David and Ryan have been together for four years. They met on the 12th of March in 2015. They are officially celebrating their first anniversary this year, on the 18th of August.
It has been a year since Open Table MCC (a church that conducts same-sex unions) has officiated David and Ryan’s wedding. A few days later, they posted their wedding video on social media.
After a few weeks, their video went viral, gaining 823,000 views and counting at the time of this article’s publication.
Now that it has been a year since their wedding, we checked back on the couple on how things are doing.
Q: Why did you decide to have a holy union?
David: We were aware that this union had no legal bearing in our country, but we decided to go for it because we wanted to celebrate the uniqueness of our relationship. We had both our families accepting us and supporting us. We had our friends backing us up and helping us stand strong. We felt very blessed, and we wanted to honor not just the love we had for each other, but also the love we received from all of them.
Q: Are you planning to get legally married in another country some time in the future?
Ryan: We originally planned to, but at the moment, we have no plans to migrate. It would defeat the purpose of getting married abroad if it won’t be recognized here.
Q: What is the importance of a holy union for you?
David: It is a public declaration of our vows for each other before God and before the people who matter. It is seeking the blessing of God and our loved ones for our spiritual union.
Q: Was there anything different in your relationship after the holy union vs before?
Ryan: Yes. We had a stronger bond with our family and friends. Since they witnessed our vows and union, they are bound to us and they will forever contribute to making sure we stand strong. In a deeper sense, we also felt a spiritual change — we felt our souls entwined. It’s difficult to find words to explain it, but we literally felt like we had one single soul after the union.
Q: When your wedding video went viral on social media, how did you feel, and how did you respond to both the positive and negative feedback?
David: We were ready for it. We are very private individuals. We like to live in our own small world, visible only to our closest friends and family. Being in a society where our kind of love is deemed controversial and frowned upon, we wanted to keep it that way for years. However, when we decided to hire a photo and video team to document our wedding day, we prepared ourselves for a variety of reactions. True enough, we had both negative and positive feedback from people we didn’t even know. Gladly, 90% was positive — inspired, encouraged, enlivened. It also changed some people’s perspectives — made them more understanding and accepting. The positive impact really made us happy, because it was the very reason why we allowed our video to be public: visibility is the best way to educate and inform. Instead of debating with nay-sayers and the un-informed, it is best to live our lives authentically in full view. Our truth, when lived out openly, is the most effective way to shut down misconceptions about our community.
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