I came down the aisle, I specifically asked for nobody to stand up.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, that was cool.

Emily Ladau:
It was so nice because I could see everyone and nobody was being blocked, which I thought was lovely. I also really loved that everybody was sitting throughout the ceremony. Nobody had to stand up for anything. You had an honor, but you didn’t even have to get up. Somebody just brought you the microphone.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That was lovely, by the way.

Emily Ladau:
Yes.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That’s where all my anxiety came from because there was no part of me that was ever going to say no to doing that, but I knew that if I stood up that my legs would be shaky because I’d be nervous. And obviously you weren’t thinking of that exact situation, but that’s sort of what you’re talking about, right? If you make something accessible for everybody.

Emily Ladau:
It makes it better for everyone. But also, I kind of was thinking about it because you read a blessing with our friend, Sean, and Sean also has CP and I was thinking about the two of you walking up to the front and Sean made a joke to me at one point like, “You should play the Jeopardy! theme song while we get up there.” And I was like, why make it uncomfortable for you? Also, if you did get up, people can wait and deal with it.

Kyle Khachadurian:
But I mean, you know the feeling of holding something up by virtue of your existence. It’s like a really nasty feeling when you’re one of us. I’m not saying you would’ve done that to be clear. I’m just saying that’s a thing that we feel.

Emily Ladau:
The way you said that, yes. Holding something up by nature and your existence, I realize that’s not what this episode is about, but oh my God, the number of times-

Kyle Khachadurian:
It probably could be its own episode.

Emily Ladau:
Every time I feel like I’m in the way.

Kyle Khachadurian:
See, look, look what she’s doing. Yeah, no, I know. It’s awful.

Emily Ladau:
I’m sure I must have mentioned this at some point, but I have a story about how I was at a conference. It was a progressive political conference. Have you ever heard of Netroots?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes, I have.

Emily Ladau:
So I was at Netroots and they made an announcement on the loudspeaker to clear the aisles of fire hazards and guess who was in the aisle?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Were you a fire hazard?

Emily Ladau:
Yes.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Nice.

Emily Ladau:
So I went and found the person who was in charge of making the announcements and I was like, “Excuse me, I’m a person, not a fire hazard.” And I would appreciate if you would acknowledge that in the event of a fire, I’m not just going to sit in the aisle, I also need to get out.

Kyle Khachadurian:
And the guy was like, “No, actually you’re both, as it turns out.”

Emily Ladau:
Well, I get called a fire hazard all the time, all the time. And I’m like, “What do you mean I’m a fire hazard? Where do I go when there’s a fire? Do you want me to wait for-”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Into the fire.

Emily Ladau:
Right. Oh, exactly. Right. I forgot we live in a time of eugenics.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I actually did a fire drill at my job. I didn’t do it. This was involuntarily thrust on me as our old fire drills. And the dude told me to just wait in the hallway and I was like, “Oh, I’m sorry. Do fires not go in hallways?”

Emily Ladau:
Oh my God. Yeah. I would have a scenario all the time where there were fire drills in my school and they finally were just like, “Well, when they’re the fire drill, the elevator stops working. So just stay in the classroom.” And one of the teachers was like, “Don’t worry, we’ll close the door. It’s supposed to have a three-hour burn time.” I’m like, “Oh, so it’ll only take me three hours to burn to a crisp. That’s amazing.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
I don’t know where the comfort is supposed to be in that.

Emily Ladau:
Right. I hopefully they’ll find me before my three hours is up.

Kyle Khachadurian:
God willing.

Emily Ladau:
Anyway, wow. Leave it to disabled people to be like weddings and death.

Kyle Khachadurian:
And fire. Your wedding was so good.

Emily Ladau:
Was it?

Kyle Khachadurian:
I’m sorry. I feel like you should really think so.

Emily Ladau:
I know. I just like the affirmation. I’m being humble. It was freaking-

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, no. It was something.

