Elton to wed at Windsor

Sir Elton John is to marry David Furnish in the same venue as Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

The singer and his boyfriend will wed at Windsor Guildhall after posting their banns yesterday - the day it became legal for homosexual couples to register to marry.

The ceremony will be on December 21, the first date on which gay couples can marry.

The pair will be pronounced 'husband and husband' by Clair Williams, who also officiated at Charles and Camilla's marriage.

The wedding will be an intimate affair with only Sir Elton, his mother and stepfather and Mr Furnish's family in attendance.

Sir Elton, 58, and Mr Furnish, 43, will then throw a lavish party at their £12million Windsor mansion, with guests expected to include the Beckhams, Elizabeth Hurley, Rod Stewart, Sir Mick Jagger and Dame Elizabeth Taylor.

Another guest will be George Michael, who plans to marry his boyfriend Kenny Goss at a later date.

More than 1,000 homosexual couples yesterday signed up for 'civil partnerships' as the gay marriage laws came into effect.

All are hoping to be among the first to enjoy the full legal benefits that were once reserved for married heterosexual couples.

And many plan to celebrate with full-scale wedding celebrations. A high proportion of the hotels and stately homes which have the legal right to stage weddings are expected to offer ceremonies and receptions to gay partners too.

Among the 1,200 same sex couples who have put their names down for a partnership according to figures compiled by the BBC, more than 500 have booked a ceremony in Brighton, the seaside town with the reputation of the gay capital of the South.

There are 140 ceremonies booked in Westminster in cental London, and 88 in Manchester, which has the biggest gay quarter among northern cities.

Ministers who passed the partnership legislation at first predicted that there would be nearly 40,000 gay partnerships sealed each year. They later scaled the number down dramatically to fewer than 1,000 a year.