LABOUR PARTY leader Ed Miliband, who once said he was too busy to get married, yesterday wed his long-term partner Justine Thornton. His brother David, though, was not asked to be his best man.
With the British press suggesting he was pushed into tying the knot, Mr Miliband wrote a tweet shortly before the civil ceremony in Nottingham, saying he felt “like the luckiest guy in the world”.
The 41-year-old, who is the first leader of a major political party to have had children before getting married, and his bride had 50 guests at the private ceremony, including their two children, Daniel and Samuel.
The Labour leader wore a slate blue suit and a blue tie, rather than formal wear, while Ms Thornton chose a traditional floor-length ivory dress, without a train, designed by Temperley.
The ceremony was completed by a quartet of two trumpets, an oboe and a piano, while the guests heard a reading from Louis de Bernières's best-selling novel Captain Corelli's Mandolinand a poem from American writer, EE Cummings, I Carry Your Heart With Me.
There had been some focus beforehand on whether Mr Miliband would ask his brother David to be his best man, given that relations between the two had suffered some difficulties after he beat his older sibling last year for the Labour leadership. However, the groom opted not to have a best man. Nor was the older Miliband, who came with his wife Louise, required to make a speech during the post-wedding lunch. Only the bride and groom spoke.
Nor did Mr Miliband have a stag. Instead, he and Ms Thornton held a joint pre-wedding celebration with family and friends. The couple asked guests to make a donation to Barnardos and to Methodist Homes for the Aged, instead of giving gifts.
The Labour leader has been irked by the attention given to his private life, telling one interviewer recently: “We’ll get married because we want to get married and love each other very much, no other reason.” The issue arose again last week after Conservative prime minister David Cameron made clear that the protection of marriage was a central plank to his often-derided, and much misunderstood, Big Society ambitions.
Responding, Mr Miliband said: “I am pro-commitment but I think that unlike David Cameron, I am not going to say that those families that aren’t married are automatically less stable than those families that are.”
