Real Weddings: Adam and Andrew

Adam Moço, a 38-year-old drag queen, met Andrew Spice, a 42-year-old psychologist and musician, in 2018, when Adam hosted a weekly drag brunch as the glamorous, funny and quick-witted Miss Moço. The duo didn’t connect romantically until 2022, but their relationship progressed quickly after that. After a beachside proposal in Mykonos in 2023, the couple was wed at the Drake Hotel in an intimate ceremony with drag shows and singer-songwriter Sarah Slean performing live for their first dance. Here’s how their big day came together.

Adam: I host a weekly drag brunch at the Drake Hotel, which I started back in November 2018 at the Gladstone. I normally talk to all of the tables before the show starts, so Andrew and I would have chatted and connected that way. But I was married at the time, so it wasn’t much more than that.

Andrew: We didn’t really keep in touch outside of me attending his drag brunches. But then, in March of 2021, I saw Adam pop up on Hinge. I was not accustomed to seeing him out of drag. I thought he was very handsome.

Adam: I had recently gotten separated and I was on and off the apps. Andrew and I would start chatting, then one of us would drop off and we’d re-match again a few months later. By May of 2022, the third time we matched with each other, it was just like, “Hey, how’s it going? What’s new?”

Andrew: Adam was a hard man to pin down because of his work. But, by July, we had our first date. We went for drinks at Soho House.

Adam: Most of the conversation was about drag. At that time, I’d just been announced as one of the contestants on Canada’s Drag Race, so I was already a bit overloaded with drag. By the end, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go on a second date with him.

Andrew: In retrospect, for Adam, drag is more like work talk, whereas it’s a hobby and an interest for me. Luckily, I convinced Adam to go out on a second date with me a week later. We had dinner at Terroni.

Related: A Q&A with Priyanka, Canada’s first lady of drag

Andrew: We got a bit deeper on that second date. We’d both had some personal hardships and relationship ruptures around the same time and had been emotionally affected by them in similar ways. I also found out that Adam shared my love for Canadian female singer-songwriters. I actually have a previous career as an indie musician—I released an album in 2003 and opened for Jann Arden before I pivoted to become a psychologist.

Adam: When Andrew asked me what kind of music I liked, I think he expected me to say drag-brunch songs like Ariana Grande and Britney Spears. But we both had some of the same favourite artists, like Kathleen Edwards, Sarah Harmer and Sarah Slean. That pulled us deeper into conversation.

Andrew: After dinner, we went to a patio across the street for another drink and shared our first kiss. Adam walked me home, and we had a little listening party of all our favourite Canadian indie singer-songwriters.

Adam: Andrew and I saw a lot of each other after that second date. I had just moved into a new condo downtown, but I didn’t spend many nights there because I was over at Andrew’s place in the west end all the time.

Andrew: Because Adam’s season of Drag Race was airing, there was a lot of public excitement around it. So we’d go to a lot of events and parties together. We also saw Sarah Harmer play at Budweiser Stage, opening for Blue Rodeo.

Adam: I mentioned to Andrew early on that dragonflies kept popping up in my life at that time. Apparently they symbolize new beginnings. Andrew and I would see dragonflies when we were together, and for my birthday, in August, he got me these little tumblers with dragonflies on them. It was such a simple thing, but it really hit something in my heart. That night, I told Andrew that I was falling in love with him.

Andrew: It felt nice to hear that from Adam because I felt very similarly. I knew this was a pretty big deal. Shortly afterward, we made our relationship official. Things moved pretty quickly from there. I met Adam’s family in Ontario, then Adam flew out with me to Manitoba to meet my parents. Early on, I told Adam that I wanted to get married one day.

Adam: I was still separated at that point, so I was in the mindset of, “I’ve done that, and I don’t know if I want it again.” I let him know that was how I felt. But, as I fell deeper in love with Andrew and understood how much he wanted to get married, it made me want it too. I started to scheme up a plan for the perfect proposal. I knew I wanted to do it on his birthday, in May, so when we decided to book a trip to Mykonos then, I figured that would be the ideal spot to pop the question. Meanwhile, I got my divorce certificate in April, so I went and bought Andrew’s ring right afterward as a bit of a symbolic thing. My mom has this ring with all of my family’s birthstones in it, and inspired by that, I got him a ring with my birthstone for August and his for May.

Andrew: The year before, for my 40th birthday, I had travelled to Greece alone. I was going through a lot of personal hardships and was feeling lonely at the time. Going back with Adam the following year was a healing experience. But I had no idea that he was planning to propose.

Adam: I really wanted it to be a surprise. The night before the proposal, I told Andrew, “I’m not ready for marriage right now, but maybe we can have the discussion again in a few months.” I kept up the façade so that he really wouldn’t expect it.

Andrew: I tried to react neutrally, but privately I was thinking that I’d need to have a serious conversation with him after the trip about what his barriers were to getting married. The next day was my birthday. We went to a queer beach club called JackieO’ that does drag shows. We set ourselves up on a couple of loungers on the beach.

