Don Lemon marries longtime partner Tim Malone

After five years of engagement, news anchor Don Lemon and Tim Malone married on April 6 in New York City.

Wedding bells rang across New York City this weekend for Don Lemon and Tim Malone. On April 6, Lemon married his fiancé of 5 years at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan in a novel but traditional ceremony.

“We wanted to make a public statement,” Malone said People Magazineexplaining that the couple emphasizes having a standard ceremony wherein “our loved ones will participate.”

“Of course we could have easily gone to City Hall,” Malone said. “We could have used Covid as a perfect excuse to do something really quiet. But I think that’s also the message. Because I don’t know what percentage of our guests on both sides, but for many of them it will be their first same-sex wedding.”

The ceremony, honoring their individual upbringing, included a religious service, a grand Irish blessing led by the Malone sisters, the lighting of a unity candle and jumping the broom. In addition to cultural traditions, Lemon and Malone also followed the popular “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue”. They each wore custom suits from Suit Supply, with Malone showing off something blue in the form of a blue velvet double-breasted jacket, while Lemon opted to hide the blue underneath his suit.

The bride and groom’s guest list, surrounded by about 140 friends and family, included stars such as Sunny Hostin, Tamron Hall and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who officiated the ceremony. Further mixing modern and traditional elements, Lemon and Malone exchanged personal vows before exchanging their traditional wedding vows.

“I’m a last-minute person and I just don’t worry about most things,” Lemon said. “I wasn’t nervous about anything except writing my vows.”

Set to Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed and Delivered,” the couple left the church and joined the New Orleans-inspired second line that marched from the church to the wedding reception in honor of Lemon’s hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The newlyweds celebrated their wedding at the Ralph Lauren Polo Bar, where they coincidentally had their first date almost eight years ago. Lemon and Malone’s romance began during the 2016 election when they went to a viewing party together. Lemon remembers them leaving the star-studded party to eat at the Polo Bar. With an evening off and spotty cell service at an underground restaurant, Lemon remembers the moment they learned Trump had won the presidency.

“Tim and I looked at each other and I told him, ‘I don’t want to be alone tonight.’ It was so weird,” he said. “We went back to my apartment in Harlem and he never left.”

Swapping their dress shoes for Nike Dunk sneakers, Lemon and Malone returned to the Polo Bar, where their wedding guests dined on the salmon, cauliflower steak and bone-in ribs the couple had eaten on their first date. Although the previous CNN host sees marriage as a validation of his and Malone’s love and commitment, he admitted he never imagined he would have the option to do it as a gay man.

“I never thought I would get married,” Lemon said. “I mean, maybe Tim’s generation, he’s 18 years younger than me. So for him maybe it was more likely. The legal part is a big deal because I didn’t think something like this could happen. In all my years of growing up and hiding things, I never thought something like this could happen legally. But with all the rights people are trying to take away, I wanted to make sure we got it right.”

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