Audience members of the Broadway musical “The Prom” were the surprise guests at the wedding between two women who tied the knot during the production’s curtain call on Saturday night.
After the cast of the show made their bows, real-life couple Armelle Kay Harper and Jody Kay Smith exchanged vows on stage at the Longacre Theatre in matching rose-gold sequin gowns in a ceremony officiated by one of the show’s writers, Bob Martin. Martin gave the couple the idea to get married on the stage earlier this year.
“He said, ‘Well, I’ve married people onstage before, so if you wanted to just get it over with and do it at curtain call, we can do that,'” Smith, who is an actress and singer, tells The New York Times. Harper is a script coordinator for the Tony Award-nominated musical.
The couple share a love of theatre and felt a deep connection to “The Prom”, which tells the story of a group of actors who travel to Indiana, where a lesbian student is barred from taking her girlfriend to the prom. Harper’s family partially disowned her in February when the couple sent out “save the date” invitations.
“‘The Prom’ company has really embraced me and made me feel loved by my chosen family,” Harper tells Playbill. “Jody and I attend ‘Prom‘ events together all the time…. ‘The Prom’ means the world to the two of us as lesbians from the Midwest/South.”
Harper and Smith met on the Bumble dating app in 2017 and became engaged 19 days later.
“We’re both really witty people, and it’s hard to find someone who can keep up,” Harper says to The Times. “But she really got me, and she made me laugh. Plus those blue eyes. What can you do? Gorgeous.”