Adam: I knew I would propose where Andrew decided to spend his birthday, and I thought the beach club was perfect. I was so nervous to propose. There was another couple sitting on the loungers next to us, so I had a bit of an audience, which didn’t help. But I just wiped those feelings away, got down on one knee and asked Andrew to marry me.

Andrew: Given the conversation Adam and I had the night before, I was totally shocked. My jaw literally dropped. But I was overjoyed.

Adam: We locked down our wedding venue first and chose our date: September 14, 2024. The Drake Hotel, where I now host my weekly drag brunch, was the perfect spot. Weddings can be a high-stress day, and we knew that being in a space where we already know the staff would bring the stress levels down.

Andrew: The Drake is a place where we’ve had so much joy together. It feels like a second home for both of us. We chose to have our wedding in the main-floor lounge, where Adam usually hosts his brunch.

Adam: Decor-wise, we wanted it to feel natural, earthy and easy—not too formal. We went for an indoor garden party feel, with sand-coloured linens, little bud vases and lots of candles. There was a bit of blue, like our napkins and our cake, to acknowledge our engagement in Greece.

Andrew: We both had clear visions of what we wanted to wear. I wanted a darker suit with a slimmer leg.

Adam: I wanted a cream-coloured suit with a wider leg and a large bow on the back. One of the servers at the Drake recommended Sydney’s, a shop in Toronto that does bespoke menswear. The owner, Sydney, saw it as an exciting challenge.

Andrew: I wanted to wear a rhinestone harness over my suit, inspired by an Alexander McQueen outfit I’d seen.

Adam: I learned how to sew at a young age. So I made Andrew’s harness, and we had our friend Jim, the husband of drag queen Kitten Kaboodle, who does all the stoning for her outfits, do the stoning for the harness. He made it look so perfect.

Adam: The night before the wedding, we stayed overnight in the Drake’s rooftop suite. Then, the morning of our wedding, we actually went down to drag brunch. I had booked one of our favourite queens, Ivory Towers, to guest-host in my place along with Destiny Doll. It was my first time experiencing my brunch as a guest, and they made us feel very special. After the show, we went back up to get dressed for our wedding.

Andrew: I got ready in the bedroom with two of my close friends, and Adam got ready in the main space. Then we did our first look in the suite.

Adam: We both walked down the aisle with our moms to one of our favourite songs: “Best Day of My Life” by Tom Odell. When the song started playing, my emotions just went through the roof.

Andrew: The moment we were pronounced husbands, I felt so overcome with love for Adam. I thought, We made it! We did it! It’s official! I just started jumping up and down.

Adam: Witnessing that explosion of love—along with everyone else in the room–was probably my favourite part of the wedding.

Andrew: Our guests had cocktail hour at the Drake’s lobby bar while the main room got flipped.

Adam: Then we went back in for dinner. Our guests had a choice of chicken supreme, mushroom risotto or salmon with beurre blanc.

Andrew: One of my dreams was to have one of our favourite artists, Sarah Slean, perform at our wedding. I’ve followed her for her entire career, and we’re connected in a few ways through the music world. We were incredibly lucky that she agreed to be a part of this special moment.

Adam: Sarah played the song “Looking for Someone” for our first dance. It’s a song Andrew sent me within our first few months of dating, and there’s a very specific part that talks about marriage. That’s how I got the vibe that he wanted to get married someday. To have that as our first dance was a full-circle moment of our love story.

Andrew: I had listened to that song for so many years, wondering if I would ever be in love with someone in the way that she speaks about. To hear her singing, and for us to be dancing to it for our first dance, was really extraordinary.

Adam: Sarah Slean performed one other song for us, “Mothers and Daughters,” for a dance with our moms. After that, we had three drag artists perform: Star, Gay Jesus and Makayla Couture. Then our DJ, Sophie Jones, went on, and it turned into a big dance party. We had some disposable cameras out on the tables for guests to take fun shots throughout the night.

Andrew: The party went on until we were cut off at 2 a.m. We had booked another night in the rooftop suite, so we just went up to our room together. Everything went by so quickly. I said to Adam, “Can we do it all over again?”

Adam: We started opening all of the cards in our room, which was a nice way to relive all the happiness. A few weeks later, we went on our honeymoon, which I tacked on to a drag pageant in Lisbon I host every year.

Andrew: Being married mostly feels the same. It’s a little bit different in a positive way, like we’re more solidified. I’m looking forward to the next steps in our lives together as husbands.

Adam: Everything I do feels brand new now because I’m doing it with my husband. The other day, walking through the hallway of our home, I thought to myself, I’m walking through the home that I have with my husband.

Cheat Sheet

Date: September 14, 2024 Venue: The Drake Hotel Officiant: Sandra Ruch Wedding Planner: A Lush Affair Florals: The Wild Pansy Linens: Simply Beautiful Decor Food: The Drake Hotel Cake: Pastel Bakes MC: Wilma Checklear First dance performer: Sarah Slean Drag performers: Makayla Couture, Star, Gay Jesus DJ: Sophie Jones Adam’s outfit: Sydney’s, YSL boots Andrew’s outfit: Sydney’s, Loake shoes