An “I do” six decades in the making.
A British couple finally tied the knot a staggering 60 years after they got engaged.
Alex Hamilton, 90, wed longtime fiancée Jane, 89, in a ceremony held in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, on Saturday, with the bride using an electric wheelchair to make her way down the aisle.
“Usually at this age people are thinking about funerals,” the couple’s daughter, Sally McDonald, 59, told Southwest News Service. “But this was a major celebration and it was really beautiful.”
Alex and Jane first met back in 1956 and instantly fell in love, but the pair were both married to other people at the time and both were parents to young children.
They waited six years to leave their respective spouses and finally get together. Alex popped the question to Jane in 1962 — the same year The Beatles released their debut single “Love Me Do.” The pair planned to marry soon after, but their “busy life” just got in the way.
At the time they became engaged, Alex had two children, while Jane was a mom of one. The couple quickly welcomed two kids of their own and raised their five offspring as a blended family.
Soon after, Jane legally changed her last name to match Alex’s and the children grew up unaware that their parents weren’t married.
It’s unclear what finally prompted the couple to wed, but all five of their children — and their 11 grandchildren — turned out for the special ceremony on Saturday.
Daughter Sally said the service was the perfect encapsulation of the life the couple has built together over the past six decades.
“It was almost like this was the way it should be, looking at what they have done together, and the family coming together for that celebration,” she stated.
Jane was accompanied down the aisle by her granddaughter Claire McDonald, 29, while grandson Craig McDonald, 23, baked the wedding cake, which was decorated with edible wildflowers.
Sally described her parents as “unconventional” for cohabiting out of wedlock during a time when social expectations were very rigid. However, she said they had strict standards about many other things and were otherwise traditional.
The daughter also said the newlyweds are still smitten with each other after more than half a century together.
“If we go out to dinner with them, the two of them are looking across the table at each other, they are always so cheeky and they flirt with each other,” Sally stated. “It’s like having a new boyfriend only they’ve been like that for 60 years.”
“They still go out on little dates,” she continued. “They are really cute. Mom still giggles like a schoolgirl when dad smiles at her.”
While the Hamilton wedding may be making international news, their 60-year engagement isn’t the longest one in history
According to the Guinness World Records, Mexican couple Octavio Guillan and Adriana Martinez hold the record for the longest engagement on record. The couple wed in June 1969, 67 years after Octavio proposed. Both were aged 82 at the time they tied the knot.
