‘Queer Eye’ Star Bobby Berk Officiates Three Same-Sex Weddings at NYC Pride

Bobby Berk, Queer Eye’s most notorious hard-worker, celebrated Pride this weekend in the best way possible. On Sunday, the interior designer married three couples on the Lyft float in the New York City Pride Parade.

On marrying the lucky couples, he told People, “It’s always been something that I thought would be very special to do,” Berk said, adding, “I always thought it was a very nice, sweet thing to do [for someone] so when Lyft came to me with this idea, I immediately jumped on it.” He joked, “Literally. I jumped right onto the float.” Berk and his husband were married by a close friend of theirs, so the ceremonies were personal to the Queer Eye star.

In fact, his own wedding was equally as wild—if not more so. His now-husband snuck behind his back to organize a surprise ceremony for his partner. “I was surprised with a proposal and then before I could even think about planning a wedding, the wedding was happening then as well,” Berk revealed. “He’s very lucky that I said yes,” he quips about his long-time partner. “We’ve been together for fourteen years, we’ve been married for six; as soon as it became legal to get married, we got married, so he was pretty confident that I’d say yes.”

However, the friend who officiated his wedding made a major blunder, which led to the couple not being, well, officially married. “Funny enough, though [the friend who officiated] never sent in the correct paperwork,” he recalled. “We found out at the end of the year when we were like, ‘Why did we never receive our marriage certificate?’ that technically we weren’t married. We had to frantically run to the courthouse in downtown New York City to get married before the end of the year to make sure our taxes were filed properly.”

Luckily, the three couples who he married this weekend didn’t suffer the same fate: Toni Botticelli and Melissa Ricker, Andrew Pharis and Guillermo Irias, and Shakarah Dean and Angelina Bowkett were all legally married on the Lyft float.

In his show, Berk has expressed his discontent with the church due to being rejected and judged by his religious community in his youth—so it makes sense that he’d want a friend to officiate his nuptials instead. “Personally, I loved that we had a friend do our marriage because I absolutely wouldn’t have wanted somebody from a religious organization performing my wedding, nor would I have wanted it in a religious dwelling,” he told People.

Berk insists that nothing on Queer Eye is scripted for the Fab Five—all their wacky and heartfelt reactions are totally authentic, including an episode where Bobby refuses to enter a church because of this painful history. I think many queer people can relate to being resentful of the church or at least having a complicated relationship with religion.

However, the interior designer just wants to spread love during Pride month, which is why he’s thrilled to have officiated three weddings himself.  He added, “I love the fact that we’re able to marry these couples on a float on the most accepting and inclusive day in the freaking world, you know?”

Season 2 of Queer Eye is now streaming on Netflix.

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