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Brian Walters

Holding our hands together whilst saying our vows in our ceremony in Manchester

A Same-Sex Wedding—Manchester Style
A gay Mormon from Phoenix tells us how he ended up living and getting partnered in the UK

by Brian Walters
August 2006

I am a returned missionary, originally from Phoenix, AZ. I went to University of Pacific in California, then came to the United Kingdom to do some postgraduate study at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. I came out whilst in my last year of undergraduate work and met my partner Will in my second year of postgraduate study. He is a British accountant living and working in Manchester. We decided to get married well before we heard about the activity in Parliament, but when we heard that the bill had been passed and was going into effect in Dec 5, we were able to start planning our wedding.

We ended up having two ceremonies; one, more of a commitment ceremony with guests, family, and the like, and the second was where we signed the actual civil partnership record and said the vows. The reason for the two ceremonies was really bureaucratic red tape: Since I am a foreigner residing in the UK, I had to apply for permission from the government to get married in the UK to a UK citizen. This permission ended up coming to me only days only a week and a bit before our ceremony, and in the UK, one has to have a 15-day waiting period between "giving notice" at the registrar's office and having the ceremony. Therefore, we decided to have our first, big ceremony (what we really feel is our wedding) on the December 30, 2005, and ended up having the legal bit with just two witnesses and the registrar on January 9, 2006.

We had our first (real) ceremony at the Manchester Town Hall in Manchester, England and the second just in the registrar's office. I believe that we were the 35th same-sex couple in Manchester to be "civil-partnered," or married.

Within my family of four kids, two are gay: one of each really-two boys (one gay, one straight) and two girls (one gay, one straight). Both my sister and I have partners and have been in wonderful, loving relationships for quite a while. Unfortunately, my sister got laid off from her job the week before Christmas, so she and her partner could not come to our wedding at the last minute. But, nonetheless, the four of us (my sister, her partner, my partner, and me) are very close.

We, Will and I, do not have any immediate plans of moving to the States, but we have thought about doing so sometime whilst we are still young (we're both in our late 20s), but alas, it would be quite unfortunate if we were not given the same (equal) treatment we are used to in Britain.

Like everyone else in Affirmation in the States, I am waiting for the day when same-sex union, marriage, civil partnership, whatever you want to call it, becomes legal in the US. Living in the US's closest ally (beside Canada, I suppose), I feel extremely blessed that the UK has chosen to allow for same-sex partnerships to be legalised, like opposite-sex partnerships. I hope that putting my story on the website might show that a society once closed and very disdaining of homosexuality has embraced it and really has no issues with it whatsoever now. I really hope the US gets its act together.

See also:

Civil Partnership Bill: News from the U. K.