Helsinki Pride 2013 was a blast!

I can honestly say that this was the best pride I've ever attended and I've been to 3 parades in NYC! I had the whole week to soak in on all the gay and that's exactly what I did! Starting from Monday with the roller derby, Tuesday with 2 lectures and a movie, Wednesday with Korkeasaari Zoo in the afternoon and almost gay walk around Helsinki (guide didn't have a micro- or megaphone and there was way too many people to hear anything so we decided to go for a drink instead) and the Miss Gay Finland final in the evening, Thursday with meeting with friends and Friday with Linnanmäki with Ella, a marriage equality lecture in the afternoon and Women's Party that night and the icing on the cake being yesterday's parade and picnic and the party at night...

One of my favorite part of this week was my talk with the new Miss Gay Finland, Leena Luuri before the parade started. Finland's got a woman who can represent the lesbian community and she was just as beautiful and sweet in person as she was on stage. Well spoken, and the fact that in her "coronation speech" she was talking about small towns and cities needing lgbt support groups and activities and how important it is to not forget those places just because they have small seta's or no seta's. Basically putting my thoughts into words. And that's what I told her when I went to speak to her. And when I told her about Gay Cafe and Forssa Pride, she offered to help if she could. I'm glad the panel chose her.

Finnish member of the parliament from my home town, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen walked with us. We had a really good discussion on how to promote Gay Cafe and how very important this group is for Forssa area. We also briefly touched on marriage equality and how she thinks the vote will go when the bill is introduced.

Our super amazing logo!

Kirsi and Toni at the rendezvous point chilling before the parade. Notice Kirsi's tuned tee!

 The whole Gay Cafe gang with few guest stars. One of my favorite pictures from the whole day!

Me in all my glory and Gay Cafe and Forssa Pride stuff.

I sent this picture of us to our home town newspaper as they publish readers pictures on Sundays and they published it today!

 Another picture from our photo shoot at the park!

Heidi has a birthday tomorrow so for her birthday her friend baked her a cake! How cool is this?

At 5:35 you can see Gay Cafe at the parade!

Yle Uutiset also had a segment about the pride. On their website they had few pictures from the parade and Gay Cafe's logo can clearly be seen from it, as well as Heidi and Ella. The US ambassador to Finland was also marching at the parade. He's a cool dude!

Like I said before, Gay Cafe was placed with the SETA member organizations and I'm so proud for that. All this is so huge for a small town group like ours. I'll post more pictures and clips if I find any. I can't post any more pictures, as I accidentally shot off my camera as it was transferring pictures to my computer and lost every. single. picture from my camera! Thankfully I uploaded them to Heidi's computer yesterday and she hadn't had a chance of deleting them yet, so she'll send me all of them on a memory stick.