The day we met, it just about ruined the evening for everyone involved. This was a few dozen people, all of whom ventured out after work on a chilly, grey Tuesday evening to hear a panel discussion on the ethics of using generative AI in marketing. Em was moderating the panel, and Erkki's former boss was on the panel, so they were front and center. Suffice it to say, Em struggled to focus on the conversation at hand after spotting Erkki in the front row and wondering what kind of fascinating creature rolls up to a professional event in a leather jacket and a band shirt emblazoned with Qwälen's* logo (on which the only discernible text reads, "anti-fascist black metal") We got to talking after the event and quickly realized we had loads in common, the least of which included both having Finnish names despite being native English speakers from the US (and being once-divorced from a Finn). Being able to share memes and communicate in our native language while making eye contact (which Finns famously loathe) was like water in the desert, and in true queer fashion we'd U-Hauled by the end of the following month and both knew we'd found The One by the end of the summer. It did take a bit longer for our kids (Em's rescue dog, Falafel Eduardo Kyle Seikkanen, and Erkki's tuxedo cat, Duchess Anastasia Chernekova) to start acting like siblings, but they got there eventually. (Falafel and Ana will sadly not be joining us for the handfasting - we did ask, but they prefer not to fly... like, ever.) *For the uninitiated, Qwälen are a Finnish black metal band from Oulu, active since 2017. Their music blends raw black metal with punk influences, reflecting the members’ diverse musical backgrounds. The band has released two full-length albums: Unohdan sinut [I forget you] in 2021 and Syvä hiljaisuus [Deep Silence] in 2023, and are known for energetic live performances and a strong commitment to anti-fascist principles.

Please join us for a much-anticipated hand-fasting ceremony and plant-based dinner to celebrate our nuptials and affirm our love for one another with family and friends. We wanted a Fall wedding for several reasons. First of all, the astounding foliage. Second, the softer, more flattering sunshine. Third, the cooler evenings, clear starry nights, sweater weather, and oat milk PSLs - not to mention Halloween, the most important of all American holidays! Fall is our favorite season, and we are very excited to celebrate with you all in this special way in October in Rochester, NY - a location chosen whimsically for its many beautiful waterfalls, as there are none where we live in Helsinki, and because quite practically, we wanted to feel safe at our wedding. Quite frankly, we felt that while Em's family is in Buffalo, Rochester is one of the best small cities in the US for the LGBTQ community (and for vegans!) - and is nonetheless easily accessible to almost all of our family and friends. (In case you didn't know, Rochester's long history of supporting the LGBTQ community includes having the first LGBTQ newspaper, The Empty Closet, which was the longest continuously-published LGBTQ newspapers in the US until the pandemic). Of course, there is still work to be done on these fronts everywhere, but we want this to be a happy occasion where we feel safe enough to focus on the personal, rather than the political. That said, we chose a handfasting since we've been weaving the tapestry of our lives together since we met, and we're excited to continue this intertwining with you all, and to be able to bring a physically entwined manifestation of this back to Helsinki after the ceremony. We want to be transparent though - we did officially tie the knot last Fall, at the magistrate / courthouse / police station in *exotic* Hyvinkää, Finland on a grey, drizzly Monday morning on November 11 - so this is our anniversary. 11/11 was a date chosen to be cute, since spotting 11:11 on the clock is thought to be good luck. But we also chose it as a practicality, since in our experience bureaucrats seem to really struggle with correct notation when it comes to foreign date formats, despite citizen data hygiene presumably being a massive part of their jobs in surveilling us. At any rate, this foresight has already proven lucky, as government record-keeping sloppiness has seemed to be at an all-time high these past few months, for the depressingly obvious reason :'( While we'd have loved to have you all there in Finland on a gross Monday morning, the marriage room could only hold 5 guests, and besides, the most exotic thing about Hyvinkää, Finland is the diacritic on the Äs. The place is anything but exotic, even on the best of days, and doubly so when it comes to its mixed-use government buildings that look like the most boring 70s-era building on any SUNY campus. We wouldn't recommend visiting Hyvinkää in good faith at any point during the year, even if you don't need to factor in the carbon and fiscal cost of the airfare. But this is especially true during Nordic November, which feels 12 weeks long with no sunshine, icy rain, slippery sidewalks, and grumpy, vitamin D-deprived people as the 5 hours of bleary-grey "daylight" at the start of the month quickly decrease toward barely 3 on the Winter Solstice - with no sun expected until late January. We didn't even want to be in Hyvinkää - in fact, we took a brief 3-night honeymoon in Xàbia, Spain directly after, just to recover from the ambiance there. Given that Fall is so dark and damp in Finland, Rochester's fall sunshine for our reverse-destination handfasting of a second wedding will feel positively tropical, and we're so excited to share these moments with you!