Sam Vanderpump and his pregnant wife Alice Yaxley have opened up their wedding album for the first time after tying the knot in an intimate ceremony at Chelsea Registry Office this month.
The Made In Chelsea star, 28, and the model, 24, gave their first interview after tying the knot, where Sam admitted he was ‘struggling emotionally’ in the run to his nuptials after his end-stage liver disease diagnosis.
The couple’s wedding came after a hugely difficult period, during which Sam became seriously ill with flu in late 2024, developing sepsis and suffering liver and kidney failure.
He was later diagnosed with irreversible end-stage liver disease and is now on the transplant waiting list.
In spite of the uncertainty, Sam and Alice chose to prioritise love and decided to marry while he was well enough, ahead of welcoming their baby boy, who is due on Valentine’s Day.
Opening up in a recent interview, as the couple also shared new photos of their big day, Sam admitted the emotional strain of the past year weighed heavily on him.
Sam Vanderpump and his pregnant wife Alice Yaxley have opened up their wedding album for the first time after tying the knot in an intimate ceremony at Chelsea Registry Office this month
The Made In Chelseastar, 28, and the model, 24, gave their first interview after tying the knot
He told HELLO! Magazine: ‘I was struggling emotionally in the weeks leading up to the wedding because of everything going on with my health.
‘But I have been so over the moon happy these past few days.’
The wedding was arranged within four weeks and was followed by a dinner at The Lanesborough.
The couple opted for a low-key approach, choosing Alice’s dress together and deciding against traditional elements such as a first dance and extended speeches.
The newlyweds plan to host a larger celebration in May 2027, after welcoming their son.
As for their Chelsea ceremony, Alice walked down the aisle with her father, Jason, wearing a white silk and lace gown, while Sam opted for a white jacket and black trousers and later.
‘I was very nervous and very emotional,’ he told the publication. ‘Alice looked absolutely stunning.’
Sam popped the question to Alice in March, after he was hospitalised in January with liver and kidney failure that developed into life-threatening sepsis.
The couple’s wedding came after a hugely difficult period, during which Sam became seriously ill with flu in late 2024, developing sepsis and suffering liver and kidney failure
Last month, he announced on an episode of Made In Chelsea that he’d been diagnosed with irreversible end-stage liver disease, with his life expectancy limited to four to five years without a transplant.
The full interview is out now in HELLO! magazine
He was born with the rare conditions congenital hepatic fibrosis of the liver and polycystic kidney disease, but they lay dormant until last December, when his organs began shutting down.
In an episode of the We Need To Talk podcast with Paul C Brunson, Sam described how he later discovered the devastating truth behind his symptoms, soon after learning Alice was pregnant.
Recalling the ‘terrifying’ moment, he said: ‘I don’t remember the day, it could have been eight weeks ago, ten weeks ago, 12 weeks ago. I think when you have that trauma you block it out.
‘I got this notification on the NHS app. Alice is at work. I’m home alone and I go, “Oh, it’s a letter from King’s College.” I open it up and it’s literally a four line letter.
‘And it goes “Dear Sam, after reviewing your latest CT scan, these are in line with your condition, we’re sending you for a liver transplant assessment.” I mean, that was… receiving that I think your heart stops, your tummy drops.’
The star candidly revealed how he feared he would die before getting to meet his son after first being told he needed a liver transplant to save his life.
Asked by Paul what he was thinking of in that moment, he became teary-eyed as he confessed: ‘Fear. Yeah. Terrified. Am I going to die?’
He was born with the rare conditions congenital hepatic fibrosis of the liver and polycystic kidney disease, but they lay dormant until last December, when his organs began shutting down after developing sepsis
Sam, whose father passed away seven years ago, went on to explain how his thoughts went straight to his unborn child, saying: ‘I always get sad when I think my dad’s never going to see his grandchild.
‘To now start having that thing dawned on you. Am I going to see my child? That’s terrifying.’
Since announcing his diagnosis, Sam has spoken openly about his health in order to raise awareness about the hidden signs of sepsis and the importance of signing up to be an organ donor, in the hopes of saving lives.
However, he admitted that making his news public also reopened old wounds after he’d ‘compartmentalised and processed’ it, and caused him to have breakdown in recent weeks.
Detailing how he ‘broke’ and ‘cried for 20 minutes’, Sam revealed that it was his famous aunt, Lisa Vanderpump, who gave him ‘the kick up the backside’ that he needed to get through it, for the sake of Alice and their unborn baby.