Emily Ladau:
What a joyful day. I think that weddings can be so overrated and I just loved the heck out of mine.

Kyle Khachadurian:
On a scale of one to 10, given that you think weddings can be overrated, where would you put yours?

Emily Ladau:
I still need to say an eight and a half or a nine because I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect wedding. And I think that the wedding industrial complex is ridiculous. And I know that we got sucked into that in some regards, but I also think that we were very thoughtful about everything enough so that I don’t feel like it was just an offering to the capitalist gods. I feel like it was a little more than that. I mean, it felt very true to us. We did it at a venue that we felt was pretty accessible. It was an art museum that we love. I mean, we were there so much just figuring out measurements and pathways and who comes in where. And we’ve bought a portable ramp for the outdoor area. Did you go outside, by the way, during the cocktail hour?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. The cocktail hour. Yeah. I started in there.

Emily Ladau:
Amazing. I’m so glad people made it outside because I never did.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. No, we were having a-

Emily Ladau:
Please.

Kyle Khachadurian:
It was great. The weather was nice. The company was great. And also I’m pretty … I can’t remember, was the outside part on the area that you could see some of the art pieces? Because they had art pieces on one of the lawns and I can’t remember.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, I think there was a little bit of sculpture around somewhere.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, it was nice.

Emily Ladau:
I think my other favorite thing was, you know the tradition where the man is supposed to break a glass at the end of a Jewish wedding?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
So as you well know, but I’m telling our fine listeners at home, we wanted it to be more egalitarian.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I did not know that that was man only-

Emily Ladau:
Oh, really?

Kyle Khachadurian:
… until just now. Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
Oh yeah.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I’m thinking about it and it makes sense. I’ve seen it and I’m … Yeah, but I would not have thought that.

Emily Ladau:
No, it’s a man only situation, which is so silly. But then again, I mean, there’s a marriage contract that you signed beforehand in the Jewish religion and it used to literally be like, okay, now this man owns this woman.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Well, that doesn’t seem right.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. But we’ve modernized enough that my dowry was only one goat instead of seven.

Kyle Khachadurian:
When they say, “Do you take this woman to be your wife?” It was actually literal.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. I mean, there’s so much about wedding culture that’s super messed up. Technically the parents are supposed to give you away and technically only the dad walking you down the aisle. I mean, I think you need to do what works for you and your family structure and who you love, obviously.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You just do whatever, man. Tradition is just peer pressure by dead people.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. I actually read a really interesting book called The Jewish Wedding Now, or Jewish Weddings Now, and it’s a book all about Jewish wedding traditions, but it’s been modernized to make it so that it’s not so patriarchal and male centric. But anyway, so the glass breaking tradition, we both wanted to break the glass, but I don’t really have the power in my foot to step on the glass. So then I thought, okay, I can run the glass over with my wheelchair, but it’s not really going to work. You’re just going to push it forward. You’re not going to go over the glass. So we were thinking about it and finally it was a family affair, but we came up with the idea to make a stomper. And so my dad took a combat boot and put a pool noodle inside of it, and then he drilled a hole in the bottom, and then he attached a walking cane inside the pool noodle and the shoe.
And then once it was screwed into place, he used duct tape. And then I had my very own stomper and I was able to stomp the glass.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Didn’t you also have a sheet of metal on the bottom of the shoe?

Emily Ladau:
Oh, he did. Oh my God. Yeah, I forgot. Thank you. Wow. See, you pay attention.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, Emily, I was locked in. That was probably my favorite part of your wedding, honestly. And I will say to our old aunts who wasn’t there, her dad was incredibly proud of-

Emily Ladau:
Oh my God. They held it up like his-

Kyle Khachadurian:
I mean, and it’s just a stark contrast between him showing us his little invention and him watching his daughter get married. I’m going to be honest, not sure when the smile is bigger.

