The former high court judge Michael Kirby will marry his longtime partner, Johan van Vloten, on the 50th anniversary of when they first met.

The outspoken former high court judge has been a champion of human rights all his life but had hesitated over whether he needed to tie the knot after changes to Australia’s marriage laws in December 2017 to legalise same-sex marriage.

Kirby, who served on the high court from 1996 to 2009, initially announced he would boycott the government’s postal survey on same-sex marriage but later revealed he had changed his mind and voted “yes”.

News Corp has reported that Kirby has now embraced the change in the law and, in a talk to Bond university students on the Gold Coast last week, revealed he plans to marry his partner.

Asked by a student which moment of his life he would choose to relive, Kirby replied it would be meeting his partner in a Sydney hotel in 1969.

“I met my partner, Johan, in what was then one of the very few gay bars in Sydney – the Rex hotel,” Kirby said. “I never went to hotels. I’m not a big drinker.

“But I was like Princess Mary. She went into the Slip Inn in Sydney and picked up the crown prince of Denmark. I went into my hotel and picked up my partner, Johan, and we’re still together.

“That was a very memorable encounter.”

He said he planned to tie the knot on 11 February 2019, the 50th anniversary of their first meeting.

“Because of the change in the Marriage Act 1961 Commonwealth – most unexpectedly – my partner Johan and I had to decide whether to get married,” Kirby said. “We were not all that enthusiastic. Not because we didn’t support the right of citizens to get married if they wished to, and not to be disqualified if they were LGBT.

“But because we’ve been together now for 49 years and eight months. And so it just seemed a little artificial. It seemed a little late for the confetti. And it also seemed to us a little bit patriarchal.”

But Kirby and Van Vloten have since had a rethink.

“We’ve ultimately decided that we are going to get married,” Kirby said. “And we’re going to get married on the 50th anniversary of our meeting, which is the 11th of February, 2019.

“And we’ll get married at home. We will never call each other husband. You know, many gay people call each other husband. Our relationship is not like husband and husband.

“Our relationship essentially is one of partner and partner or spouse and spouse.

“We are happy with spouse. We will use that. And then the following night we will go back, on the Tuesday, because we met on a Tuesday, we will go back to what is now the Rex bistro. The Rex hotel has been pulled down, it is now a bistro.

“We will go back and ask for a table. Is that weird? No, I think it’s a bit romantic.”