Newlywed Hilarie Burton Morgan “lucked out” marrying her partner of 10 years, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, in an intimate ceremony that followed Morgan’s participation in The Walking Dead’s Season 10 panel at New York Comic Con in October. The couple wed in a secret ceremony —attended by Morgan’s Walking Dead co-star Norman Reedus and Supernatural co-star Jensen Ackles, and Burton’s One Tree Hill co-stars Sophia Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz — officially tying the knot despite past reports Burton and Morgan wed in 2014 or 2015. Opening up about the wedding with Entertainment Tonight, Burton Morgan says the ceremony was “perfect.”
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“It was small. It was very small, very intimate. Jeff happened to be in town for New York Comic Con, and why not? He had to do a panel that morning, and then we got married,” Burton Morgan said. “When you do it ten years later, you’re not as precious, necessarily, about it. It was perfect, it was perfect.”
Reedus did a reading for the couple before they were married by Ackles, who plays the son of Morgan’s John Winchester, Dean, on Supernatural.
“Jensen Ackles introduced us, so it was fitting,” Burton Morgan said. “It was his big idea in the first place.”
When announcing their marriage on Instagram, Burton Morgan said it “felt silly to try and correct” publications that erroneously reported the longtime couple were already married.
“You say you’re married so people stop asking when you’re gonna get married, because everybody wants to be all involved and nosey about it,” she told ET. “I have never been married before, and so you see your own Wikipedia page, and you’re like, ‘Cool, who wrote that?’”
What’s the secret to an enduring partnership? “I think finding someone you can be your best and worst with is important. You’re gonna change a lot over 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, and so it’s a choice. You make the choice to say, ‘Alright, well, I like you now, I’m gonna choose to like you in 10 years,’” Burton Morgan said. “I lucked out, because I met someone who is capable of a lot of growth and is very much a good dad and partner.”
Also present for the ceremony were the couple’s children, nine-year-old son Augustus and one-year-old daughter George.
“Here’s the God’s honest fact: From the moment I met @jeffreydeanmorgan, he was my husband,” the actress previously wrote on Instagram. “Rather than make vows right out of the gate, we lived them. For over ten years. The good times and the bad. Standing up there with our children at our sides — celebrating all that has been — was bliss. It was private and magical and everything I dreamed. So yeah. I’m Mrs. Morgan.”
“It was, without a doubt… the best day of our lives. Ever ever,” Negan star Morgan wrote when sharing a picture of the Morgan family to Instagram. “Just never knew that it could be so damn perfect. It was. And more.”
New episodes of The Walking Dead Season 10 premiere Sundays at 9/8c on AMC. For more TWD intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.
Photo credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
