Queen Elizabeth's cousin Lord Ivar
Mountbatten will marry his partner later this summer, marking the
British royal family's first-ever gay wedding.
According to The
Daily Mail, Mountbatten and James Coyle will tie the knot in
an intimate ceremony at a private chapel on his country estate in
Devon.
Mountbatten came out in 2016, years
after he and his ex-wife Penny Mountbatten had divorced. He'll walk
down the aisle escorted by his ex-wife. Their three daughters had
the idea for her to give her ex-husband away, Penny said.
“It makes me feel quite emotional,”
Penny Mountbatten said of her role in the wedding. “I'm really
very touched.”
Mountbatten said that he didn't feel
like he needed to marry but “really wanted to do it for James.”
“James hasn't had the stable life I
have,” he said, his fiance by his side. “I want to be able to
give you that,” he told Coyle.
Mountbatten explained that there was no
proposal, “just an acceptance of this great love.”
He added that he never came out to his
parents.
“Where I grew up, gay men were called
poofs, queers, everything derogatory under the sun,” Mountbatten
said. “I never thought this would happen. It's brilliant, but I
never thought I'd marry a man.”