Cordero Zuckerman, the RuPaul's Drag Race season 13 standout known onstage as Denali, married his longtime partner Alexander Montgomery in Chicago on August 29, surrounded by a guest list stacked with fellow Drag Race alumni and nearly a decade of shared history.
A Wedding Built Around a Dance Floor
Zuckerman, 34, and Montgomery, 33, first crossed paths at Berlin Nightclub in May 2017, and the couple made sure that origin story shaped everything about their big day. They walked down the aisle in matching black tuxedos with green and white corsages, exchanged self-written vows, and skipped a traditional ring bearer in favor of a game they called "ring bearer roulette," hiding the rings under a random guest's chair. Their entrance song, Andrew Bird's "Pulaski at Night," was performed live on piano by Montgomery's brother-in-law, chosen because its lyrics about starting over in Chicago mirrored their own story.
The ceremony was officiated by Jamie Meun, better known to Chicago audiences as drag performer Aunty Chan, keeping the day rooted firmly in the city's drag scene rather than a more conventional officiant. Zuckerman's grandmother, 90, served as flower girl, walking alongside both mothers.
There were happy tears, so much dancing and more love in one room than I could have ever imagined. It was pure magic and I wish we could relive it all over again.
Denali
Drag Family, Front and Center
Roughly 125 guests attended, including Drag Race winners Shea Couleé and Willow Pill alongside Denali's own season 13 castmates Kandy Muse, Utica Queen and Kahmora Hall. For the reception, Zuckerman and Montgomery changed into custom looks designed by Utica Queen's Ethan Mundt, a recent Project Runway finalist, with Montgomery in a sleek black button-up and Zuckerman in a silk halter with oversized trousers. A Chicago house DJ, VITIGRRL, kept the reception centered on what the couple said mattered most: getting everyone, young and old, onto the dance floor.
More Context
Before Drag Race, Zuckerman spent five years on a competitive figure skating team and toured professionally with companies including Cirque du Soleil, later choreographing for skaters like national medalist Amber Glenn. He was the first Alaskan, and the first competitor to skate, on Drag Race. That athletic background, paired with the drag community he found on Chicago dance floors, is part of what made this wedding feel less like a formal affair and more like a reunion of the people who shaped his adult life. The timing is notable too: Denali was announced this year as one of eighteen alumni returning for Drag Race All Stars 10, meaning the wedding arrives at a genuine career high point rather than a quiet lull.
You're taking a step away from the circumstances you were born into and forging new bonds, choosing to honor those bonds as highly as those you were born with.
Alexander Montgomery
MQ's Take
Celebrity weddings are easy to write off as fluff, but this one is worth sitting with. Denali and Montgomery didn't import a template, they built the day out of the exact things that make queer partnership distinct: a chosen officiant from their own community, a grandmother who lived to walk the aisle, and a guest list of people who found each other, in Denali's case quite literally, on a nightclub floor. Montgomery's point about chosen family being compatible with marriage rather than opposed to it is the real headline here. Weddings like this one aren't just celebrity news, they're a small, public record of how much room queer couples have carved out to define marriage on their own terms.
