Sydney Paige Hopfer and Jes Ansley Graham hustled from their Jan. 3 wedding ceremony at the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse in Washington straight to the Supreme Court Building. There, they tied red capes on over their wedding dresses and held aloft a bridal bouquet of red roses they intended to burn.
“That was our political statement,” said Ms. Hopfer, 25, of Vienna, Va. “The red cloaks were representing ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ where women are being controlled and don’t have choices.”
The two were among the L.G.B.T.Q. couples rushing to get married before Donald J. Trump returned to the White House. Concerns that marriage equality rights might be in jeopardy under the new presidential administration contributed to their decision to move their legal wedding this year to January from June. But they also saw their wedding day in Washington as a chance to flex their activist muscles on behalf of women’s reproductive rights.
“I’ve seen firsthand that access to care for women is going in the wrong direction,” Ms. Hopfer said. Both work in women’s health, Ms. Hopfer as a nurse to high-risk pregnancy patients at a hospital in Silver Spring, Md., and M. Graham is a patient care technician and doula.
Since meeting M. Graham, 26, who uses they/them pronouns and the courtesy title M., on Jan. 3, 2022, Ms. Hopfer has combined her activism with another belief born of firsthand experience: “The universe definitely played a role in us finding each other,” she said.
Ms. Hopfer grew up in Pittsburgh with her parents and two siblings. In December 2021, when she was a senior at PennWest Edinboro studying for a bachelor’s degree in nursing, a friend in Washington, Elizabeth Tate, invited her to a New Year’s Eve get-together. The city was bracing for a Jan. 4 snowstorm. To avoid treacherous driving on the way back to Pennsylvania, she stayed in Mrs.. Tate’s Washington apartment for a few extra days.
M. Graham, who grew up in Namibia with nine siblings and their Christian missionary parents, studied cosmetology before settling on a career in health care. They were living in Falls Church, Va., when they got a Jan. 3 call from Mrs.. Tate, a mutual friend, asking for a haircut. With scissors in hand, M. Graham drove to Washington, where Mrs.. Tate and Ms. Hopfer met her in the apartment building’s lobby.
“It was an immediate attraction,” M. Graham said. “I had stars in my eyes.”
Minutes later, Ms. Hopfer had squeezed into Mrs.. Tate’s small bathroom to watch M. Graham cut Mrs.. Tate’s hair. “I just wanted to be close to them,” she said. By the following day, Ms. Hopfer also had a fresh haircut. She also had a feeling that, wherever she ended up after college, she would like it to be with M. Graham.
For two years, they were a long-distance couple. In June 2022, to get her career off the ground, Ms. Hopfer accepted a job as a labor and delivery nurse in Pittsburgh. But “the goal was always to live together,” she said. M. Graham was then working as a medical assistant and taking community college classes. “It worked because we made it work,” M. Graham said.
In 2023, Ms. Hopfer shifted from nursing to working with mothers of stillborn babies as a bereavement doula. But she knew she would eventually return to nursing. Late that year, she accepted her current job in the obstetrics department of the Maryland hospital.
First, she moved into the house in Vienna that M. Graham was sharing with roommates. When M. Graham’s lease was up six months later, in June 2024, they found a place of their own in Vienna. Before they moved in, they had started talking about marriage.
On June 17, 2024, M. Graham proposed to Ms. Hopfer on a weekend trip to Savannah, Ga., with a diamond engagement ring Ms. Hopfer’s late grandfather, a jeweler, had set aside for her. A month later, Ms. Hopfer proposed to M. Graham at Mellon Park in Pittsburgh with another ring her grandfather had set aside for a grandchild’s wedding.
The couple’s Jan. 3 courthouse wedding lacked the head count of the celebration they planned for June in Forest, Va., but not by much. Instead of 25 guests, 10 watched them exchange vows before Judge George Barbour, the branch chief of the marriage bureau of Washington, D.C.
[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]
The mood they managed to create in a place meant to feel more official than romantic, both said, was one of pure love. Handwritten vows each read reinforced their commitment and principles. M. Graham promised to be a safe haven for Ms. Hopfer.
Ms. Hopfer also promised security, in love and in life. “I promise to always choose you,” she said, “even when the world around us feels uncertain.”
The post A Wedding Ceremony Reflecting More Than Just Their Love appeared first on New York Times.
