It’s been a big year for the royal family! First Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, and now another one for the history books. For the first time in the family’s history, there will be a same-sex wedding. Queen Elizabeth’s cousin Lord Ivar Mountbatten will marry his partner James Coyle in an intimate ceremony at a private chapel in Devon, England, surrounded by close family and friends.
“It’s a very modern marriage,” Coyle told The Daily Mail in an interview. “There was no proposal, just an acceptance of this great love.”
Mountbatten came out publicly in 2016. Prior to that, his wife Penny was one of the few people that knew the truth about his sexual orientation. The two were married for 16 years and have three daughters together. According to the interview with The Daily Mail, he came out to her as bisexual before they were married. The pair remain close. In fact, Penny is giving her former husband away at the wedding. “It makes me feel quite emotional. I’m really very touched,” she said of her role in the ceremony, which was originally their daughters’ idea.
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In a 2016 interview with The Daily Mail, Mountbatten said his family lineage wasn’t what prevented him from coming out all these years. “Being a Mountbatten was never the problem, it was the generation into which I was born,” he told the outlet. “When I was growing up, it was known as ‘the love that dare not speak its name.’”
As far as we know, no one from the immediate royal family will be attending; however, Mountbatten explained that close friend and relative Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth’s third son, has expressed his support of the union. The ceremony itself is intended to be only for the couple, Mountbatten’s daughters, and a small group of their close friends and family followed by a larger celebration with plenty of “lovely food and good dancing.”
According to Coyle, there won’t be many of the accoutrements of a traditional wedding such as a cake, tuxedos, or a first dance. “We’ll probably have cheese, instead of cake,” added Mountbatten. Cheese boards instead of cake at a wedding? Sounds like they might be onto something.