Lincoln’s Cottage hosts first same-sex wedding

Travis Hollenbeck and Daniel Vukelich (Photo courtesy of Daniel Vukelich)

Two D.C. men unknowingly made history in late April when they became the first same-sex couple to get married on a U.S. military installation.

Travis Hollenbeck and Daniel Vukelich exchanged vows before more than 150 family and friends at President Lincoln’s Cottage on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Northwest Washington on April 28. Vukelich, a self-described “Lincoln buff,” told the Blade that he and Hollenbeck, who have been together for 13 years, chose to get married at the national monument after they visited it on a tour.

Hollenbeck served in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, N.C., for eight years before he moved to the nation’s capital. Vukelich said that neither he nor his husband had intended to make history on their wedding day.

“We weren’t really gunning for it, but since the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ it was only a matter of time,” he said. “We’re trendy.”