If the headlines marking their wedding were to say, simply, ''Man marries woman,'' it might please the Reverend Fred Nile and his bride Silvana Nero, and it might please their Lord.

The couple were perhaps less pleased when, across the road from their nuptials on Sunday, a small group staged a protest ceremony for which the headline might read: ''Man marries man-in-drag.''

Lucky for some: Fred Nile weds Silvana Nero. Credit:James Alcock

In this mock marriage, bottle blond Brae Michaels married bottle blonde Viva la Bang. She was radiant in a traditional white gown, if not as dazzling as Nile's younger bride, 55-year-old Nero, who wore an embroidered white dress.

Nile, the 79-year-old groom and Christian Democrat MP, came with subtle blond streaks in his hair. Only last month he declared he would celebrate the ''victory'' of his stand against gay marriage - and his part in the defeat of a bill in the NSW upper house that might have allowed it - with his own wedding.