Emily Ladau:
Okay. It’s so funny that you say that because there’s a photo of us walking down the aisle and my mom is smiling like the fricking queen and I’m happy, but I’m focused. And my dad is like, I wish there was a sound for the face he’s making. It’s just like so serious. But then when he got to show the stomper to everybody, I mean, you would think he was holding up Simba in the Lion King.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, that’s exactly what it was.

Emily Ladau:
And there’s video too. He looked so thrilled. He was so overjoyed.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I mean, that could have been his grandchild, honestly. Genuinely, that’s the vibe he was giving off.

Emily Ladau:
And you were right about the metal thing. So he took a piece off of a footrest from my wheelchair and attached it to the bottom because it’s like a really hefty piece of metal and then drilled it into the bottom of the boot. So yeah, and then we tested it. He ordered practice glasses. We practiced. It was a whole thing. So we knew for a fact that it was going to work and we were going to pull it off and he was so proud of it. And he also, I’m not kidding you, it’s in our storage unit right now, but I asked the other day just to make sure that it was safe and sound in there. And I told him one day I’m going to want to display that when I have more room. And he was like, “I’m going to build you a trophy case for it.” He was like, “I’m going to get velvet lining.” And I was like … I hope you-

Kyle Khachadurian:
You got to put all your trophies in your trophy case, including that.

Emily Ladau:
I was like, “I hope if you have grandchildren one day, you treat them like the stomper.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
He’ll treat them better than the stomper.

Emily Ladau:
He also loves babies.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That does not surprise me one bit.

Emily Ladau:
He loves babies and he loves things that are his babies that he created.

Kyle Khachadurian:
So imagine, if you think about it, grandchild, kind of both.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. That’s a whole other conversation, but anyway.

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, I know. I’m just kidding.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. So I don’t know what else happened. Oh, we did a choreographed dance.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes.

Emily Ladau:
And very specifically included a move that was an homage to Kyle because Brandon learned it from Kyle. I

Kyle Khachadurian:
Actually did not know that he really, really did learn it from me. I thought he was being nice. I didn’t think he was lying, but I genuinely did not know that I taught him that.

Emily Ladau:
No. So Kyle always jumps on the back of my wheelchair. You actually just did it the other week because we-

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes, I did.

Emily Ladau:
… in person and we rolled almost like a half an hour to go to the restaurant with him on the back of my chair. And so Brandon saw it and caught the bug and was like, “I want to do that. ”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Dude, it’s so fun.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, it is. It’s really delightful. I love it. Having another person on the chair, there’s just something funny about it. It charms people. I kind of love the looks that we get.

Kyle Khachadurian:
It really does charm people because they stare in a way that Emily and I don’t usually get stared at. It’s more like … It’s like curiosity and then they look and then they smile.

Emily Ladau:
Exactly. They’re not … You know how people look at you? It’s like, “Oh, you walk funny.” Or like, “Oh, why are you in that wheelchair?” But it’s like, “Oh my God, no, that’s so cool.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
“I need to get a wheelchair using friends so I can do that.” It’s like, you don’t even know how correct you are.”

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. So it’s like my favorite kind of spectacle actually. It makes me laugh. I also have reached the point where I just don’t really care. People are going to look at me. I used to care so much.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That is something I know about you, but is, given who you are to me and how I know you, so surprising.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, I know. It actually, I finally started getting better with it probably around the time we became friends because there was-

Kyle Khachadurian:
Really?

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, because there was a time … Well, this is a deep cut, but there was definitely a time when I was like, “I can’t really be around disabled people in public because it calls too much attention to me.” And then all of a sudden, because I met you on the same day that I met my ex who is a wheelchair user and around that time I was like, “Oh, I think I can date a wheelchair user. I think I can be around other disabled people.” And then we used to all get together in these big groups and there was you and another person with CP who was walking and then another person with CP who was a chair user and then me.
And then it was just like a whole circus of getting on the train and I finally realized I don’t care.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
But it took me a while to get there.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I mean, as somebody that doesn’t like to be perceived by anyone ever, I feel that.

