Love at first sight: Chicago couple on love and marriage at the Grammys

Chicago, IL - At the 56th annual Grammy Awards on January 26, same-sex marriage took center stage. Grammy-winning hetero duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were riding high on the success of their pro-gay anthem "Same Love." During the performance of that song during the Grammy Awards ceremony, thirty-three couples, gay and straight took part in a mass wedding to be broadcast live to millions of Grammy viewers around the world.

One such same-sex couple, Steven Veselka-Crain and Lukas Veselka-Paulénas, both current Chicago residents, took part in the Grammy wedding ceremony. Veselka-Crain, a former Southwest Airlines employee who now works as a Starbucks manager, and PaulÉnas, a student at River Forest's Concordia University studying Business Administration have a story made in social media heaven.

According to Veselka-Crain, who met PaulÉnas on May 21, 2013, after accepting his Facebook friend request (they shared many mutual friends, but had never met), it was the first time he had ever been so taken with someone. "From the moment I saw him there was an instant connection. Not to be cliché or anything, but it was literally love at first sight," Veselka-Crain said.

Steven proposed to Lukas atop the Stratosphere during a trip to Las Vegas in 2013, not long after they first met, and hoped to wed in October 2014, with "our close friends and family" in attendance. "We were actually looking at Promontory Point here in Chicago," Veselka-Crain told ChicagoPride.com. "It has this awesome little venue that looks out over the city."

The process of applying to be a couple in the mass wedding on the Grammy Awards followed an invitation from friend in Los Angeles. "He said that an event was going on and asked if Lukas and I would be willing to move up our wedding date," recalled Veselka-Crain. "We said, 'Sure, why not. If it's going to be paid for, cool!' He relayed our information on to the company called The Casting Firm and after talking to them they asked us to send in our story and some pictures of us. We had to sign a confidentiality agreement. They wanted to make sure that we were legit couples, not just wanting to get married on live TV."

With the confidentiality agreement signed, Steven and Lukas had to keep the whole thing a secret after learning they were selected on Christmas Eve. "It was a big secret for a little more than a month and a half where we couldn't say anything to anybody, which was the hardest thing we had ever done in our lives," said Veselka-Crain. "We can't keep secrets."

He went on to say, "The morning of (the Grammy Awards) was when were able to tell people. We blew up our Facebook (pages) to get the word out. Then we called our families and said, 'You have to watch the Grammy Awards. We're getting married!' We had started posting things on Facebook about how we had something we wanted to share with everybody to keep people checking in on us about the big surprise. The response that we got from our friends and family has been incredible. Even from our deeply conservative friends and family. I, personally, would never in a million years have thought that they would accept us or recognize us. They've reached out with encouraging and heartfelt words. Hearing things from my grandfather himself has been overwhelming. How supportive he is of me and Lukas is incredible. Lukas' family here in Chicago and his family in L.A. have been supportive, too. We went out to lunch and brunch with them when we were in L.A. That kind of overwhelming support was something I'd never experienced before. It's been incredible."

As if being one of the couples selected to be included in the Grammy Awards wedding ceremony wasn't enough of an awesome life experience, Queen Latifah officiated, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Mary Lambert and Madonna provided the music -- details they learned during rehearsal the day before the Grammy Awards. "That's when the emotions really hit us," said Veselka-Crain. 

He describes the Grammy wedding ceremony as "one of the most amazing events I have participated in in my entire life. While we were standing in the wings, before we walked down the aisle, there were people sitting in the audience who knew what was going on because they had read the press releases that came out earlier in the day. They were congratulating us. As we started walking down the aisle at the Staples Center, people were up on their feet, loudly applauding and cheering. It was amazing. Thinking about it makes me cry. It was one of the most emotional and incredible events of our lives. Lukas and I looked at each other in disbelief. It was a complete joy and we were amazed how things are progressively changing. Seeing celebrities and stars crying with joy for us was one of the biggest highlights."

Lukas handled the details of what he and Steven would wear. "Lukas and I wore somewhat matching tuxes," Veselka-Crain said. "He wore a bow tie and I wore a long tie. That was his idea. He was at Target and he saw a card that had that on it. He said, 'This is what we should wear.' He's the one who took care of what we were going to wear.

