Robin (they/them) met Voltaire (they/them) and Valentina (she/her) around the same time, all on OkCupid. What started as two separate courtships folded into one relationship, and when a Brooklyn nonprofit called Pride Grows in Brooklyn offered their annual free wedding giveaway, they applied and won! The result? A day full of queer love, and three people who now call each other spouse, esposita, esposité, and (when Robin’s feeling a little witty) “love triangle.”
Let’s see how this throuple wedding in Brooklyn all came together…
Two months, three people, one very small dress rehearsal for chaos
Pride Grows in Brooklyn gives away a wedding to a queer couple (or in this case, couples) each summer, and Robin, Voltaire, and Valentina found out they’d won only two months before the event.
“Val, Volt, and I got swamped to the smallest degree in vendor chats and meetings,” Robin told us, “and that small taste was PLENTY.” The nonprofit had already lined up the venue, Carroll Hall’s garden space, and paired them with the second couple sharing the day (Emilyn and Shellz). PGIB split the event into two separate ceremonies for the couple and the throuple, with a joint reception for all five of them after.
Voltaire sewed their own trousers for the day, and wore the most phenomenal floral ring by Miriam Bloom Designs. Robin and their sister hand sewed Robin’s suit, which took a battering, “I’ve sewn for almost 20 years but never an original garment, much less two, for a formal event,” Robin said. “My shirt still lives, now with a pen stain. My pants, alas, made it through the ceremony and most of our rest period then bit the dust.” A backup outfit saved the reception.
And Valentina? She was in a floor-length black lace gown with sheer draping sleeves and matching lace gloves, dramatic eye makeup, a bouquet with red stems standing up out of the pale pink and white florals like an exclamation point nobody asked for and everybody appreciated.
A ceremony with circle seating, jumping a broom, and a reading from a book called The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions
The guest list stayed small enough that only a handful of people needed to arrange travel. Everyone (guests and vendors included) tested negative for Covid the morning of the wedding.
For the ceremony, guests sat in a loose circle rather than rows, everyone visible to everyone else, which suited a dress code Robin described as “as ostentatious as it was comfortable.” Their officiant, Angel, wore a gender-bent formal look, and the rest of the vendor team leaned into color for the day too. “It was really sweet,” Robin said.
The triad entered from the back of the garden separately: Robin’s sister walked them down, Voltaire’s mom walked Voltaire, and Valentina came in with her sister and her best friend. In the photos from that walk, Robin is in a pale lilac-silver satin top and matching wide-leg trousers, a flower crown threaded through short hair, one hand resting on a wooden cane. Voltaire wears a sheer black lace veil pinned over their face, a heavy drape of cowrie shells layered over rainbow beaded strands against a cream brocade suit.
Angel read a section aloud from The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, a 1977 queer utopian fable written by Larry Mitchell and illustrated by Ned Asta, and then the triad exchanged vows.
Robin’s, in part:
“You take me as I am and you challenge me to be a better person.”
To Voltaire, they said: “I met you when neither of us could or wanted to act as though our brains are calm. I’ve had the honor of caring for you and caring for cats with you. We watch water flow. We repair and transform with our hands.”
To Valentina: “You changed my life by pointing your care at me, ensuring that I eat and that the house is clean. I want to build that solace with and for you.”
Then the three of them jumped a broom that Voltaire’s mother brought, and nuzzled in place of a kiss. They exited to upbeat orchestral rock.
Four cakes, a DJ who read the room, and dinner that started at 3pm
At the shared reception, DJ Mona built a set that braided together the music tastes of both couples getting married that day, deep cuts alongside crowd pleasers. “Mona combined our three music tastes with that of the other marriers for an eclectic yet masterful mix,” Robin said. “I applaud the DJ.”
The two couples danced first. Robin, Voltaire, and Valentina shook it out to “Freaks” by Haute and Freddy. Emilyn and Shellz went with a classic R&B ballad. Voltaire and Emilyn spoke briefly to thank PGIB, the venue, and the guests before the reception properly opened.
