Nick Harvey/REX/ShutterstockLooks like they made it after all!
Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black tied the knot at the Bovey Castle Hotel hotel on Dartmoor National Park in Devon, England, surrounded by family and friends, BBC News reported Sunday. The couple shared a series of portraits, taken by Andy Mac Photography, via social media Monday.
In January, Daley confessed to The Sun that planning their nuptials was proving to be harder than he'd ever anticipated. "It is like a trans-Atlantic wedding. The easiest thing would be to do it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," he said. "We may have to do a Skype wedding."
Daley was hospitalized just two days before his wedding. The Olympic diver, who won bronze medals at the Olympic Games in London and Rio de Janeiro, posted a photo of himself in a hospital bed Thursday night and promised fans he'd be "back on the board soon." Though he didn't divulge what was wrong with him, he said, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Suggesting he had suffered some kind of training injury, Daley added, "#AthleteLife."
Their road to the altar wasn't without a few speed bumps.
Daley, 22, and 42-year-old Black, screenwriter of the 2008 movie Milk, got engaged in October 2015, two years after they began dating. "I am in the middle of planning [the wedding] with Lance, but it's all been fun," he told The Mirror four months ago. "It's a fun time and exciting time. So, I am really looking forward to this year."
Despite their 20-year age difference, Daley said he found the perfect partner in Black. "We just complement each other, and I think we really understand each other," he said. "He's very good at what he does—and he understands the hard work I have to put into what I do—so it works."
Most of the time, anyway. In 2016, they went on a secret seven-month break, during which time Daley had cyber sex with another man—and a NSFW video leaked online. "This will absolutely never happen again now that we're getting married," he told The Sun in January. "The date is set and we're raring and ready to go for that wedding now." Blaming "the distance" for their split, he added, "It's not like I actually met up with anyone. I'm 22 years old, and if you talk to someone through social media it is what it is. It was nothing more than that. We never physically met. But in the modern world, this is what can happen. Things are more accessible online, and distributed, and they spread like wildfire. People are just exploring and finding out what can be done and how easy it is to not even think about what you're doing online."
Black was forgiving, Black added: "We don't have secrets in our relationship. We're honest and open about everything. When we were back together I told him everything. Lance and I had a period of time apart, and then coming back together and realizing we're meant for each other."
"We're soulmates—and the only way that we were going to get back to that point was to be honest, open and share everything that happened in our time away from each other," Black told the newspaper. "It's totally crucial to us that we are completely and totally open with each other. I don't think I've done anything more or less than any other 22-year-old has done. Lance and I have such a strong connection that, again, our honesty and openness is so important."
As the couple revealed last year, it was Daley who made the first move on Black. "Tom took my phone, and he typed his number in with a winky face," the screenwriter said when they covered OUT's Love Issue. "At which point I felt I had confirmation that he was gay. I've never in my life heard of a straight man putting his number in another man's phone with a winky face."
Instantly, Daley and Black connected on a deeper level than they had with previous boyfriends. "Not only is he unbelievably attractive to me, and that goes beyond just how he looks, but he gets me. He understood my competitive spirit," Black explained. "We both had been to the top of our fields—he'd been world champion, I had an Oscar—and neither of us felt we were done."
The couple talked about marriage within the first two weeks of dating.
"We were so busy making all these plans—we both wanted to have children; we both wanted to build a home of our own someday. I draw, so I was sketching little plans for houses on cliffs overlooking oceans, while Tom watched over my shoulder—it was a very grown-up version of playing house. Marriage is the foundation to all of these other big plans we have," Black told OUT. "We knew we were going to get engaged—it was just a matter of when, and who does it."
Daley got down on one knee to pop the question. Moments after he proposed, Daley learned Black had been planning his own proposal. "He ran off to the bathroom to get his rings," the diver said. "He had this whole speech prepared, but he's a writer, so his was quite extravagant."
Now that they're married, are they ready for kids? "I'd like to have children," Daley told BuzzFeed in a 2013 interview. "I grew up with two brothers, so I'd like to have at least three."
(Originally published on Sunday, May 7, 2017, at 9:52 a.m. PDT.)