On Saturday 29 March, the first day same sex marriage is allowed in England and Wales, Saturday Breakfast will be live with three couples on their big day. Tony Livesey joins Stephen and David in Birmingham as they prepare to tie the knot. We'll also be in Huddersfield with Teresa and Helen and in Brighton where Phil and James will take their vows live on air.
David explains why he and Stephen are choosing to marry after 26 years together.
"I'm David (53), my partner is Stephen (60). We've been together since January 1988.
"Stephen was born in Handsworth in Birmingham, trained as a chef, later retrained as a stage door keeper and is very proud of his home city. I'm a housing officer, born in Warwickshire but these days rarely return.
"We're ordinary people living a quiet life. We've seen each other through thick and thin, changes of careers, college courses, my university degree and bereavements. We'll never be wealthy but we get by.
"We have different experiences of growing up during the '60s and '70s. The only role models I recall were ones I didn't want to emulate, who were portrayed as figures of fun or derided with unkind words.
"We both come from hardworking, responsible and caring family backgrounds but agree that we shared the compulsion to hide our feelings for fear of becoming the family shame or disappointment.
"I joined the forces for a while, in an effort to become somebody, anybody, else. I enjoyed it although I lived a lie all the way through. Even after I was back in civvy street and had met Stephen it took five years of nurture in our relationship before I could pluck up the courage and come out to my nearest and dearest. No surprise, they'd already guessed and were waiting for me to say."
Stephen feels that he was always on the outside looking in, inventing imaginary girlfriends, bullied at school and singled out by his peer group as being "different" which for many gay people seems to be a common denominator.
"We've had our share of ups and downs. We've lived in the north, in the midlands and are currently down south.
"We live in a little village in Devon, in an old stone built cottage which we're slowly renovating. We talked about having a civil partnership but somehow, despite having the same rights as married straight couples, for us the wording made it less than equal. How should we describe it? 'We're civilly partnered? We have become partners civilly? We have undertaken a civil partnering?'"
"We preferred to wait and see how things developed. I'm glad we did. After 26 years together I think we can assume that we have completed the trial period and I proposed to Stephen on the Brixham quayside last year.
"Why are we getting married? I guess the answer now is 'because we can'. It's about the feeling that the phrase 'we're married' offers, that to us, who have always felt married, can only be resolved by the action. It's about acceptance. It's about feeling validated. It's because we now have the choice, more so, at the moment, as we can do either. Whatever your belief or religious conviction, the approbation of authority is a universal truth for happiness. It's about love."
Saturday Breakfast with Tony Livesey and Eleanor Oldroyd Sat 29 March from 6am.
