Adam Rippon reveals that he got married to Jussi-Pekka Kajaala in a “perfect” and spontaneous ceremony on 31 December 2021. (Instagram/@adaripp)
Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon has revealed that he secretly tied the knot with his Finnish fiancé on New Year’s Eve.
Rippon and his partner Jussi-Pekka “JP” Kajaala first started dating in 2018 after meeting each other on Tinder. The pair got engaged in February after the ongoing pandemic forced them apart for almost a year.
Nearly a year later, Rippon shared in a beautiful post on Instagram that he and Kajaala spontaneously decided to get married on New Year’s Eve.
“One afternoon JP and I looked at each other and just said the very classic *romantic* phrase of ‘let’s just go do it now’,” Rippon wrote. “So we did. It was just the three of us, and it was perfect.”
Alongside the announcement, Rippon shared a series of sweet selfies of the newlyweds alongside their adorable pitbull mix puppy, Tony. In one image, Kajaala is seen giving Rippon an adorable, loving kiss on the forehead.
Kajaala shared similar photos on his Instagram and also posted a video from the “actual wedding day”. In the video, Kajaala and Rippon smile at the camera while driving to presumably the venue where they tied the knot.
The real estate broker added it was a “simple ceremony” with “just the three of us”, which was “exactly what we wanted”.
The Olympic medalist told People that he expected that “everyone knew” the pair were going to get married, but he thought “nobody knew if we were going to give them a heads up or not”.
“And I guess we didn’t even know if we were giving ourselves a heads up,” Rippon said. “Listen, we’re unpredictable.”
Rippon, who was one of the first openly gay men to compete on Team USA, explained the couple had always wanted a low-key ceremony with “just the two of us”.
He recalled how they were “looking at different options” of when and where they could get married when they reached out to a California marriage officiant to ask for her availability.
Rippon said the officiant happened to have spot open on the day. So they just decided to jump in the car and get married.
Kajaala told People that they had “some plans for the date”, but they ultimately decided to get married that day “because New Year’s Eve is not a big thing for us”.
“We’re in bed [at] like 10:30,” Kajaala said. “So then we decided that, oh, maybe [we’re] going to use this day for something special like this, and now we have a great meaning for that day.”
Rippon said a good portion of the wedding was just paperwork followed by a ceremony in an office filled with decorations that looked like something “you would get from the dollar store if you knew you had a wedding in five minutes”.
He added that he swiftly became emotional during their vows, which he said were “very sweet”, and he “cried when I left”.
As for the future, Adam Rippon said they may get a “bigger house eventually” with a pool and a yard. But Kajaala said that “there’s no rush” to do anything any time soon.