Johnson & Johnson: Carrie takes Boris’s surname after wearing ‘borrowed’ £2,870 wedding dress

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Boris and Carrie Johnson will delay their honeymoon so the Prime Minister can get back to his desk at No 10 tomorrow and concentrate on the fight against Covid.

The couple tied the knot in secret at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday before celebrating with a small group of family and friends at a summer festival-themed party in the Downing Street garden.

His wife, who is thought to have hired her wedding dress, said last night that she was ‘very, very happy’.

And Boris, who wore a white shirt tucked into some navy trousers, didn’t appear to be wearing a wedding ring. 

They were expected to spend the rest of the Bank Holiday weekend at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat in Buckinghamshire.

The newlyweds will conduct their first official engagement as husband and wife in a fortnight as they host world leaders and their spouses, including Joe and Jill Biden, at the G7 summit in Cornwall.

Mr Johnson, 56, is the first prime minister to marry in office in 199 years. A photograph released yesterday showed the pair gazing into each other’s eyes in the Downing Street garden after the wedding.

His wife, 33, wore a £2,870 appliqued tulle gown by designer Christos Costarellos, which she is believed to have hired from £45 a day. The picture was taken by Rebecca Fulton, an Oxfordshire wedding photographer whose prices begin at around £2,300 for a day’s work.

A later photograph tweeted by Foreign Office minister James Cleverly showed a barefooted Mrs Johnson with her husband, who had by then unbuttoned his shirt collar, taken off his jacket and tie and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

Bunting was hung from trees and a drinks table had been fashioned from bales of straw.

On Saturday evening, guests could be overheard signing Don McLean’s hit song American Pie. The couple and their guests are understood to have been entertained by London-based acoustic trio Fiddlin’ About, who have also performed for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Mr Johnson is believed to have saved money on his wedding by using a marquee installed in the No 10 garden for official events.

Weddings in England are subject to strict coronavirus restrictions, with only up to 30 people able to attend ceremonies.

The PM’s father, Stanley Johnson, was photographed smiling outside No 10 on Saturday with his younger daughter Julia. Other guests included anti-Brexit campaigner Hugo Dixon, who is one of Mr Johnson’s oldest friends having gone through prep school, Eton and Oxford together.

Mr and Mrs Johnson are planning a larger celebration next year when restrictions are expected to have been relaxed, with save-the-date cards sent out for July 30, 2022. A No 10 spokesman said: ‘The couple will celebrate their wedding with family and friends next summer.’

It is understood they plan to go on honeymoon at the same time.

Ahead of the wedding, Mrs Johnson shared on Instagram a photograph of their one-year-old son Wilfred in a field of bluebells, leading some to speculate it was a cryptic reference to the tradition of a bride wearing or carrying ‘something blue’ on her big day.

The wedding ceremony, held in Britain’s largest Catholic church, was conducted by Father Daniel Humphreys, the acting head of the cathedral, who also baptised Wilfred there last autumn. Most of the staff, as well as the tourists in the 118-year-old Byzantine-style building in central London, had no idea the Prime Minister was about to be married there.

As the time neared for the couple to tie the knot at 2pm on Saturday, visitors were ushered out by staff who told them the cathedral, half a mile from Downing Street, was going into lockdown.

A limousine swept into the piazza by the main west door. In it was Miss Symonds, who stepped out in a flowing white dress but no veil. She and Mr Johnson – who wore a ‘very dapper’ suit, according to one witness – walked down the aisle of the Lady Chapel to classical music and shared a kiss after their vows were read. Wilfred is said to have accompanied his parents.

Preparations for the service were so top secret they involved only a handful of church officials.

One member of staff at the cathedral said they only discovered the identity of the couple the day before. Another, cathedral chaplain Father Michael Donaghy, did not know the identity of the bride and groom until it was over. ‘It’s been kept very confidential,’ he said. A cathedral worker said the bride ‘looked beautiful’ and the groom was ‘extremely happy’, adding: ‘She came down the aisle and he didn’t take his eyes off her. They looked besotted.’

Big Issue seller Adrian Richmond, 52, saw events unfold outside, with guests slipping into the cathedral just after mass had finished at 1pm on Saturday. He added: ‘It was very discreet. I only saw one lady holding a bag with a present. There weren’t any flowers, so it felt a bit cloak-and-dagger. One of my friends said the PM was getting married. I thought she was having me on. I wish them good luck.’

The couple announced their engagement – and the news that they were expecting their first child – in February last year. Wilfred was born two months later.

Mr Johnson finalised his divorce from second wife Marina Wheeler last year, having divorced Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1993. 

How twice-married PM was able to marry in a Catholic Church?  

Questions were yesterday raised on how twice-divorced Boris Johnson was able to remarry in a Catholic church.

Mr Johnson was baptised as a Catholic but was confirmed as an Anglican as a teenager when he was at Eton. His bride Carrie Symonds is a practising Catholic.