Honeymoon plans are still in the work, according to Steven. "We're planning something for the early summer. He graduates in May. He can't take any more time off of school like we did for our weeklong adventure." Where are they bound? "Cabo San Lucas down in Mexico," which should be a welcome respite after this brutal winter.

Taking part in a historic mass wedding at the Grammy Awards is made even more significant by the fact that Steven and Lukas live in Illinois where it is now legal for same-sex couples to be married.

As Steven puts it, "For us, it goes back to the whole acceptance thing. Having everybody, including our friends here, being supportive and accepting makes our fight for equality and same-sex marriage even stronger. It puts it out there for us to help win that fight and make sure that it becomes legal for all of America, anywhere we move to. If we don't stay in Chicago, if we move to someplace else that currently doesn't recognize it. We want to make known that that's something we are fighting for so that we're not all second class citizen anymore, that we have the same human rights as everybody else."

"The word is about, there's something evolving,/whatever may come, the world keeps revolving/They say the next big thing is here,/that the revolution's near,/but to me it seems quite clear/that it's all just a little bit of history repeating"

- Propellerheads + Shirley Bassey

History repeating: a personal story on marriage equality from ChicagoPride.com features columnist Gregg Shapiro

In April 1993, several months after meeting my partner Rick Karlin, we took part in the mass wedding held the Saturday before the National March On Washington. Presided over by Reverend Troy Perry, the nuptials were performed, symbolically, in front of the offices of the Internal Revenue Service.

Rick and I had always planned to attend the March. But things took an unexpected turn a few weeks into our preparations. Because Rick was a prominent figure in Chicago's LGBT community, as both an activist and a journalist, word of our participation in the wedding reached the offices of People Magazine. We were contacted and asked if we would be willing to be interviewed by a People writer and photographed, at the ceremony and March, by a People photographer.

After discussing it at great length and conferring with friends and family, we decided to go through with it. We bought rings at the gay-owned store We're Everywhere on Halsted. We purchased new clothes for the occasion and visited our favorite hair stylists for new dos.

On the morning of the wedding, we met the People journalist and photographer for brunch at the Mayflower Hotel. From there, we were whisked in a limousine to the site of the wedding. The gathered throng consisted of the hundreds of couples taking place in the ceremony and the well-wishers who were there to share in the history-making joy of the occasion. The People photographer, who left brunch ahead of us, had cordoned off an area near the dais where Rev. Perry would be conducting the ceremony.

Before the ceremony began, participating couples were given colorful sidewalk chalk to write messages of love on the street. There was a great deal of hugging and crying. Boutonnieres and corsages were being attached to lapels and wrists, respectively. The attire was as varied as the LGBT community itself. The lesbian couple in matching mullets who took their place beside us also wore matching Harley-Davidson t-shirts. We were dressed in colorful sport jackets, brightly colored shirts and ties reflective of the time; Levis and color-coordinated Doc Marten shoes.

The ceremony was uplifting and emotional. A genuinely surreal experience that blended passion and politics, commitment to each other and commitment to changing the laws that qualified us as second-class citizens. The People photographer, with a few cameras slung around his neck, recorded the event for us and the readers of the magazine. (An unexpected result of the photographer creating a barrier around us was that other photographers thought we were someone important and took our pictures, consequently landing us in the page of magazines and newspapers throughout the country.) The next day, the photographer followed us along the parade route, snapping pictures of us waving to the crowd along the parade route and posing in front of the White House.

We eagerly awaited the Tuesday when the People Magazine containing the feature story would hit the newsstands. A day before it was set to hit the streets, we received a call from the People writer to tell us that because of the events at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, coverage of the National March on Washington was greatly reduced in the forthcoming issue and that our story had been bumped. We were disappointed, but the whole experience had been so wonderful and unforgettable that we soon got over our feelings of disenchantment. The People Magazine staff was kind enough to write us a warm letter of gratitude and to send us some of the best photos of us taken at the wedding and March.

Same-sex marriage continues to be a relevant and topical news story more than 20 years later. Passage of same-sex marriage rights have been occurring globally, as well as in states across the U.S., beginning with Massachusetts in 2003. It seems as if almost every day another state passes same-sex marriage laws or some legal event takes place, such as Attorney General Eric Holder extending equal treatment for same-sex couples, including in states where same-sex marriage is not recognized.