Emily Ladau:
I mean, you are in a way being perceived right now, and I apologize for putting you in that position.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That’s okay. I’m used to it from you.

Emily Ladau:
Oh, and then, okay. How did you feel about the accessible hora?

Kyle Khachadurian:
That’s a tough question to answer because I was deep in inebriation. And so I was very nervous to tell you the truth, but I would’ve been anyway. And then once you made your announcement about how it was going to work, I was like, “No way.” Not no way like there’s no way it’s going to work. I cannot believe that she thought of this. And then it just was and it was so cool.

Emily Ladau:
So just to explain, so the hora is like a traditional dance that you do at Jewish Weddings to the song Hava Nagila, and you just go around in chaotic circles. And I always trip people with my wheelchair and people always fall over and it’s just a hot mess. So I got on the microphone and directed people like a camp counselor and I was like, “We’re going to be in the middle. If you don’t want to move, form a circle around us and dance in the circle. If you do want to do the traditional dance, get in the circle around that circle.” I tried to organize everybody because you know what I hate? I hate going to parties and then they’re like, “And now we’re going to do the Cotton-Eyed Joe, the Electric Slide, the Cha Cha slide, the Cupid Shuffle, and you’re just going to have to sit there and twiddle your thumbs.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
And the funny thing is you know what those dances are and you can’t do any of them. And I have no idea what you just said. I mean, I know the words. I know those are all dances that exist. Yeah. I know a thing or two about Jewish weddings. I thought, because the whole night, the whole night, I was like, “I cannot wait to see this. ” In my head, they were going to lift you onto a comically large chair. I thought that you were going to be on a chair in your … And what you did was way better, but I was so ready to be blown away by how funny that it would’ve been.

Emily Ladau:
We thought about it. I didn’t want to-

Kyle Khachadurian:
Did you actually think about doing it in a more traditional way?

Emily Ladau:
Yes. So I would’ve had to get into another chair because my power wheelchair is 400 pounds.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I always forget that it’s so heavy.

Emily Ladau:
I don’t know if you’ve ever worn a wedding dress, but you can’t do very much once you put it on.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Tell me about that, by the way, when you’re done with this. I want to know everything about how you found it, how it got tailored. You in that, because it looked like you were born in it. It just was part of you-

Emily Ladau:
I intend to [inaudible 00:30:47] in it.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Good.

Emily Ladau:
I mean, not really.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Not good, but.

Emily Ladau:
I really want to be buried in that thing. I love it so much.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I mean, it wasn’t just that it was flattering and fit well. It was like your chair was clearly thought about in a way that … I mean, to be clear, I knew you would do that, but the execution of it was amazing. And I feel like there’s a lot there that went into that decision and also finding the tailor.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. So the tailor, it was … Okay. Well, first of all, the dress shop, I went to this incredible dress shop called Brides by Young. And the woman was my fairy godmother there. And I was so nervous because first of all, I hate trying clothes on. And second of all, I hate trying clothes on as a wheelchair either. And I was worried because wedding dresses are obscenely long and I was like, “Well, I’m going to run this over with my wheelchair and I’m not able to stand up to get into it. And I don’t know how I’m going to zip this and button that and whatever.” She made it work like magic. There were a couple of times when I accidentally did run over the material and it got tangled in my wheel and I was like, “That’s it. I’m going to damage it and I’m going to have to pay a thousand dollars for a dress that I don’t want because I ruined it.”
She was so patient with me and figured out how to untangle the dresses without damaging them. I just felt so good the whole time. I only tried on five dresses. Usually people try on a ton.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Thank you for reading my mind.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. Usually it’s like a whole thing, but I tried on five and the fifth one, I was like, “This is it.” So then I was supposed to work with the tailor from the store, but that tailor fell and broke her hip. And so she had already started the process of tailoring and we decided that we were going to cut off a ton of material. So she’s just sitting there on the floor and she cuts half the dress off. And I’m like, “Oh my God, I just paid so much money and you’re just hacking away at the dress.” And after she broke her hip, I got matched up with another tailor who was filling in for her and it turned out that that Taylor’s niece was a wheelchair user.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh my God.

