Damion and Latasha Gillespie on Celebrating 25 Years of Marriage and Being an Example of Love for the Next Generation: “It’s Worth It”
by Morgan M. Evans
SHARE ARTICLE
LEFT TO READ

minutes

PUBLISHED ON

October 13, 2023

ARTICLE LENGTH

12 Minute Read

SHARE ARTICLE
CONTRIBUTOR

Damion and Latasha Gillespie on Celebrating 25 Years of Marriage and Being an Example of Love for the Next Generation: “It’s Worth It”

Damion and Latasha (Courtesy of Amazon)

In the summer of 1991, Latasha Gillespie met the love of her life. In between her junior and senior year of high school, the Illinois native met an ambitious Damion from around the way. At the time, both students took part in the National Urban League’s youth program, TSTM (Tomorrow’s Scientists, Technicians, and Managers), aiming to expose minority youths to science, technology, and math and prepare them as future business and career leaders in the tech and media space. 

Within the program, Latasha and Damion became fast friends. While they continued to keep in touch after that summer, Damion and Latasha lost contact during college, attending two different schools. But despite the four-year break, once they re-connected as adults, their friendship “blossomed into 25 years of marriage.”

Flash forward to 2023, Latasha and Damion, both 49, toasted 25 years, celebrating the milestone “Platinum” anniversary in unique fashion. With two grand vow renewal wedding events, the couple not only took the time to honor themselves but also all the people who have made their union what it is today.

“We had two events, which we called ‘Platinum Amore,’” Latasha told Black Love. “Silver is the color for 25, but platinum just sounds more sexy. Besides, you have to be married 70 years for platinum, and you have to get married at 10 for that, so we borrowed platinum.”

Explaining why the couple decided to have two wedding events, the Head of Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Amazon Studios said: “We realized there’s a whole generation of young people in our family, who had never seen a wedding. And I think that’s a combination of people just not getting married as much anymore and/or a lot of our adult nieces, nephews, and cousins who had gotten married, had opted to do a simpler courthouse service, versus a traditional wedding. And so there were a lot of young people in our family that had never been in or seen a wedding.”

The parents of two sons, Damion II, 25, and Myles, 23, then added that the “young people” also included their youngest son.

“We decided, ‘We need to do this for them because how can they be what they can’t see?’” Latasha explained. 

And with that came the name for the one-of-a-kind wedding renewal occasion:A Love Letter to a Generation.”

The pair kicked off the first wedding celebration with a celebration for their families. Set in Chicago, where the Latasha’s side of the family had planned to host their 59th annual reunion, the pair invited 250 people to a “full-blown wedding” the night of the planned family reunion banquet event. 

And while they agreed that their favorite part of the Sept. 2 ceremony and party was seeing everyone in their large families come together, Latasha shared that another highlight was the surprise musical guest. 

“We surprised our guests with D-Nice,” she revealed. “All during the evening, we just kept referring to him as Rick James; nobody knew he was coming.”

BlackLove.com Related Articles:
Viola Davis & Julius Tennon on Black Love and Marriage: “Keep God at the Center”

Love Lessons From Mrs. KevOnStage After 17 Years of Marriage

Their Wedding Cost $99 and Their Marriage Has Lasted Over 20 Years: Christina & Eddie

The Chicago ceremony was the blow-out event the couple dreamed about hosting. But the celebrations didn’t end there. A week later, the Gillespies took the festivities abroad, hosting a more intimate second ceremony in France — a country that holds special significance to the pair’s love story and vow renewal. 

“Damion re-proposed to me last year in Paris, in this beautiful setting in front of the Eiffel Tower, and then also at The Louvre…it really just was magical,” Latasha recalled. “We had always talked about doing a vow renewal, so when he proposed at year 24, it was the prelude to renewing our vows for 25. And as we were planning, we thought about, ‘We should go back to the South of France.’”

And just like that, the destination wedding ceremony was set. The couple continued their “platinum” celebration with a week-long tour of the French Riviera, bringing along 45 of their closest friends and family members, who the pair consider a “highly curated group of our people” that have “a critical part” of their lives and their love journey.

The French fête included a stylish welcome soirée, a chartered yacht to Saint-Tropez, an evening in Cannes for a special dinner at the famed La Môme, followed by the vow renewal ceremony — a chic affair which took place in front of their guests on a picturesque pier. No doubt an affair for the ages. 

But separate from all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the actual wedding ceremonies, the pair are staunchly aware that being married for 25 years is no easy feat. Agreeing that relationships, especially those of longevity, are “hard,” Damion explained that they are also “ever-evolving.” And in that evolution comes “constant renewal.” 

“You know what? It’s hard…everything is ever-evolving. There’s a lot of ups and downs, a lot of peaks and a lot of valleys,” Damion said. “But, I think you constantly reconnect and you constantly develop new strategies, new goals, new plans, new desires for one another…And those things, it’s just as with anything, the grass is not greener on the other side, it’s greener where you water it. So as you realize that you have to put in a little effort because it’s never just going to go smooth sailing, you never put it on autopilot. For me, I think it’s just a constant renewal of love and desire and friendship.”

And despite today’s common vow renewal naysayers, the Gillespies explain that their anniversary ceremony wasn’t meant to mend anything that was broken, or needed to be fixed, it was a true celebration of their lasting love and “next chapter” of their lives with “a new beginning.” 

“I just felt like we are at a point in our lives where we’re empty nesting, technically. The boys are both adults. Now that they were grown, it was our opportunity to come together and reevaluate things and say, ‘Okay. Now, we’re at this point, our children are gone. How do we feel about each other? How do we love each other?’ So it’s just a “renegotiation,” as Latasha would say,” Damion continued. “A renewal of a marriage…the next chapter. We closed that book. Now let’s start a new book. A new beginning.”

Adding to her husband’s thoughts, Latasha said, “We were kids when we got married. We were kids, having kids. I always like to say, ‘We didn’t have nothing. We didn’t know nothing.’ Life was a blur, in our twenties and thirties.” 

“And he’s right about the ‘renegotiation.’We say it jokingly, but we really did have that conversation where we said, ‘Okay. Who are we in this stage of life, and what do we need from each other and what are we willing to give each other?’ We actually sat down and had a really lengthy, difficult conversation around where we were in life and what we needed to do next. And I’m so grateful for that,” Lastasha said, noting that the pair had their reaffirming chat prior to her husband’s big reproposal in Paris.

“When he re-proposed, it wasn’t just a formality of getting caught up in the romanticism, it was with clear heart and mind that I am re-upping for this because I’m very clear about what he needs from me and what he’s willing to give to me,” she clarified. “So for the naysayers, I would say, ‘Well, maybe this isn’t for you, and that’s fine.’ We didn’t necessarily renew our vows because we felt like they were broken or because there was something wrong with the original ones, we did it as a reminder to ourselves that marriage, in this day and age, is activism. Because it’s so much easier to get divorced than to fight through the dark seasons.”

With their celebrations, Latasha and Damion hope to send a message that their love and all love is worth fighting for, in addition to being an example of lasting Black love for their friends, family, and the next generation. 

“We wanted to publicly make that commitment to our children, to our family, because we know other people go through seasons in their marriage too,” Lastasha said. “And I want them to see that you can come out on the other side and be stronger and better. You got to work at it every day, and it’s not always easy work, but it’s worth it.”

JOIN THE CONVERSATION