Kat and Aly Wright are a queer married couple in Columbia. Kat is queer and nonbinary, and Aly is a bisexual transgender woman.
They met and fell in love while playing roller derby. They spoke about how some unexpected circumstances changed their original wedding plans – perhaps for the better.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Kat Wright: I just had an alert pop up on my calendar the other day that said, “Book your wedding venue if you haven't yet.”
Laughter
Aly Wright: Oh, my God.
Kat Wright: Because my timeframe was 2025.
Aly Wright: That's right – because it would have, like the dates would have lined up really well.
Kat Wright: Yeah, it would have been 8/9/25, and it would have been, I think, on a Saturday, I'm not sure.
Aly Wright: Yeah, that's why.
"We skated into the gazebo from different sides of the lake and met in the middle and got married on skates."Kat Wright
Kat Wright: Yeah. But that plan, kind of blew out of the water a little bit –
Aly Wright: Yeah, it was 2022 when Roe v. Wade got struck down –
Kat Wright: – and I was like, “Oh, this is happening, and terrible things could happen because of this.” So, we gotta cover our butts. We got to take care of the marriage – so that we are married, so that if we have to go to a different state, if we have to go to a different country –
Aly Wright: So, we decided to accelerate our timeline just a little bit.
Kat Wright: Just several years.
Laughter
Kat Wright: Just several years and a way smaller budget.
Aly Wright: Yeah, we did something very tiny, and we told our families, or at least my family, I think your family too.
Kat Wright: Yeah.
Aly Wright: That we would do a larger ceremony a few years down the road when we had time, when we had money, and all of that, and that was not a lie.
Kat Wright: I think even though that was a really terrible sort of catalyst for us deciding to get married that year, I love, we love – we've talked about it, we love the way that the wedding turned out.
Aly Wright: Absolutely.

“Roller derby helped me feel for the first time like I was in my own body, which was massive for me. I love Derby to this day just for that,” Aly Wright, who is a transgender woman, said. “I feel bad because my body—for all the progress that I've made and all the ways that I feel really good about it, especially compared to before I came out—sometimes I still feel really bad in my body. I look in the mirror, and it just does not match what my brain expects to see there. Or I get really sad because my body doesn't work the way most other women's bodies work. And not just that but, like, I'm exhausted at having had to think about this and deal with this my entire life. But especially most potently the last 10 years I've had to navigate the world with [this] trauma on my shoulders, these weights that I've been carrying. And so when that gets particularly exhausting, and I just start sobbing, Kat is always there to pick me up.”
Kat Wright: We were up super late the night before braiding our handfasting knot, which was gorgeous –
Aly Wright: – and writing vows
Kat Wright: – writing vows.
Aly Wright: And Kat had had their vows written for months.
Kat Wright: Yeah, definitely not since the April you said you want to might want to get married…
Laughter
Kat Wright: I hadn't been working on them since then – that would be crazy and very gay of me. Oh, no!
Laughter
"I'm here. I'm queer. And I love you very, very much."Aly Wright
Kat Wright: Yeah, we had about 25 of our closest friends and family under the gazebo at Stephens Lake Park –
Aly Wright: In the middle of the lake,
Kat Wright: Yeah.
Aly Wright: Which was so perfect –
Kat Wright: Yeah.
Aly Wright: – because that was one of the places like that was one of our first dates. We just got lunch from, I think, Main Squeeze, and we went out and sat on the hill at the park and just like, watched the water. And so, but it's, still to this day, one of our favorite places, and we roller skated around the little path together all the time. And so, one of the parts of our wedding –
Kat Wright: – we skated into the gazebo from different sides of the lake and met in the middle and got married on skates.
Laughter
Kat Wright: I'm here. I'm queer, and I'm absolutely thrilled that you are here and queer, as well.
Aly Wright: Thank you. I'm here. I'm queer. And I love you very, very much.
Kat Wright: I love you very very much.
Aly Wright: Stop! I love you.
Kat Wright: We’re going to go way past our time limit if we get into this battle.