Emily Ladau:
So yeah.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Really?

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, really. So I think that there was just that natural, “This is not weird to me.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. No, no, sure. But what kismet that is. That is incredible.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. It was also really great because it meant that I had to go to her house and I was like, “I can’t get into somebody’s house.” And she was like, “I have a ramp.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Right. Of course you have a ramp. Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
I was like, “This is so great.” So it was completely fine. And then she was so lovely and just working with my body. And the manager of the dress shop, even though she was not supposed to do this, not that she wasn’t allowed, but there was nothing that said she needed to do this. She came on her day off to my dress fitting appointment so that she could help, just the loveliest people. And when I was trying the dress on, I was like, “I don’t know how I’m going to avoid this getting stuck in my wheels.” And we talked about it and we problem solved and we decided we were going to kind of cut the bottom like a waterfall so that it would be rounded and wouldn’t get tangled up in the wheels. And I was like, “I’m just going to trust the process.” And then I put it on and it was the greatest thing I’ve ever worn.
And I feel like I understand the cliche in movies now with a woman just sitting in the bathtub in her wedding dress because, obscene that you buy that and only get to wear it for one day.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. Although, obviously you only get to wear it for one day, but you could wear it anytime you want and everyone will think you have just gotten married.

Emily Ladau:
A funny behind the scenes story is after I put the dress on, I had to roll from the hotel to the art museum, which was only like a five to 10 minute walk.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I have it on good authority that you could see it from the hotel. I don’t remember that, but …

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. So I’m like rolling along the street in my wedding dress and cars are like honking at me and like yelling stuff out for me.

Kyle Khachadurian:
For all the right reasons this time.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. It was so funny. Oh, oh my God. Of course it takes me until so long into the podcast to say this.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I think this is going to be a little bit longer, but yeah, sure. What just hit you?

Emily Ladau:
Well, I don’t think I experienced a speck of ableism on my wedding day.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Good. That is great.

Emily Ladau:
But also that’s really a revelation.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
Nobody was patronizing to me. Nobody was rude. Nobody made obnoxious comments. Nobody excluded or discriminated or in any way slighted me. And I understand, yes, it’s my wedding day, but also the level to which I do not trust people.

Kyle Khachadurian:
“You won’t believe what this one woman did to not experience ableism.”

Emily Ladau:
“She threw a whole party. She got married.” That would be such a good Squeaky Wheel article.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, you should write it.

Emily Ladau:
In my free time, yeah. It’s wild though. And I’m saying this coming off the heels of like, I just went to the doctor earlier and I was approaching the door and a woman was coming up behind me and she was like, “Do you need me to get that for you? ” And I was like, “No, I’m good. Thank you.” And she was like, “Oh, good for you. You’re so self-sufficient.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
“I try.” That’s so weird. You’re so self-sufficient is a wild thing to say to an adult human being.

Emily Ladau:
Right?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, that is …

Emily Ladau:
You know what would’ve been a really good social experiment though?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Going to the doctor in your wedding dress.

Emily Ladau:
Oh my God, yes, that’s what I was going to say. What if I had went in my wedding dress?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Wait, are we actually going to say that?

Emily Ladau:
I was actually going to say that.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Hell yeah. Someone mind-meld us. But see, someone like that I feel like would be equally as impressed that you found yourself someone to marry you. That’s the vibe that that sounds like to me.

Emily Ladau:
Or because it would just be me alone in my wedding dress. They would be like, “Oh, deary, did you escape the asylum?”

Kyle Khachadurian:
What happened?

Emily Ladau:
Yeah.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. Did you escape the asylum? Oh, man.