After Mark died by suicide in 2018 at the age of 59, she and Sam became even closer, with him previously declaring: ‘She really stepped up, she has been there and became an amazing support network for me and my brother.’
Detailing the reason for his breakdown, Sam explained that he had been unprepared for the level of media interest in his diagnosis after announcing it on the E4 reality TV show.
Sam and Alice announced they were expecting a baby boy in September, due on Valentine’s Day next year, with the couple already having picked out his name
He said: ‘I mean, I had a breakdown. I think it was a couple weeks ago. I decided to talk about this for these reasons. I went, I’m gonna do my thing and raise awareness. It’s just what you should do.
‘I was expecting to do it on Made in Chelsea, do a bit of media and that would be it. And I really did expect that.
‘So what ensued was the fact eight weeks later, I’d processed it or compartmentalised it for now, dealt with it. And this media storm we talked about earlier hit.’
He went on: ‘And in all truth, a liver transplant is extremely successful. So I’m going to be here for my son. I know that.
‘And there are those fears. But you know, the context is I’m healthy now. My liver might not be good for four or five years. But I’m going to have this liver transplant and everything’s going to be fine. I will live a long, happy life.
‘So I dealt with that and processed that. And Made in Chelsea portrayed that brilliantly. The media storm which followed, every newspaper comes out with the headline four or five years left to live. That’s not true. And that broke me.
‘Then you suddenly sit there and your mum’s a little bit broken, I could hear it in my mum’s voice because she thought she heard it in my voice.
‘And you go, ‘Why am I doing this? I’ve fudged up here. I shouldn’t have talked about it. I should have kept it private. I should’ve dealt with it internally, with our family, processed it ourselves.’
Detailing the reason for his breakdown, Sam explained that he had been unprepared for the level of media interest in his diagnosis after announcing it on the E4 reality TV show (seen)
‘And I broke and I sat there with Alice and we just took 20 minutes to cry.’
Sam explained how Lisa was the one to push him through, recalling: ‘I spoke to my aunt and she kind of gave me a kick up the backside.
‘She was like, “You need to be there for Alice. You need to be there for your son. Yes, I understand what you’re going through”.
‘And she was fantastic at empathising with me, but she gave me the kick up the backside. And then it propelled me into thinking, this is why I’m doing this. I’m doing this to raise awareness.
‘There are 8000 other people out there on a transplant list that are waiting for transplant, that would wish to have the voice I have, the platform I have to talk about this to encourage people to sign up to reduce that list so they can get well soon.’
On their wedding day, the couple posed for a stunning photoshoot together, which they shared exclusively to Hello magazine.
Sam and Alice announced they were expecting a baby boy in September, due on Valentine’s Day next year, with the couple already having picked out his name, that has huge significance to his family.
Sam said: ‘We have a name, it’s Marmaduke. My dad is no longer with us, but he always wanted to call my brother ‘Duke’ because he believed my brother would one day become Prime Minister, Duke Vanderpump.
‘I really love the name. My mum didn’t like it, so my brother was named Jack. My dad still had the last laugh by giving him the middle name Daniels.
‘I think Marmaduke is fantastic, and we’ll call him Duke for short. There’s a great Downton Abbey scene where Maggie Smith and her daughter discuss a man named Marmaduke, which made us love it even more.’
Sam previously explained how Alice had ‘saved my life’ after the quick-thinking model phoned an ambulance for him when he mistook his sepsis symptoms for flu last December.
He was told by doctors if he was admitted to hospital 24 hours later it would have been too late, and that he very ‘nearly died’.
He recalled: ‘I thought I was going to die. I didn’t think my body could cope and that was the scariest thing. It was terrifying.
‘I remember the doctor saying to me that I was going into liver and kidney failure. I burst into tears. My mum didn’t react badly, you would expect her to be in complete meltdown, but she didn’t want to scare me.
‘The words they used for the function of my liver were ‘deranged’ and ‘demonic’. You don’t feel your organs normally but when they stop working and because my liver and kidneys weren’t working my heart was in overdrive, my pancreas was struggling, my spleen wasn’t well…
‘And you can feel all this pain and uncomfortableness, I was really, really fighting to keep myself alive. I didn’t think I was going to survive or see the outside of the hospital again.
‘You never think the flu will lead to you being in a hospital bed and nearly dying. They told my mum that if I had got to hospital 24-48 hours later, I wouldn’t have made it. By calling the ambulance, my girlfriend literally saved my life.’
Register as an NHS organ donor at: https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your-decision/
