Dinner and Dancing in Queens

• By Catherine Coreno

Justin Chapple & Jason Sarnoff
The Foundry
September 26, 2008

It didn’t start out as a wedding. “We wanted a fifth anniversary party,” says Justin. (They had met five years earlier at the Stonewall Inn and moved in together after two months, when Justin’s lease was up.) So they booked a space, found a caterer, and sent out invitations. “The invite said commitment celebration, because when we had them printed, marriage wasn’t an option,” says Jason. Then current events intervened: Soon after Governor Paterson issued the directive for New York to recognize same-sex marriages, they flew to California to legalize their union. “We didn’t tell many people. We wanted it to be a surprise,” says Jason. At the party, the rabbi revealed that they’d wed in San Francisco. “Everybody screamed!” recalls Justin. “We talked a lot about how we should be pronounced: husband and husband? Partners for life? We decided on ‘united in marriage.’ ”

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