Elton John will marry his partner of more than two decades, David Furnish, this weekend at a ceremony in England. The couple underwent a civil partnership in 2005, according Us Weekly, and has been waiting for a same-sex marriage to be legal in the country before planning their wedding; a law went into effect this past March allowing same-sex marriage in England and Wales.
That month, the singer told Matt Lauer that the couple was planning a quiet wedding and that their children would be present. “For this legislation to come through is joyous and we should celebrate it,” John said. “We shouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, well, we have a civil partnership, we’re not going to bother to get married.'”
“I think what we’ll do is go to a register office in England…and take the boys with us, and a couple of witnesses,” Furnish told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (via The Guardian) in a separate interview around the same time.
The couple met in 1993 and now have two sons, Zachary and Elijah. “I was attracted to David immediately,” John told Parade in 2010. “He was very well dressed, very shy. The next night we had dinner. After it, we consummated our relationship. We fell in love very quickly.”
The singer has always been an outspoken advocate of marriage equality, but has been more vocal this year as he has planned the wedding. This past June, he had powerful words to people who use religion as an excuse to dismiss same-sex marriage. “If Jesus Christ was alive today, I cannot see him – as the Christian person that he was and the great person that he was – saying this could not happen,” he told Sky News. “He was all about love and compassion and forgiveness and trying to bring people together and that’s what the church should be about.”
