Mean Girls star Jonathan Bennett marries Jaymes Vaughan in Mexico
The couple have tied the knot after five years together.
By Will Stroude
Words: Will Stroude; Images: Instagram
Jonathan Bennett and Jaymes Vaughan have married in Mexico.
Mean Girls star Bennett, 40, and TV presenter Vaughan, 38, tied the knot during in a lavish wedding ceremony at the Unico Riviera Maya Hotel in Mexico, 15 months after announcing their engagement.
Bennett, who played Aaron Samuels in 2004 high school comedy Mean Girls and more recently starred in festive Hallmark TV movie The Christmas House, first confirmed his relationship with former Amazing Race contestant Vaughan in 2017, in what was then an effective public coming out statement.
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“It was honestly a dream wedding!”, Bennett told People. “We kept having to stop and remind ourselves that we weren’t on a movie set, but this was actually our real life.
“If you had told me this was one of my Hallmark movie sets, I would have believed it. It was that perfect.”
Vaughan, who currently hosts US entertainment news programme Celebrity Page, added: “I got to marry my best friend! I knew we’d be emotional but I don’t think either of us realized just how overwhelming that moment would be until we were in it.
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“Seeing him crying only made me cry harder, and then our guests cry harder, and then we’d all start laughing, and then all back into crying.”
Vaughan popped the question to Bennett in late 2020 after three years of dating.
Sharing a series of pictures of the emotional proposal on social media at the time, Bennett wrote: “I said yes! And ugly cried like a crazy person.”
In 2019, Bennett’s former Mean Girls co-star Daniel Franzese, who played “too gay to function” high school student Damian, revealed that the pair “confided” in each other on set as two young gay actors.
“We both were sharing in our little private misery of having to be in the closet,” Franzese said at the time. “We definitely confided in each other.”
Franzese eventually came out publicly in 2014 before landing the role of Eddie in the second season of HBO’s LGBTQ drama Looking, but it would be another three years before Bennett did the same.
The Cake Wars host, who was accidentally outed by Dancing with the Stars judge Julianne Hough in 2014, first publicly acknowledged his sexuality when confirming his relationship with Vaughan.
In the same interview, Franzese recalled: “When I came out, I urged [Jonathan] to come out. He just wasn’t ready at the time.”
He added: “I’m glad now he’s at a place in his life where he can feel free to be himself. I’m proud of him.”