Country music star Billy Gilman is married!

The “One Voice” singer — who was runner-up in season 11 of The Voice — tied the knot with his partner Anthony Carbone on Friday, Aug. 23, in his home state of Rhode Island. Gilman, 36, tells PEOPLE the couple chose their venue, a 45-acre horse farm, because it fondly reminds him of his childhood spent visiting his grandparents on their own sprawling horse farm.

When the Grammy-nominated musician first saw the picturesque venue, he was “blown away,” he recalls. Carbone, who spent a lot of time on the horse farm while growing up in Rhode Island, adds that the property “just felt like home.”

As the couple dove into planning their big day, they had one simple goal in mind, Gilman says: “All we said was, ‘We want good people, great food and great music.’ That’s it. What else do you need?”

The wedding, Carbone, 32, notes, was “not about the pomp and the fuss of everything — but about what it all means to us.”

The pair exchanged vows surrounded by around 115 guests — the majority of whom were family members. “I just really wanted to keep it simple, with the closest core of our family and friends who have watched our love story grow every single day,” he explains.

Gilman’s best friend of 20 years, Kim Bruna, officiated the ceremony.

Not surprisingly, Gilman and Carbone put a lot of care into the music selections for their special day. Both fans of old-school tunes, they chose “very European jazz fusion music” for the cocktail hour, followed by “Motown and feel-good music” with some country thrown in for good measure. To “get the dance floor going” after dinner, Gilman says, the playlist switched to party music, from The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” to “Cha Cha Slide.”

Gilman surprised his new husband by singing him a special song, and the pair shared their first dance to “My Love” from the TV series STAR.

Food also was a top priority for the couple. The self-described “foodies” hired Providence-based Pranzi Catering, which put together a trial menu ahead of the wedding that Billy says “literally tasted like it came out of our own kitchen.”

During the two-hour cocktail reception following the ceremony, guests enjoyed passed hors d’oeuvres including bacon-wrapped scallops, New England clam chowder, ahi tuna wonton cups, bruschetta and chicken and waffles. A plated dinner followed, with a menu featuring parmesan-crusted filet, Statler chicken and pumpkin ravioli with a sage cream sauce.

The couple chose a two-tier cake by Casale Cupcakery, and also served a selection of other desserts.

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Gilman and Carbone first met through mutual friends at a Providence bar the night before Thanksgiving in 2022. Carbone recalls that they immediately “hit it off” and started talking. After that night, he says, “we just kind of stayed in touch and life just kept bringing us together again and again.”

Gilman — who publicly came out in 2014 — tells PEOPLE he, too, was instantly smitten. “[Carbone] sat down, and I immediately knew … it hit me over the head like a hammer,” he remembers, while admitting that he felt a bit hesitant about jumping into a new relationship at the time. “We met up again and that’s when I said, ‘I got to follow my heart.’ I said [to Carbone], ‘Would you want to go on a first date?’ ”

“[We’ve] been inseparable ever since, leading up to this one getting on his knee,” Gilman adds. “I’m super grateful for our friends, that’s for sure. It’s just, when you know you know.”

“We got really close, really fast,” Carbone agrees. “We’ve had relationships before and dated other people, but we just really couldn’t be a day apart.”

Carbone says their relationship began with a solid foundation of friendship that had the pair sharing many deep conversations about life and their goals and values.

“That was just such a deep part of my heart where not only is he the love of my life, but he became my best friend in that moment, and to me, that’s, I think, the basis of everything, and I think that’s how everything should start. I think that’s somewhere when the best relationships flourish the best,” he explains.

The couple got engaged on a rainy night on Sept. 24, 2023, after attending a Pam Tillis concert in East Greenwich, R.I., with Gilman’s parents. Carbone knew it would be the perfect occasion to pop the question, as Tillis is Gilman’s “idol” and the artist who first sparked his interest in pursuing a music career.

Carbone proposed using two rings that he actually purchased years ago when he was a hopeful 18-year-old on a trip to Aruba with friends. The group went into a jewelry store to browse, and Carbone, on a whim, purchased two men’s rings — one gold and the other silver.

“Being as corny and sentimental as I was, even back at 18, I told myself, ‘These will be the rings for the love of my life one day,’ ” he recalls. “I kept them in a drawer and they sat there for 12 years.”

When Carbone got down on one knee in the pouring rain and asked Gilman to marry him after the concert, it was “like a perfect movie scene,” the “Roller Coaster” singer says. “I was sobbing — but he couldn’t tell with the rain.”

He tells PEOPLE that was the moment he knew he had found “his home” in Carbone and was finally “safe, in the truest sense.”

“I’m home. This is my home for good, for bad,” he adds of finding love with his now-husband. “I’m truly grateful that [Carbone] is that kind of a human because I never thought I would find it.”

On Saturday, Taylor Swift reportedly threw a party at her Rhode Island beach house and she invited a big crew. Pictures of Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce at the house were shared by TMZ, showing that the NFL player reunited with the Eras Tour star as soon as she returned from abroad.

Actress Blake Lively was there and photographers snapped a picture of her kissing her husband, Ryan Reynolds, just outside the mansion. Lively wore floral bathing shorts over a pink bikini and Reynolds was also dressed for the pool in a pink short-sleeved shirt and baseball cap.

In pics shared by the Daily Mail, actor Bradley Cooper was seen with his daughter, Lea. Cooper seems to have befriended Swift and Kelce through his girlfriend, model Gigi Hadid. The foursome even traveled together earlier this year in California and Hadid and Cooper joined Kelce in the audience at one of Swift’s shows in France at the start of her European Eras Tour leg. But it does not seem Hadid was in attendance this weekend.

Kelce’s teammate Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany Mahomes, were also at the event with their children. Swift and Brittany have become fast friends, spending many of the Kansas City Chiefs games side-by-side in the VIP box.

Swift’s home in Rhode Island is famous for hosting parties, though she has historically put on big gatherings for the Fourth of July. Since she was out of town, this was likely the first opportunity for that kind of event. Kelce and Swift were last seen together in July before he flew back to the United States from Europe for training camp as the Chiefs enter the 2024/2025 NFL season. He is expected to play a game the first week of September, so it is a narrow window for beach weekends.

Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.

Taylor Swift and her Lover Travis Kelce are on a cozy getaway in Rhode Island following their past month of busy scheduling.

TMZ posted some pictures of the lovebirds hanging out in Rhode Island on Saturday. The couple has been occupied for the last couple of months with Travis’s Kansas City Chiefs training camp and preseason games as well as Taylor’s European leg of the Eras Tour.

The hangout in Rhode Island marks the first time the pair has been spotted together since mid-July, when the NFL star attended his 13th and 14th Eras Tour shows in Germany.

Previously, an insider told People that their their relationship is serious. “They really are very, very happy together. They’re very serious about each other, and the relationship feels different for both of them.”

The source explained, “They have so much fun together, and it just works. It’s funny to their friends because at first everyone wondered what they had in common, but you realize how similar they are. They both wear their hearts on their sleeves and are all-in with everything they do, whether it’s with career, family or friends.”

For the unversed, Taylor will resume her Eras Tour concerts in October.