Tell us a little about yourselves; what do you do for work and fun?
Kit is a writer, primarily for film and audio; Lee is a therapist currently in school to become a psych nurse practitioner. Kit is a drag performer and producer (whose drag name is Tulle Kit), and Lee is a philosophy nerd. They both love traveling, the outdoors, movies, music, and their two cats, Scout and Jeremy.
How long have you been together, and how did you meet?
We’ve been together for four years—we actually got married at City Hall on the fourth anniversary of our first date. We met the “old fashioned way”—i.e., on Tinder. Our Tinder profiles specified that we weren’t looking for anything serious, but that all changed as soon as we met up for our hours-long first date. We met six months before the COVID lockdown started in NYC. We were UHauled by the pandemic and have been sharing a home, life, and cats ever since.
Aside from your wedding, what is your favorite memory together?
One of our favorite bits of lore from our relationship history is something called “The Setlist.” Kit sings, and Lee plays guitar, so we had a bit early on in our relationship where we decided we were going to form a two-person cover band. We made a collaborative Spotify playlist called “The Setlist,” where we were ostensibly going to collect songs we could learn together. Still, it quickly became a way for us to share songs that captured how deeply we were falling in love instead.
We spent the first couple of months of our relationship sending each other not-so-secret declarations of love via The Setlist before we finally acknowledged our true feelings IRL. It was so sweet, romantic, and emo, waiting for the other person to add a new song to The Setlist and scouring our music libraries for the perfect track to capture how we felt.
We love having a song-by-song record of our relationship’s earliest days and listening back to how it evolved and took shape. We’re pulling all our significant songs for the wedding ceremony—first dance, etc—from The Setlist, as well!
Tell us about the proposal.
We took an amazing week-long trip to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile as soon as it was possible to travel internationally after the COVID lockdown (with lots of testing, vaxxing, and masking). Though we’d been discussing eventually getting married since very early on in our relationship, neither of us planned to propose in Chile.
But on the first night of our trip, we were sitting by the fire at our hotel, looking up at the stars and mountains and talking about what we would want our eventual wedding to look like… and we both secretly started planning to propose to the other while we were in Chile. Lee ended up beating Kit to the punch in the end.
We took an incredible hike to the top of Cerro Toco, an 18,400 ft volcano. At the summit, Lee handed their phone to our guide, Pierre, and asked him to take one more picture of us. As Kit got ready to take the picture, Lee got down on one knee—no ring, no big speech—and asked Kit to marry them. It took Kit a minute to figure out what was happening (there was not a lot of oxygen up there), but they said yes as soon as she got her wits together.
We bought some copper and lapus lazuli rings in town, and the rest of the trip became a celebration of our engagement—we feel like we started the wedding process with our honeymoon and have been working backward from there!
Talk us through the decision to elope.
We had a big party for our friends at Ginger’s Bar after our elopement, and we’ll be having a more formal wedding ceremony and reception at the Prospect Park Boathouse in December, but we wanted the chance to celebrate together first. It was beautiful to spend our City Hall day and elopement reception with those who know us and love us the best.
Talk us through the actual elopement.
We decided to get married at Brooklyn City Hall on our fourth dating anniversary with just our photographer, Lee’s dad and sister, and Kit’s two best friends (one of whom was there in person, the other of whom was Zooming in from Oregon). Afterward, we went off just the two of us and returned to Betty Bakery, the coffee shop where our first date started, to share a celebratory homemade Twinkie. We went home to have a glass of champagne, then went out for a lovely vegan dinner at Lady Bird in the East Village. Weddings can be such a whirlwind that you barely end up spending time with your partner, so we wanted to make sure that we got to cherish and be present for every second of each other’s loving company on the day of our legal marriage ceremony before any of our bigger celebrations took place.
A couple of days after our City Hall elopement, we hosted an “elopement reception” at Ginger’s, our favorite local lesbian bar, for our close friends and chosen family. Ginger’s is the oldest lesbian bar in Brooklyn, and we had some of our earliest dates there. (We were so worried that the bar would close during lockdown, but it came back in full force once NYC opened up again). We had vegan cupcakes from Clementine Bakery for dessert, and Kit invited a bunch of their drag friends to perform songs from the collaborative Spotify playlist Kit, and Lee created early in their relationship as a vehicle to send each other not-so-secret declarations of their love.
It was so beautiful to celebrate with our queer community before anyone else, as they are the ones who are with us day to day here in Brooklyn, who know us best, and who understand how beautiful and special queer and trans love is.
What does the future hold for you both?
At least we plan on staying in New York for a couple more years. Lee just started their psych NP doctorate program at Columbia. Kit just sold their first feature screenplay and has two big podcast projects coming out this year (Alethea on Audible and Underwater from Warner Music, starring Jason Derulo and Alex Shipp). We’re looking forward to putting down additional roots somewhere a little greener while keeping a foot in our queer community here in Brooklyn.
Lee is looking forward to practicing as a psych NP working with queer clients. Kit is looking forward to continuing their career as a writer of gayer and gayer stories.
We’ll start our fertility journey this year and hope to have a kid together. But right now, we’re enjoying our new life as spouses and partners. We’ll be documenting our married life and fertility journey on our YouTube channel, @kitandleevlog.
Photography by City Hall – Anna Selle
Ginger’s Bar – Human Flower Productions
Accessories MyHeartAndArmor
Ceremony Venue Brooklyn City Hall
Desserts Clementine Bakery
Outfits Reformation, RoseCut Clothing, H&M, Rag and Bone, Phix
Reception Venue Ginger’s Bar
Wedding Favors PerfectOccasionStore
