Inside Robin Roberts and Amber Laign's magical wedding celebration
Roberts and Laign tied the knot following an 18-year romance.
"Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts and her longtime love Amber Laign are officially married.
The couple tied the knot on Friday, Sept. 8, in the backyard of their home in front of family and close friends. Roberts’ childhood pastor officiated the ceremony.
Roberts and Laign each wore wedding gowns custom-made by designers Mark Badgley and James Mischka.
After the wedding, the newlyweds celebrated with family and friends at an enchanted garden-themed reception.
The couple entered the reception as violinist Caroline Campbell played “Can You Feel The Love Tonight.”
"An intimate, magical wedding ceremony in our backyard followed by a joyous reception…ohhhh the dancing!! We are immensely grateful to all for making it a day and a night to remember," Roberts wrote on Instagram. "Honeymoon here we come!"
Guests ate at round tables anchored by a dance floor, ordered drinks from a custom-made bar and enjoyed a wedding cake from Vincenzo Salvatore Cakes, a New York-based bakery. After dinner, guests hit the dance floor to tunes spun by DJ Valentina.
The wedding was a celebration of Roberts' and Laign's 18-year romance that started with a blind date set up by mutual friends.
"Our two friends, my friend Alex, her friend Bert, finally said, 'Enough, you two are going to meet,'" Laign told "GMA" previously, adding of their first meeting, "I remember just walking up and she's just beautiful, and she took my breath away, and she still does."
Over the nearly two decades together that followed, Roberts and Laign overcame countless health and personal obstacles together, from grieving the losses of parents to helping each other through two bouts with breast cancer and Roberts' lifesaving bone marrow transplant in 2012.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the time at home bonded the couple, they said, and turned their talks of marriage over the years into a reality.
The official marriage proposal came at the end of 2022. The couple decided to wed while eating at a favorite restaurant together in Connecticut, where they put rings of calamari on each other's fingers.
"We took the calamari rings and we slapped them on each other's fingers and we just we proposed to one another," Roberts said. "Now looking back, it was pretty fitting for us to not have a down on one knee [proposal] and one person doing it ... it was just us hanging out in our little hole-in-the-wall Mexican spot and putting calamari rings on each other and saying, 'Let's go. Let's do it.'"
During the countdown to their wedding day, Roberts and Laign said they appreciated each other more than ever.
"She is truth speaking. She treats everybody with such kindness, and to have someone by your side like that is a gift," Laign said.
Added Roberts, "Many people go into marriage hoping for and looking for what Amber and I already know we have, and so ours is a celebration. We've been living our happily ever after through all the ups and downs, so it's a celebration."
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