lets hope that the indian government comes up with a law that recognises gay marriages as legal the civil rights in india need to be the same for everybody says vinodh philip 43 who got married to his partner vincent illaire 47 in december last year the couple hosted a wedding party in mumbai last week as indias first married gay couple honeymoons in south india toi connects with them to talk about their love story marriage and kids vincent you are from france and vinodh from chennai why did you both host a wedding party in mumbaivinodh we got married in paris on december 10 2018 we had the wedding party in mumbai because i came out to my folks in mumbai i also started rainbow voices mumbai which is indias first lgbt choir i have a lot of friends in this city who helped me come out and be myself so this place is close to my heart i was born and raised in chennai while i came out to certain colleagues and friends back home i felt more comfortable and safe doing that in mumbai how long were you both datingvincent we were dating for two years before getting married take us through your love story vinodh we first met in paris i arrived on july 24 2016 i chatted with vincent on a dating app for gay people we had our first date that week then we started meeting regularly and going for movies like friends like it happens in most love stories towards the beginning of 2017 we started taking weekend holidays together when vincent went to thailand for his birthday in april that year for three weeks we really missed each other we were not together back then vincent wrote a message on a prayer tile at a temple in thailand which said please let vinodh stay in france with me laughs it seems that prayer came true i met his family in france and vincent visited india for the first time last year and met my family after that we decided to get married as soon as we returned to france we started with the marriagerelated paperwork the paperwork in india took a lot of time since there was no clarity on the part of the indian administration when itcame to getting a certificate of bachelorhood or attestations etc what was the wedding ceremony like vincent the ceremony was done in a town hall in paris it was a sevenminute affair our friends and family from across the world attended our wedding have you both ever faced backlash because of your orientation vinodh yes i have experienced backlash in the form of rude comments and bullying in various workplaces but mainly in chennai when i look back i feel that its unfortunate that those colleagues of mine were so unaware of homosexuality and that they used to make those comments sometimes i saw them picking on guys who were a bit camp