Food was light: hors d’oeuvres, crudités, mostly vegetarian, plus a bar stocked with wine and canned beer. Robin remembers a salmon bagel bite and a particularly good cheese. But the day’s real punchline was dessert. Somehow, there were four cakes. Emilyn and Shellz had lemon with blackberry. The throuple’s was chocolate with raspberry. Then the cake vendor threw in two more, unprompted: seven-layer cookie cakes, one iced in rainbow, one in the colors of the trans flag.
Robin’s parents had warned them that a wedding day is the most fun and the least food you’ll eat in one sitting, and it held up. Vendors wanted the group on location by 9am, and between the ceremony and the group photos, nobody sat down to eat until catering finally checked in around 3pm with alcohol and a small plate of vegetables. Robin had eaten a heavy breakfast and considers it a win compared to their parents’ own wedding day, where the first food available was a plate of pimento cheese sandwiches waiting in a car trunk after the reception ended.
Photographer Bailey Q kept the whole day moving. She collected small objects for a flat lay while the wedding party rested, ran the group photos on a deadline tight enough to actually work, and pulled the three of them out to a nearby alley for a set of portraits against a wall of layered graffiti and a rolled steel security gate. She also led an hour of intermediate yoga for the two couples during their venue walkthrough. “That was a lovely introduction to both her and the space,” Robin said.
On the guest tables: a custom crossword and a fanned-out tarot deck
PGIB built a crossword puzzle just for the two couples getting married that day, printed on a rainbow gradient board and left out for guests to fill in with a hot pink marker. Answers spanned the origin story: OKCUPID, TWENTYTWENTY, TRIAD, BROOKLYN, COMMUNITY, PRIDEGROWS. Next to it sat a sprawl of loose pronoun and pride pinback buttons free for guests to take, a bud vase with a single calla lily, and a stack of colored note cards clipped to a line for well-wishes.
Another table held an amber glass vessel stuffed with a shaggy yellow zinnia, a chartreuse pompom mum, and sprigs of mint, next to a mercury glass votive and a full tarot deck fanned open with the Ten of Cups turned face up on top. A framed note from the PGIB team sat beside it, thanking guests for showing up for “these extraordinary marriers.”
What Robin took from the whole thing
Winning a wedding on a two-month runway isn’t exactly a normal engagement timeline, but Robin figures it’s not far off from planning any small wedding under pressure. The bigger lesson was smaller and stranger: you can love more than one person at once and still end up eating standing up in a break room at 3pm because that’s just what wedding days do to everyone, regardless of how many people are at the altar.
Asked how they describe the three of them as a unit, Robin didn’t reach for one word. “We three go by triad, trio, throuple… spouse, wife, partner, lover, beloved, and then we get multilingual with esposita y esposité. Love triangle if I’m feeling witty.” Polycule works too, technically, though Robin reserves that term for something bigger: “the total constellation of platonic BFFs, mentors, lovers, comets, hook ups, and 20yo activists we temporarily adopt.”
Check out the full gallery for all the queer throuple wedding inspiration you could ever need…
Vendors
- Project: Pride Grows in Brooklyn
- Venue: Carroll Hall
- Planning: em events jc / Mavens
- Officiants: Once Upon a Vow / Queer Officiant
- Photography: Bailey Q Photo / Kade Joy Photography
- Videography: Reel Brooklyn
- Content creation: All the Love NYC
- Photo booth: Firework Photo Booth Co
- Floral design: Miriam Bloom Designs / Rising Tide Botanicals
- Floral donations: Stems Brooklyn / Rising Tide Botanicals
- DJs: Mon Amie Events / am_nazz
- Hair and makeup: Simple and Sultry / jgreymua
- Catering: Pixie Scout NYC
- Stationery: Polk Paper
- Baker: Vici Design NY
- Website: uxbex design
- Yoga: Woo Woo Crew
Special contributors:
- Cookies: lpelican
- Rainbow cupcakes: ursula_brooklyn
- Decoration: Snap Collective World