Emily Ladau:
I don’t know, man. Weddings are a wild thing. You know what people keep asking me now though?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Tell me.

Emily Ladau:
I wonder if you ever get this question. In fact, I’m sure you must get this. When you are in a relationship and people know that and other disabled people know that, then they’re like, “How did you find someone?”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh my God. Yeah. Man, that’s another episode.

Emily Ladau:
Right. Okay. Actually, I think that should be a part two.

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, no. I mean, really. Oh, man. I mean, this is cliche. I’m going to do one of your lines, but there’s a lot to unpack with that. Because on the one hand, what do you mean? But on the other hand, it’s like there’s this … I don’t want to say arrested development kind of, but kind of. And a lot of internalized and externalized ableism to go … Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Part two.

Emily Ladau:
We really do need to talk about that because also I for sure don’t have some secret formula. I really don’t. I’m not-

Kyle Khachadurian:
I don’t know. Right.

Emily Ladau:
I’m not going to come out with this one weird trick got me a husband.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Well, I do think … I mean, I know we did this a couple of episodes ago, but that episode that we did about needing to be charming and needing to be on all the time, because everyone around us is kind of a … We don’t know that they’re not going to be ableist. That is unfortunately the default position, and so we have to disarm them. I do think in social situations, which includes, I think, finding a partner, I think that actually does give us a kind of a, forgive me, leg up. No, but really, I do think it … And I think as much as people like you and I have it, there are members of our community for some reason or another that don’t. And I think that such things can tip the scales. But I do think by and large, that is something that we … I mean, I’ve definitely heard it and I’ve been around you when you’ve heard it, so I know you’ve heard it.
Yeah. So yeah, man, I wish this was a segue, but we got to stew on this one a little bit.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. Also this is, I think, long for us. So I think that we should do final takeaways and then we should do a part two where we talk about finding a partner as a disabled person.

Kyle Khachadurian:
My final takeaway is donate to our Patreon at patreon.com/theaccessiblestall. Just $1 a month in trust and all curtain feature episodes of The Accessible Stall remain accessible and we’ll be contributing to the Kyle and Emily Podcast Fund, which is the fund that we use to transcribe the episodes. I was going to make a Honeymoon joke, but then I realized that I probably shouldn’t joke about that because that’s podcast money, baby.

Emily Ladau:
Can you imagine people are like, “Oh, she’s stealing the podcast money to go on honeymoon?” No, I am.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I will empty out that account to give to you for your honeymoon. After we pay for the transcript for this episode, I will not actually do that, but I would do it.

Emily Ladau:
I know you would. And that’s true friendship and true love. My final takeaway is I was actually just feeling a little nostalgic because we did an episode a while ago and it was about when I was dating and the whole thing that … Yeah, well, I had just started dating him, I think, but there was something or other on Reddit about not bringing up disability in conversation. Do you remember that episode?

Kyle Khachadurian:
I know what you’re talking … I don’t remember the main focus of it.

Emily Ladau:
I just feel like we had this conversation where it was like, you’re clearly in a wheelchair and the guy that you’re dating is not bringing it up. Do you bring it up to him or whatever?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Did you?

Emily Ladau:
Well, I mean, I think that I did say something finally where I was just like, “Hey, just making sure this is-”

Kyle Khachadurian:
“Hey, man, you see this, right?”

Emily Ladau:
Yeah.

Kyle Khachadurian:
“Because if you don’t, I’ve got some news about you too, buddy.”

Emily Ladau:
Something like that. I mean, I was the one who had to bring it up. I know that much, but anyway, time is slow.

Kyle Khachadurian:
And I’m in a very sort of unique position where I have never disclosed until at least we’re talking. Which in some ways is better, but it’s also like, obviously I disagree with this, but I understand the, “Why didn’t you tell me?” I understand they feel that. Not I understand they should feel that, they shouldn’t feel that, but they do sometimes.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. I think that I’m just feeling very nostalgic right now because we’ve been doing this podcast since 2016 and that has been so many versions of ourselves, so many different relationships and started from the bottom, now we here.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I’m not going to quote the Drake song, but I agree with sentiment.

