*Bishop Oliver Clyde Allen III and Rashad Burgess renewed their vows on Sunday in Atlanta to celebrate 20 years together.
The ceremony was held at The Whitley hotel where 600 guests gathered along with the couple’s children, Joshua, 11, and Caylee, 10, People reports. Judge Glenda Hatchett officiated the ceremony. Before same-sex marriage was legal, Allen and Burgess performed a “private sunrise ceremony” by the ocean.
“It meant the world for us to finally bring all our family and friends together after 20 years of marriage to celebrate love,” Allen told the outlet. “In a world with so much division, we seek to be the bridge that brings people together through the power of love.”
“We were both excited and emotional, especially when they opened the doors to the ceremony, and we saw all of our family and friends there to celebrate our 20 years of marriage,” Allen shared.
Allen is the Senior Pastor and founder of Vision Cathedral of Atlanta and CEO of iElevate+TV. Burgess serves as Vice-President for Advancing Health and Black Equity Gilead Sciences Inc.
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The couple opened their church in 2005 to serve as a safe space for members of the LGBTQ+ community, Allen previously told Today.
“When people of color, Black people couldn’t find solace in white LGBTQ spaces, we created our own,” Allen told Today.com. “We created our own of everything, whether it was our own fraternities and sororities, our own institutions, our own churches.”
Allen and Burgess met in 1999 and reconnected shortly before they married in 2002.
The couple shared the secret to reaching 20 years of marriage: “We never got in the way of each other’s success because we always believe that we can be better versions of ourselves because we are in each other’s lives.”
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