Last night the Diocese of Westminster confirmed that, as someone baptised in the faith, Mr Johnson’s previous marriages were not considered valid because they were not Catholic ceremonies.

So this meant the Prime Minister could marry for the ‘first’ time in a Roman Catholic church.

Despite explanations about how their wedding could have been held in accordance with Vatican doctrine, the subject was being keenly discussed yesterday by Westminster Cathedral worshippers.

Some wondered whether Mr Johnson had needed to convert before the nuptials took place, while one even brought up Henry VIII’s troubled love-life as a potential precursor.

But last night a Diocese of Westminster spokesman confirmed: ‘With regard to divorced persons, a baptised Catholic who has contracted a marriage recognised in civil law but without observing the requirements of Catholic Canon Law is not recognised as validly married in the eyes of the Catholic Church.’

Austen Ivereigh, a Roman Catholic author, commentator and biographer of Pope Francis, said on Twitter: ‘Many will ask how it is that the Catholic Church, famous for its vigorous commitment to the permanence of marriage, should be witnessing the marriage of a twice-divorced PM who is publicly notorious for the opposite? What kind of message does that send?

‘But Catholics have a right to the sacraments and if they fulfil the requirements in law, and properly enter into them, no one can stop them exercising those rights.’

Mr Johnson was married to first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen for six years and to second wife Marina Wheeler for 27 years.

A Westminster Cathedral spokesman added: ‘The bride and groom are both parishioners of the Westminster Cathedral parish and baptised Catholics.

‘All necessary steps were taken, in both Church and civil law, and all formalities completed before the wedding. We wish them every happiness.’

A fairy tale ending for the Tory PR chief turned First Lady: The ‘cloak and dagger’ operation surrounding Boris Johnson’s marriage to Carrie Symonds

By Paul Bracchi and Andrew Pierce for the Daily Mail

She wore a stunning embroidered white dress without a veil and a crown of flowers as she walked down the aisle to the strains of classical music.

It was certainly a fairy-tale ending for Carrie Symonds, the Conservative PR girl who finally married her ‘boss’ in a secret 30-minute ceremony in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Cathedral on Saturday.

Yet the path that led to the altar where a ‘besotted’ Boris Johnson was waiting to exchange vows (for the third time) was anything but.

The succession of scandals and squabbles which seemed to dog their relationship – almost inevitable perhaps given the dramatis personae and the circumstances – must have made the weekend all the sweeter for Miss Symonds, 33.

The naysayers said it wouldn’t last after all, that she herself was on the make anyway.

And who can forget that screaming match at her flat in Camberwell, south London, overheard by nosey neighbours when she could be heard shouting: ‘Get off me… Get out of my flat!’

Friends denied that they were on the verge of breaking up and insisted the row nearly two years ago had been just a lovers’ tiff. And so it proved to be.

Yet, the intrigue and the whiff of controversy continued right up to the ‘cloak and dagger’ operation surrounding their nuptials – just six days after save-the-date cards were sent to a handful of close friends and family telling them to keep July 30, 2022, free for their wedding.

It was an elaborate ruse, of course. Even Downing Street aides had been unaware that they were tying the knot.

They had apparently been planning it all for the past six months.

Many, however, were surprised to learn that the couple were allowed to marry in Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of the Roman Catholic Church in England, because Mr Johnson, 56, is twice divorced. 

But this was not an impediment, we were told, because neither of his previous marriages were within the Catholic Church.

It was as if this was the first time, in other words, he had uttered the words ‘I do’ – at least in the eyes of the church hierarchy. Miss Symonds is a Catholic and Mr Johnson is the first baptised Catholic to become Prime Minister.

Covid rules limit weddings to 30 guests at the moment. Might this, in the circumstances, have proven convenient for Mr Johnson – avoiding the expense of a more lavish affair and awkward questions about why certain family members opposed to the marriage might be missing? Even Mr Johnson’s father Stanley found out only a few days ago.

Even if they had wanted a much bigger celebration, their joint finances would not have stretched that far, a source told us. The fact that Mr Johnson had to repay Tory donor Lord Brownlow for the controversial Downing Street flat refurbishment didn’t help.

‘It’s no secret Boris is broke,’ said a friend, who was not at the wedding. ‘But having the wedding meant it had to take place under Covid restrictions with only up to 30 guests allowed including the bride and groom.’

Had they waited until later in the year they both agreed that a grand reception would have sent the wrong signals as the country emerges from the gloom of the pandemic.

Miss Symonds is also said to be sensitive about her nickname ‘Carrie Antoinette’ – which she was dubbed in some quarters – after hiring society interior designer Lulu Lytle.

‘They won’t be able to say that now after the celebration consisted of a few drinks at Downing Street,’ the friend added.

