Pride & Groom

One year after New York State legalized same-sex marriage, this documentary-style special from Here Media marks the anniversary the way it was meant to be marked: with a wedding. Mitchell Cook and Paul Neenos, an engaged couple from Upstate New York, open their lives to the camera in the run-up to their big day, sharing the planning, the nerves, the families and friends gathering around them, and the quiet awareness that a ceremony like theirs was not legally possible in their home state until months before. Directed by Keren Aronoff, the special blends the pleasures of a wedding show with the weight of recent history, letting two ordinary people stand in for the thousands of New York couples who lined up at clerks' offices in the summer of 2011. Warm, personal and grounded in a single relationship, it captures what marriage equality looked like once it stopped being a headline and became a life.