Downing Street has finally confirmed that Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds married on Saturday.
“The prime minister and Ms Symonds were married yesterday afternoon in a small ceremony at Westminster Cathedral,” a No 10 spokesperson said.
“The couple will celebrate their wedding with family and friends next summer.”
Initially, Downing Street refused to comment on reports of the wedding. No 10 has since confirmed the couple will not go on their honeymoon straight away and will instead go in summer 2022.
Mr Johnson, 56, and 33-year-old Ms Symonds – who intends to take her husband’s surname – are said to have sent save-the-date cards to family and friends for the celebration on 30 July 2022.
The couple were engaged in late 2019. Their son Wilfred was born in April 2020 during the first coronavirus lockdown.
It is the prime minister’s third marriage after he finalised his divorce from his second wife, Marina Wheeler, in 2020.
It comes as the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, offered his congratulations to the couple, but said its timing should not send a signal that the further easing of lockdown measures earmarked for 21 June will not happen.
Put to him that the timing suggested that a larger wedding after 21 June was not on the cards, Mr Zahawi told Sky News: “I wouldn’t extrapolate anything from that.”
He added: “On 14 June, we will set out very clearly the data that we are continuing to gather from Step 3, which was on 17 May, and then we’ll share that with the nation, as the prime minister has done in each and every step from Step 1, 2 and 3, and then of course, Step 4.”
The wedding ceremony at the Catholic cathedral was carried out by Father Daniel Humphreys, who had given the couple pre-marriage instructions, and baptised Wilfred last year, The Sun on Sunday reported.
Shortly after 1.30pm, the cathedral was suddenly cleared of visitors, with staff saying it was going into lockdown, the newspaper said.
Half an hour later, a limousine carrying the bride swept into the piazza outside the main west door.
Ms Symonds wore a long white dress but no veil, while Mr Johnson was described as wearing a “very dapper” suit.
Mr Johnson’s father Stanley was spotted in Downing Street after the ceremony, while guests and musicians were seen leaving No 10 on Saturday night.
The ceremony meant Mr Johnson became the first prime minister to marry in office since Lord Liverpool married Mary Chester in 1822.
Cabinet minister Therese Coffey sent her congratulations to the couple “on your marriage”.
Minister for children and families Vicky Ford sent her congratulations and “big love to Wilf”, adding: “So many weddings have been delayed and disrupted by covid. Life is always better with love.”
Northern Ireland’s first minister, Arlene Foster, tweeted: “Huge congratulations to Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds on your wedding.”
But Labour former frontbencher Jon Trickett said the wedding was “a good way to bury this week’s bad news” on Dominic Cummings’s damning testimony on the prime minister’s actions in the lead-up to the first coronavirus lockdown, the spread of the Indian variant and the row about funding of the Downing Street flat.
Fellow Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi suggested the “emergency marriage plan” was an attempt to “deflect from negative press” over Mr Cummings.
She added: “They know he won’t be able to plan one in Chequers cos he won’t be PM next year…”
