Gay couple competes for Swedish wedding

Gay marriage is not legal in North Carolina, but one local couple has found an interesting way to circumvent that.

As of Sunday, Brett Kessler, a UNC senior, and Thomas Landreth, who graduated from UNC in May, were leading a contest to win a destination wedding in a Swedish ice hotel.

The contest, sponsored by Scandinavian Airlines, is open to all U.S. residents in a homosexual relationship who are at least 21 years old.

The winning couple will be announced Oct. 13 and will fly to Sweden on Dec. 6.

Included for the winners will be the wedding ceremony itself, a rental car and stays in luxurious resorts ICEHOTEL and Stockholm’s Hotel Skeppsholmen.

Landreth said he randomly stumbled across the contest online, but knew he was looking at the perfect opportunity for him and Kessler.

Both of them said they had talked a lot about marriage, but legal and monetary concerns have so far kept them from tying the knot.

“We had decided we were mature enough for it and wanted to pursue it,” Kessler said. “But it was kind of a pipe dream until now.”

He said the free trip, wedding and honeymoon in a country with a long tradition of gay rights support made it an attractive offer.

The couple is winning the competition at the moment, with nearly double the amount of votes as the second-place couple.

They began a Facebook event on Tuesday titled “Thomas and Brett Are Getting Married (With Your Help)” to ask for votes, and by Sunday they had more than 800. Out of the 30 other couples, only four had more than 100 votes.

Despite their lead, Landreth and Kessler aren’t taking anything for granted. They said a similar contest for Europeans has much larger publicity, with multiple couples already at thousands of votes.

“The European side of the competition is just insane,” Kessler said. “If it catches on here like in Europe, we could get usurped.”

To help out, senior Kate Moore has been publicizing their effort.

Moore, who claims credit for introducing the two, said she’s excited for their opportunity.

“I feel like they’re family at this point,” she said. “I call them my boys. Everyone who knows us at this point knows it’s Kate and her boys.”

She said publicity for the event so far has been largely limited to Facebook and knocking on dormitory doors, but Moore said she hopes to involve local businesses and gay-friendly churches as well.

“This means a lot, not just for them being able to get married, but saying to the world there’s this couple with real love and real intentions that’s just as good as anyone else,” she said.

The couple said they began dating when, at a party, Kessler gave Landreth a kiss as well as a case of the flu.

After spending the following week together recuperating, they became official despite the inauspicious start.

Nearly three years later, the two are still going strong.

And whether they win or not, the two say they are committed to getting married one day.

“I’m not too concerned about it yet,” said Landreth. “We’ll cross that bridge when it comes.”

Kessler said that they plan to continue living in the United States and that the marriage license — if they win — will hold up in any state that recognizes gay marriage as well as several others.

More important than the actual wedding to them, they said, is what they are representing.

“Not counting California, we’re the only couple from south of Illinois,” Kessler said. “It’s kind of nice to see New York, California and then Chapel Hill.”

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.