Brian McKnight rings in the New Year with a lavish wedding to his new wife Leilani Malia Mendoza. The couple tied the knot on Dec. 31 at Oheka Castle Hotel & Estate in Huntington, New York.
The 48-year-old singer announced their wedding via a series of Instagram posts showing how they welcomed 2018 full of love.
"Ladies and gentlemen introducing Mr and Mrs Brian McKnight," captioned the first photo, which shows the pair about to share one of their first kisses as husband and wife.
He also posted a short clip showing the two of them in the "happiest day of our lives."
His new wife was glittering in all the photos. After all, some 50,000 Swarovski crystals were used to make her dazzling Sabrina and Mannings gown.
According to Us Weekly, it took a month of hand work to apply all the crystals on the hand-cut fabric so that it would create a vanishing out effect.
McKnight and Mendoza got engaged in May, after being together for three years. He told the world about it in a black and white Instagram post highlighting Mendoza's huge ring. "She said yes," he said in the caption. "Took me 42 years to find her and I'm never letting her go I'm so in love with you baby."
In a 2016 interview with Montgomery Advertiser, months before he popped the question, the "Back at One" singer shared that they are already "more married than any married couple" he knows.
McKnight gushed about their relationship, saying that Mendoza made him believe everything that his parents and grandparents said about love.
"I thought that true love was a just fairytale but I have it and it's pretty amazing," he said in another interview with Soul and Jazz and Funk in March 2016.
Before meeting Mendoza, McKnight was married to his college sweetheart Julie McKnight until 2003. They were together for 13 years and share two children, Brian Jr. and Niko.
