the common room
’91
MICHAEL SUCSY
“I DO”— AT LAST by Anna Newman
76
Winter 2014
When Michael Sucsy ’91’s fiancé, Demitri Sgourakis, proposed to him on Valentine’s Day, which also happens to be Mr. Sucsy’s birthday, last year, they didn’t know if they would ever be able to marry legally in their home state of California. That all changed on June 26, when the US Supreme Court overturned California’s Proposition 8 that banned same-sex marriage. “To have been excluded for so long and finally be included means a lot,” Mr. Sucsy told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was overwhelming. Proposing was something personal,” Mr. Sgourakis said. “We had no idea at what point, or if, things would change.” Mr. Sucsy and Mr. Sgourakis were profiled in The Hollywood Reporter, as an example of a Hollywood power couple—Mr. Sucsy is the award-winning director of Grey Gardens and Mr. Sgourakis is an interior designer—now planning to walk down the aisle. And they will be only one of the estimated 37,000 same-sex couples who will marry in California over the next three years. In what The Hollywood Reporter calls the “rainbow ripple effect,” California’s $7 billion wedding industry will receive a $500 million boost from these new couples. “We want to have something festive but relatively small,” Mr. Sucsy said about their wedding plans, to which Mr. Sgourakis responded, “He says that now.” ••
Amanda Friedman
fiancé