Congratulations to one of our favorite lesbian comedians, Fortune Feimster, on her marriage to Jacquelyn Smith!

The two, who announced on social media in January 2018 that they were engaged, tied the knot on Friday in Malibu, California. It was a small ceremony at a rented house with views of the ocean. They invited guests to join over Zoom. As usual for celebrity weddings, our friends at People.com got the exclusive scoop!

“It was something small,” Feimster shared with People, noting that because of covid-19, the travel restrictions prevented her family coming from North Carolina and her new wife’s family couldn’t travel from Michigan. “We only had a couple of good friends there. We all had COVID tests. We purposefully kept it small for the reasons of it being during a pandemic.”

We know so many Equally Wed couples can relate to this. Also relatable to LGBTQ+ couples planning their weddings right now (and many of us queers who’ve already tied the knot) is Feimster’s concerns about how the recent U.S. Supreme Court discussions on same-sex marriage played a major role in her wanting to get married.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed to the court tonight, and the court will have a 6-3 conservative majority. And earlier this month, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito said the 2015 same-sex marriage ruling Obergefell v. Hodges continues to have “ruinous consequences” for religious liberty. Their statement worried many Americans about the right to same-sex marriage being overturned.

“I’m not going to lie, there were some nerves about the Supreme Court. After Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, all these people started talking about gay marriage again. On the first day of their session, two of the justices brought up gay marriage. I think I had posted something on Instagram, something like, ‘Oh man, this is nerve-racking as a gay person.’ Especially because we were planning to get married. All these people were like, ‘Go get married now,’ ” recalls Feimster, who met Smith at Pride in Chicago one day after the court declared same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states in June 2015.

“Who knows what will happen? Hopefully, marriage equality is here to stay. But we wanted to be more proactive and get married while we know we can,” she explains. “It definitely got the ball rolling for us a lot faster. I mean, we were going to get married no matter what, but we just were like, ‘Why wait?’ We’ve been engaged for like two-and-a-half years. You just don’t know what will happen when the tide shifts so significantly with the Supreme Court. You hope that they listen to the country. I mean, the majority of people support marriage equality. You want that to be the voice that guides them in that decision, but you just don’t know.”

And while we’re all holding our breath hoping that marriage equality is here to stay for America, we truly hope that Fortune and Jax are as happy as Brenda and Tim. 😉

 

header photo: Instagram.com/fortunefeimster