The story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono has captured the attention of many over time. Their relationship was hotly debated since they began their courtship while The Beatles star was still wed to another woman. Nevertheless, their marriage is an enduring image of 20th-century popular culture. We take a look back at their nuptials.
Most Beatles fans know a bit about the story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s wedding. After all, Lennon sang of it in his song “The Ballad of John and Yoko”, which he recorded with fellow Beatle, Paul McCartney, on April 14, 1969.
The lyrics go like this:
“Finally made the plane into Paris
Honeymooning down by the Seine
Peter Brown called to say
You can make it OK
You can get married in Gibraltar near Spain”
Ono met Lennon in November 1966, as she prepared to open her art exhibit called Unfinished Paintings and Objects, which was held at the Indica Gallery, in the basement of the Indica Bookshop in London. According to Lennon, they fell in love on that day.
After their initial meeting, they kept in touch for months, and eventually became an inseparable couple and a force to be reckoned with. However, when Lennon and Ono began their courtship, the singer was still married to his first wife, Cynthia Lennon. Cynthia filed for divorce in August 1968, and by March 20, 1969 Lennon would be remarried to Ono.
Initially, the pair wanted to marry in the most romantic way they could think of – on a train to Paris.
“We wanted to get married on a cross-channel ferry. That was the romantic part,” Lennon said in The Beatles’ Anthology documentary. “We went to Southampton and then we couldn’t get on because she wasn’t English, and she couldn’t get the day visa to go across. They said, ‘Anyway, you can’t get married. The captain’s not allowed to do it any more.'”
After that plan failed, they tried many others, and eventually settled on Gibraltar, a location suggested by their friend Peter Brown.
“We chose Gibraltar because it is quiet, British and friendly. We tried everywhere else first. I set out to get married on the car ferry and we would have arrived in France married, but they wouldn’t do it. We were no more successful with cruise ships. We tried embassies, but three weeks’ residence in Germany or two weeks’ in France were required,” Lennon once explained.
The pair chartered a plane to Gibraltar and married on March 20, 1969 (about a week after bandmate Paul McCartney wedded Linda Eastman), in a 10-minute ceremony at the British Consulate Office.
The bride wore a white, tiered miniskirt and top, small floppy hat, knee-high socks, plimsolls, and round, black sunglasses, and the groom donned a white high-neck top, a blazer, and jacket.
After the wedding, came the honeymoon, which has gone down in history as one of the most famous honeymoons of all time.
For their honeymoon, the pair planned a “bed-in” for peace for the week of March 25 – 31, at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. The event was covered by a variety of international media outlets.
“We decided that if we were going to do anything like get married that we would dedicate it to peace,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1971. “And during that period, because we are what we are, it evolved that somehow we ended up being responsible to produce peace.”
“I was very aware that we were ruining each other’s careers and I was hated and John was hated because of me. We did everything together and we did everything publicly together. The Bed-In was our work for peace but we weren’t liked for it,” Ono shared with The Telegraph.
Seven months after their wedding, the pair released their album titled “Wedding Album”, and it was quite odd. The first side, called “John and Yoko” features a 22-minute long recording in which they pair say each others names, against the backtrack of a beating heart. They purr, wail, and coo, saying each others names in silly ways.
Image: Instagram / riley_and_john
