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pink weddings magazine » 59
Frank & Camilo
W
e first met in a bar in london in may
2004. The exact date is long forgotten
as we didn't know at the time that we
were going to get together – let alone
stay together! There was no official
proposal. We had discussed getting
married – hypothetically! – several times, but one obstacle was
the size of the wedding party. We liked the idea of a pod on the
london Eye, but could only have had 20-25 guests and my
family alone would have taken us to 30 people! So a huge
consideration in our plans was for the event to include all of
our families and the majority of our friends.
Given that it was going to be a big event, finance was also
an issue – so the real impetus to us getting married was
‘Catgate’. We hit the headlines when Home Secretary Theresa
may commented – in her speech at the Tory Party conference
about the need to tighten immigration – that Camilo had been
allowed to stay in the country after his visa expired because of
our pet cat, maya. in fact Camilo had been arguing his right to
family life in this country under the European Convention on
Human rights because we had been together for four years.
When the story first broke we thought we could just
weather it by not saying anything, although our lawyer was
telling us that his phone had been going non-stop from
journalists looking for a story. However, a couple of days after
Theresa may’s comments i came home from work to find
journalists outside the front door. our lawyer put us in touch
with a media and Pr contact, who decided that we should sell
our story to the Sunday People – so, indirectly, we have
Theresa may to thank for paying for our wedding!
The style of our day was always going to be super-elegant,
no matter what. We wanted to wear morning suits, and our
invitations encouraged the female guests to wear hats and
fascinators. We chose a venue that could accommodate a large
number of guests and one Great George Street lent itself to an
elegant wedding with rooms for all the different things we