It is also unlikely that everyone would have accepted an invitation.His four older children by his second marriage to Marina Wheeler were reportedly upset by the relationship, prompting his eldest daughter, Lara, a journalist five years younger than Miss Symonds, to write on Instagram (back in April 2019) that the past 12 months had been the ‘hardest and the most hurtful year’ of her life.

Her father was publicly linked with Carrie Symonds shortly after he split up with Marina, his wife of 25 years, in 2018.

Miss Symonds was described at the time as a party-loving Tory aide. She was no stranger to complicated romantic entanglements: Her father was a journalist on The Independent, her mother, one of the paper’s lawyers. Both were married to other people at the time that she was born, and they never lived together.

She was brought up by her mother in East Sheen, in the London suburbs. After attending Godolphin and Latymer, one of the leading private girls’ schools in the capital, she went to Warwick University to study art history and theatre studies.

After graduating she flirted with the idea of becoming an actress but joined the Tory party media machine in 2009 instead.

She rose quickly through the ranks – from press adviser to head of broadcast at Conservative campaign headquarters in the run-up to the 2015 general election and then, in 2018, the party’s director of communications.

Miss Symonds first met Mr Johnson when she worked on his campaign team for re-election as mayor of London.

Gossips quickly noted how she was inclined to praise him when he was Foreign Secretary. ‘This is really worth watching,’ she tweeted, posting a link to a speech he had made. ‘Boris absolutely brilliant in debate on Brexit and Foreign Policy earlier this week.’

Soon tongues started wagging and – in the time-honoured fashion – they were said to enjoy a ‘strong friendship.’

Her apparent influence over Mr Johnson – whose chequered private life included a first marriage to his girlfriend at Oxford, Allegra Mostyn-Owen, as well as a child with art consultant Helen Macintyre – alarmed some Westminster power brokers.

Rumours about their ‘strong friendship’ intensified after Mr Johnson was reportedly spotted in Rules restaurant in Covent Garden with a ‘young attractive’ blonde woman. 

They are said to have spent two hours at a corner table with two bodyguards nearby. Proof of their growing closeness, for many at least, came when he attended her Abba-themed 30th birthday party. 

‘Crikey,’ said one pal at the time. ‘He must be really smitten to endure that.’

In the weeks that followed, they were variously described as ‘inseparable’ and later as ‘very much in love’. Miss Symonds, it emerged, had a picture of a smiling Mr Johnson as a screensaver on her phone and she called him ‘Bozzie Bear.’ It was not long before he had moved into her flat in Camberwell.

Friends commented, meanwhile, on Mr Johnson’s new slimline look. He had lost 18lb, he would later admit, for which he credited his girlfriend who was keen on yoga, healthy eating and protecting the environment.

When did their romance receive the official stamp of approval? It was probably in September 2019 when Miss Symonds became the first unmarried partner of a serving Prime Minister to visit the Queen at Balmoral on the traditional annual engagement.

But she really came into her own during the election campaign three months later, demonstrating what some called a masterclass in how to become a successful First Lady – proving that this was a relationship likely to last. The couple announced their engagement in February the following year when they revealed they were expecting their first child.

It is thought Mr Johnson proposed during a break in Mustique over Christmas – with good reason.

Miss Symonds posted an intimate picture of him tenderly kissing her cheek, accompanied by the following explanatory note: ‘I wouldn’t normally post this kind of thing here but I wanted my friends to find out from me…

‘Many of you already know but for my friends that still don’t, we got engaged at the end of last year… and we’ve got a baby hatching early summer.’

Their baby son, Wilfred, was with them at the wedding.

Among the guests was her closest female friend Nimco Ali, a campaigner against female genital mutilation, along with the journalist Alex Wickham. They are both reportedly godparents to Wilfred.

Josh Grimstone, a special adviser to Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, was also on the guest list.

‘People should give some credit to Carrie,’ said the friend who spoke to us. ‘She’s just got married to one of the most famous, recognisable men in the world – and no one knew. It’s astonishing nothing leaked. She kept it really tight and her inner circles are loyal and never said a word.

‘The key to the secret? She kept the politicians out of the loop.’ 

From coy glances at a fundraising ball to a secret wedding with a ‘festival chic’ ceremony: The story of Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds’ courtship in pictures

• Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds were first pictured together at Conservative fundraiser in February 2018
• As the pair’s love blossomed snaps show the pair adopting a Jack Russell named Dilyn, and moving into No10
• They also revealed how Carrie shared engagement news and birth of their son on private Instagram account 

If it wasn’t love at first sight, it wasn’t far off. 

The Foreign Secretary leaves a Tory fundraiser and shares a glance with a young party campaign worker on the steps of the Natural History Museum. 

That was February 2018, and just three years on Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds this weekend sealed their relationship with marriage at Westminster Cathedral, their one-year-old son looking on. 

Throughout that time, be it in the glare of press photographers’ lenses or on their private Instagram account, the world has watched on as the couple’s relationship blossomed. 

Here, we take a look back at some of those most-striking images…