Emily Ladau:
I’m sorry I quoted Wheelchair Jimmy.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, that’s not even the closest to the most problematic thing that Drake is. But anyway-

Emily Ladau:
I know that.

Kyle Khachadurian:
This is what happens when Emily skips the infamous Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef from last summer, but.

Emily Ladau:
Why would I give my attention to that?

Kyle Khachadurian:
This is what happens when Emily and her co-host have vastly different pop culture interests. My final takeaway is your wedding was phenomenal and it was so good. And little inside baseball, you got to see me and your husband in the same clothes, like two or three weeks apart.

Emily Ladau:
I know, which raises the question, do either of you have other clothes?

Kyle Khachadurian:
I don’t. I actually, what you’re seeing now is a mirage.

Emily Ladau:
Kyle, oh my God, can’t believe we waited until just now to say this. Kyle learned how to tie a tie.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Just for you.

Emily Ladau:
For the wedding. And may I say, you looked good in it.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Thank you. You looked-

Emily Ladau:
You looked so handsome.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You looked so good in your wedding dress. I posted that silly photo of the tie where the knot was correct, but the length was obviously wrong to my Instagram and everyone was like, “That’s not how you do it, dumb ass.” And I’m like, “Yeah, dude, I know. This was a joke.”

Emily Ladau:
I know. Meanwhile, I was like, you’re going to wear it like that to the wedding, right?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes. And I really wanted to, but it just didn’t match the rest of my vibe.

Emily Ladau:
No, he looked so good and your girlfriend also looked so good and you guys looked so good.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I will say we did. It was unintentionally matching, by the way. That was not planned, but it worked out.

Emily Ladau:
Really?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes.

Emily Ladau:
The blue, it was working for both of you.

Kyle Khachadurian:
It was fantastic.

Emily Ladau:
Anyway, my final, final, final, final, final takeaway is I think Kyle has a great girlfriend. Okay.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You know she’s going to listen to this, right?

Emily Ladau:
I know.

Kyle Khachadurian:
She’s like, “That’s why I said it.

Emily Ladau:
” Oh, wait. Okay. Last thing. So for a gift for Kyle, she had made him a custom embroidered shirt for our podcast.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes. For my birthday.

Emily Ladau:
So I was like, “Oh my God, I love it so much. I want one.” And then I thought nothing of it really because I didn’t want-

Kyle Khachadurian:
Why would you?

Emily Ladau:
I didn’t want to seriously-

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, I know, but that’s just a thing that you say and you mean it, but no, I know you did, but you don’t ever expect …

Emily Ladau:
Yeah.

Kyle Khachadurian:
The point is that Emily got one too.

Emily Ladau:
I did. In blue, it has our logo on the front and on the back it says, “May we say you look good today.” And I am telling you, when we were sitting and opening gifts from the wedding, I cried so much when I opened that.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Her husband took a photo of Emily in deep emotional distress, mid-tear to send to me and I showed it to her in our brief layover in Manhattan eating artichoke pizza and it was very cute, the photo, and the pizza.

Emily Ladau:
I just cried too much. Do you stop an artichoke pizza?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
Nice.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Good.

Emily Ladau:
Good choices. Good choices. Okay. This has been the longest freaking episode ever. Anyway, may we say you look good today.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You do. Especially you, Emily.

Emily Ladau:
Especially you, Kyle. And-

Kyle Khachadurian:
How come we’ve never done that?

Emily Ladau:
Also, because you’re listening to this, especially you, Katie.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, dude. What have you done? No, it’s okay. She always looks good.

Emily Ladau:
My husband does not listen to this because he lives with me, so he literally lives with this podcast.