Spencer Puckett never thought he would get married until they realized that their longtime partner, Caleb Platt, was about to propose. Every year the couple takes a vacation together in celebration of Puckett’s birthday, and they drove to northwest Montana in May 2022 to enjoy the region’s majestic red cedars, which span as much as eight feet across. While Puckett was busy looking at some spiders who had gathered on a log, Platt beckoned them over to admire what they claimed was a “really cool rock.” That’s when Platt, eyes gleaming, bent down on one knee with a ring in his hand; made of meteorite metal, it contained a green and a blue sapphire, one for each of them. The design was based upon a popular internet meme, which posits that soulmates are just atoms that were next to each other in the Big Bang and have found each other again.

Earlier that day, a thought briefly passed through Puckett’s mind that a proposal might be imminent — it had been four years, after all — but they reflexively dismissed the notion. For as long as they could recall, Puckett thought they would be alone forever. When they were coming to terms with their identity as a young person, it was still illegal for LGBTQ+ couples to marry, and they saw very few examples in their life of what queer love could look like. Before meeting Platt in a Bozeman café following a prolonged Grindr flirtation, Puckett had never had a significant romantic relationship; a part of them had given up on the very idea of marriage entirely.

“It never really was a dream of mine,” Puckett tells Reckon. “It was hard to picture what it’s supposed to or can look like. So I felt like I was levitating. I felt completely loved for who I am. I felt accepted. I felt proud. I felt courageous.”

Last September, Puckett and Platt decided to share their newly realized dream with 800 of their closest friends, passing acquaintances, and even people they’d never met before. The couple were married right in the middle of Livingston, Mont., a scenic tourism hub home to 8,300 people that sits on the banks of the Yellowstone River. In a first for the town, they shut down Main Street for the nearly day-long celebration, in which wedding guests danced to Donna Summer and Beyoncé against the arresting backdrop of the Crazy and Absaroka mountain ranges. They even installed a catwalk on the street just for the occasion, a choice that proved a big hit among the attendees’ children, who sashayed the day away.

The wedding of a queer couple in a small, rural mountain town would have already been momentous, but Puckett and Platt’s nuptials had a special resonance for their community. They are both drag performers, throwing local events under the names Jean Jacket and Lebia Majora, respectively. During the ceremony, Platt sported a navy blue genderfluid suit with a 20-foot train, which he notes is only five-feet shorter than the one that the late Princess Diana wore to her 1981 wedding. Puckett donned a flowing black suit draped in a feathery red gown, and both of the betrothed wore makeup and shimmering jewels. Their officiant, the drag performer Ivita Nelottovaz, married the couple in glam papal regalia-inspired by the Netflix sitcom “Schitt’s Creek,” except that Moira Rose’s bottom wasn’t visible through the original version of the ensemble.

Puckett and Platt knew they were taking a major risk by making the expression of their love so public. The wedding took place five months after Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) signed a drag ban prohibiting “sexually oriented shows” from being held at schools, libraries, or other forms of public property where children might be present. The law was just the second of its kind in the United States, and critics warned that the vaguely worded legislation could potentially be exploited to target trans and gender non-conforming people just going about their day. Days after the ban was enacted, a Butte library canceled a planned LGBTQ+ history event with Adria Jawort, a Native trans woman. State Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D), Montana’s only out trans elected official, was banned from the state legislature for the remainder of 2023 session after passionately denouncing the statute.

Luckily, Montana’s anti-drag law was partially enjoined by a federal court prior to the ceremony, and with no restrictions in place, the couple decided to go big. “In the Pride parade a couple years ago, the theme was Yellowstone,” Platt tells Reckon. “We had a grizzly bear riding a tourist because we thought it was funny, but we were accused of bestiality. What I took from that was: The more they jeer, the more I queer. I’m going to push those buttons. We encouraged everyone to wear the most fabulous thing they had. Whatever they wanted to wear, they should wear it.”

Even as wedding guests flooded the streets in crop tops, pink cowboy hats, and clear plastic suits, Platt says there was “no negativity” in Livingston that day. “We had one old lady there that was mad that we had kids dancing at nine o’clock at night,” he notes with a laugh. In fact, the town was overwhelmingly supportive of the event, he says. The Livingston City Commission voted unanimously to change the town’s liquor laws to

temporarily allow open containers in public, and the couple went around to every business in the entertainment district to ask permission to shutter Main Street for the service. Not only did they all agree, but a local bookstore also allowed Puckett and Platt to use its upstairs space as their personal dressing room. Restaurants and bars even offered food and drink to attendees.

While the announcement drew condemnation from a local right-wing radio host and a handful of town residents did complain, guests say that they wouldn’t have been able to tell from how joyously the wedding was received. Baylor Carter, whose band scored the processional music, says there was a “palpable” energy in Livingston during the event, a kind they don’t often experience in a quiet area. “It’s akin to what people describe in visiting New York: an enveloping pulse that comes up under your feet and carries you into the night,” he tells Reckon.

His wife and fellow bandmate, Carolina, adds that she would periodically turn to her husband throughout the ceremony and say: “Wow, this is amazing.” “People fear the unknown, and I hope that by seeing such a beautiful celebration of love, it helped make that unknown known,” she says. “I hope it helps people to open up their hearts to each other and know that there’s more that brings us together than tears us apart.”

Celebrants believe that the wedding will have a lasting impact on Livingston, which is known as a progressive bubble in a sporadically conservative state. The town’s slogan is “Where Artists and Cowboys Meet,” a nod to the town’s rich cultural and artistic history. Livingston has served as the setting for films ranging from The Horse Whisperer to The River Runs Through It, and television’s Yellowstone, which is soon to air its fifth and final season, frequently filmed on location in the area. The actor Jeff Bridges owns a ranch in nearby Paradise Valley. But despite the influx of creatives that lend the town a more liberal feel, Livingston is no stranger to reactionary conservatism: In May 2023, a planned Drag Story Hour event was forced to move locations following threats from far-right white supremacist groups.

As organizers with the local Pride Coalition, Puckett and Platt say that their wedding, in many ways, felt like an extension of that work. The county’s suicide rate is three times the national average, Platt notes, and his wish is that seeing a “successful happy, blossoming queer couple that’s right in their town” provides hope to LGBTQ+ youth who might be struggling. “If you have a rocket and you change it one degree, way out in space, it’s going to be a million miles off,” he says. “I hope we changed Livingston’s trajectory that much.”

Puckett believes that, as someone who once struggled to envision a queer future for himself, knowing that it was possible to celebrate a love like theirs would “have been life changing.” “I think it would have completely shifted my path,” they add. “It would have been everything I needed as a child.”

But for as much as they recognize that their wedding was an act of public advocacy, the couple hopes to live married life for themselves, not other people. When they perform in drag together, Platt says it’s customary for audience members to pull out their phones and record the show for social media, and he expected the same would be true of their nuptials. That was not to be the case, however: Not a single screen was visible from the Main Street stage as they exchanged vows. Seeing everyone so present and connected reminded Platt of how comfortable and safe he felt when he first met his partner, talking for nine hours straight as if there were no one else in the world.

Now, as a married couple, Platt wants to luxuriate in that calm for a while. “It still feels right,” he says, “and I feel very fortunate to have found Spencer.”