Lorraine Kelly leaves viewers in tears after marrying gay couple on live TV
TV host Lorraine Kelly has wedded a gay couple live on her ITV show Lorraine, and left viewers in tears.
In today’s show (27 March), Scottish TV host Lorraine Kelly was decked out in a glittering rainbow dress as she prepared to marry Cardiff couple Luke Avaient and Gavin Sheppard.
Kelly, 64, announced earlier this week that she would marry the couple in celebration of the ten-year anniversary of the first same-sex marriage in the UK.
The UK’s first gay wedding took place on 29 March 2014, following the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 being passed on 17 July 2013.
During the heartfelt ceremony, NHS nurse Luke and estate agent Gavin were joined by their friends and family in the Lorraine studio, as Kelly asked them to read out their adorable, personal vows.
Addressing the couple, LGBTQ+ ally Lorraine Kelly said that she wanted to host the couple on her programme to “show people across the country that love is love”.
Musical theatre singer Alfie Boe was on hand to round off the ceremony with a rendition of Foreigner’s power ballad “I Want to Know What Love Is”, while pop superstar Anastacia sent in a message congratulating the couple.
Gavin proposed to Luke in 2022 at an Anastacia concert. The couple met in the summer of 2019, initially through a dating app, but properly through an incidental hospital appointment in November that year.
Luke was the nurse at one Gavin’s routine appointments, and the “connection” began then.
As the couple’s friends and family members cheered during the live ceremony, Kelly announced that they had also been gifted an all-inclusive trip to Santorini, Greece, as a honeymoon present.
The nuptial ceremony was moving enough to send Gavin into floods of tears, while viewers at home also said that they were getting weepy.
“Props to #Lorraine and her team!! The media landscape is so hostile to anything queer, and she’s showed herself to be a true ally with today’s wedding. Lovely, lovely stuff to celebrate ten years of gay marriage,” one viewer shared.
While a few boring social media dwellers dubbed the live wedding as “cringe”, and others launched into predictable calls for Kelly to host a straight wedding next, most were simply happy to see something so sweet on TV.
Speaking to Attitude magazine ahead of the ceremony, Kelly explained why she wanted to host the gay wedding.
“We wanted to celebrate the fact that it doesn’t [matter] who you love, everybody should be allowed to love who they want to. I thought it was important to mark that,” she said.
“We never thought we’d see this day. We never thought there’d be this level of acceptance… It’s joyful, it’s absolutely joyful.”
How did this story make you feel?
