Hannah Bardell celebrated her marriage with a sweet post (hannah_bardell on Instagram)
Lesbian SNP candidate Hannah Bardell took a “wee break from the campaign trail” to tie the knot with her partner, she has revealed in a social media post.
Bardell, who is campaigning to retain her Livingston seat in the upcoming general election, shared a photograph of herself and Lucienne Kennedy, both in wedding dresses and with bouquets in hand, leaving the wedding venue.
She described the nuptials as the happiest day of her life.
“To my beautiful wife, @luciennekennedy, I can’t wait to have for ever with you. To our family and friends who came to our very small and intimate ceremony, and made it so very special, thank you,” she wrote.
With a laughing emoji, Bardell light-heartedly told her followers to “prepare yourselves for some wedding (and election) spam in the coming weeks”.
Former Scotland first minister Nicola Sturgeon put four red-heart emojis under the post while Stonewall’s ex-chief executive, Nancy Kelley, wrote: “Woot. So much love, my friend 🙌🙌”
Bardell came out as lesbian to her family while campaigning for the 2015 general election. She won the formerly safe Labour seat with a majority of 16,843.
The former SNP spokeswoman for sport and culture has spoken about the challenges and hate she has faced as an openly queer politician – including receiving death threats – and told PinkNews in an exclusive interview in March that it made her “really stop and think about my job, and if it was worth it”.
Bardell admitted to having considered stepping down after the murder of David Amess at his Southend West constituency surgery in 2021, but opted to continue because she wanted to be a voice for her constituents and feels “very strongly” that there need to be “queer voices, diverse voices, people from different backgrounds” at Westminster.
“I’m a queer woman from a working-class background and a single-parent family, there are not that many people like me in parliament,” she said. “I’m a disruptive force, I’m conscious of that, just by walking through the doors every day.”
In July’s general election, Bardell will be competing for votes against Alba Party candidate Debbie Ewen, Scottish Green Party hopeful Cameron Glasgow, the Lib Dem’s Caron Lindsay, Reform UK candidate David McLennan, the Workers Party of Britain’s Danielle Mclean and Labour’s Gregor Poynton.