LGBTQ+ activist and former five-term Pennsylvania state legislator Brian Sims and his partner Alex Drakos wed on a frosty afternoon at the Massachusetts state capital in Boston just before Christmas, Sims announced on Instagram this week. The intimate wedding was witnessed by their parents and officiated by a friend.
Sims, the current CEO of Agenda PAC, which advocates for LGBTQ+ representation in politics, told Out the couple chose the golden-domed Massachusetts State House for its historic role in the fight for marriage equality. Massachusetts was the first state to recognize same-sex marriages in 2004.
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Sims called the day “pretty incredible.”
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“It was around 10 degrees, so everyone was pretty resilient in coming out there and kind to spend the time,” said Drakos, a UC Berkeley graduate who works with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
A snowstorm that blanketed Boston the night before — and held up Sims’ parents, who arrived just two hours before the ceremony — provided a magical backdrop for the ceremony, held on a balcony overlooking the city.
Drakos said their officiant, Julian Cyr, an out Massachusetts state senator, delivered “beautifully prepared remarks” and then “surprised us by bringing us into sort of an antechamber for the governor’s office — and there’s a beautiful fireplace, an incredible Christmas tree. There’s pictures of women of color who are civil rights icons plastered all throughout the walls there.”
Under their gaze in the wood-paneled salon, the wedding party shared a toast for the couple.
“It was [the] most champagne I’ve had in a single day in maybe ever,” Drakos added.
The couple met a ferry ride away in Provincetown at a Bear Week Tea Dance in 2021.
Sims proposed to Drako on the beach there two years later, and the pair planned a big wedding for the summer of 2025. But with the prospect of a second Trump administration looming last summer, the couple began to rethink their plans.
“Would we be worried that our marriage would no longer be possible on the timeline that we thought it would be?” Drakos remembered thinking on Election Day. Sims parents called with the same concerns.
“We know we want to get married, and it’s very doable to get it done before Trump takes office and any expected changes start to occur. So why not do it?”
These are “very treacherous times we’re going into, and having the protections of the law,” Sims said, is “an assurance that I think everyone deserves.”
“And if you’re considering that, you should too,” he said of other couples considering tying the knot.
“While we still have the fruits of what so many advocates fought years for, we should avail ourselves of them while we continue to fight to defend them and expand them,” Sims added.
In the end, though, family trumped politics when it came to the couple’s wedding day, which ended with more champagne and “a wonderful dinner,” Drakos said.
“It was obviously something we felt like we had to do because of the times and things that could change, and we wanted to make sure we had the opportunity,” Sims said of the last-minute change in plans. “But I will tell you that as soon as it was done, we both recognized that having the intimate moment with our parents was a lot more special than we had maybe even considered that it would be.”
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