Mel B swore she was never going to get married again. Then along came her now fiancé, Rory McPhee.
“I was like, ‘I’m never going to get married again. Never, never, never. I’m never having a relationship. I’m fine by myself. I want to raise my kids, put my head down and work, and that’s it,’” she told PEOPLE. “And then… never can say never, can you?”
The couple are due to tie the knot this weekend at St Paul’s Cathedral in central London.
“He’s very special. He’s a very confident man, and that, to me, is a man,” the former Spice Girl told Us Weekly in May 2025. “He makes me feel so safe.”
Here’s everything we know about their relationship.
HOW MEL B MET HER FIANCE RORY MCPHEE
Mel and Rory have been family friends for years. Rory, a hairstylist, was best friends with Mel’s cousin and she knew him while they were all growing up.
“I was like, ‘Oh, god, boys will be boys, whatever.’ He’s just a friend, a family friend, nothing like that,” she told PEOPLE about her first impression of Rory.
When the pop star moved back to Leeds in 2019, the pair reconnected and their friendship soon turned romantic.
“He was just there patiently waiting, always there to give me a hair treatment, always there to talk. He’s a great listener,” she told the publication. “And he just became more and more of a friend, and more and more important in my life.”
“It’d been a long time that anybody was that kind to me. I wasn’t looking for intimacy or anything like that because I was still suffering a lot from PTSD. And he was just patient. He read the first draft of my book. He just couldn’t believe that a person that says they loved you would treat you like that.”
HOW DID RORY MCPHEE PROPOSE TO MEL B?
Rory proposed to Mel B in 2022.
“He took me to my favourite hotel, Cliveden, and I said, ‘I’m not going anywhere unless we bring the dogs.’ So I’ve got my two Rottweilers, my little Cookie, and the whole room is decked out in flowers,” she shared on TODAY in 2024. “I was like, ‘God, they’ve really made an effort with this hotel room, haven’t they?’”
“And then it started to sink in,” she continued.
“Then he just got down on one knee and I went, ‘Oh, my God!’ I was in my walking clothes, hair up in a bun. And he did a whole spiel to me about me being his best friend. I didn’t really listen to most of it because I was like, ‘He’s got down on one knee! Oh, my God! Wait, where are the dogs?’ It was just beautiful.’”
Speaking to Hello! Magazine that year, Rory said he was “so nervous” before the proposal.
“My lips were trembling,” he said. “I’d spent ages writing down all these things I wanted to say, but when it came to it, I just babbled.”
In a special touch, Rory went to visit Mel B’s dad’s grave to ask his permission before he proposed.
“He knew my dad before he passed,” The Masked Singer judge said on TODAY in March 2024. “He went to my dad’s grave, so he told me afterwards, and asked for my hand in marriage. I mean, not that my dad could say anything… but it was so lovely.”
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT MEL B AND RORY MCPHEE’S WEDDING
The pair are set to tie the knot at St Paul’s Cathedral in central London this weekend.
St Paul’s Cathedral is the church where King Charles and Princess Diana were married in 1981. Mel was able to book her wedding at the cathedral because she was honoured with a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2022.
“So I got an MBE for all my charity work that I’ve been doing,” she shared on TODAY. “It was actually Prince William that gave me my little honorary badge. And it’s quite a big deal. I didn’t realise how much of a big deal it was until I started reading about it, and then I started getting really nervous. It was really lovely. So because of that, I am going to get married in the same church as Princess Diana.”
In November 2024, Mel B shared on Instagram that her fellow former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham had designed her dress for the big day.
“Victoria actually designed my dress and my mum’s dress. It’s such a beautiful honour to get,” Mel B confirmed to TODAY in January 2024.
“I don’t think it would be fair to just have one. Just have as many as you want — at least three, right?” she added. “One to actually get married in, which is the proper ceremony — very proper at this church, St. Paul’s [Cathedral]. And then maybe I want to change out of that and be a bit more less… You know, I actually don’t know!”
Two of Mel’s former fellow Spice Girls will be among the famous guests at the wedding this weekend, with reports that Emma Bunton and Melanie Chisholm will be there to cheer their friend on.
However, Victoria Beckham will miss the big day as she will be out of the country and Geri Halliwell is expected not to attend after the pair reportedly fell out when Mel B spoke about their intimate relationship while being interviewed by Piers Morgan in 2019.
“Victoria has long standing plans out of the country and she simply can’t be there,” a source told the Daily Mail. “She adores Mel, they get on really well despite their paths going in opposite directions. It’s a real shame.”
“There is no issue between them, they haven’t fallen out. It’s just one of those things.”
MEL B’S RELATIONSHIP HISTORY
In 2006, Mel B met actor Eddie Murphy and the two had a whirlwind romance.
“It was as if a 2,000-volt electric current had passed between us,” the singer described their first meeting in her 2018 memoir, Brutally Honest. “I felt a hundred different emotions at once, from confused to elated, to happy to scared, to relaxed to incredulous, and everything in between.”
Mel continued: “I felt I had known this man all my life and that I was staring at my destiny in his face.”
The pair waited six weeks to become intimate and when they finally slept together, Mel B said it was like “poetry”.
“When it happened, it wasn’t sex. It was like poetry, every touch, every kiss every sense out of this world. We were both completely besotted with each other,” she wrote in her memoir.
Just months into their relationship, Eddie asked Mel’s late father for permission before he asked her to marry him. He also tattooed her name on his thigh.
Then Mel became pregnant and their relationship soured when Eddie demanded a paternity test.
“I don’t know whose child that is until it comes out and has a blood test. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions, sir,” he told a reporter at the time.
In 2007, on Eddie’s birthday, Mel gave birth to Angel Iris Murphy Brown. Two months later, Mel announced a DNA test had confirmed Eddie was the father.
Soon after things ended with Eddie, Mel met director and film producer Stephen Belafonte. The pair tied the knot in a secret Las Vegas ceremony just four months later. And in 2011, they welcomed a daughter who they named Madison.
In 2017, Mel B filed for a restraining order against Stephen, after alleging her was abusive towards her.
“I wasn’t just emotionally and physically abused, there was all the financial abuse too,” she alleged in an interview with the BBC last year. “I didn’t realise that I didn’t have as much money as I thought I had. So I literally had to eat humble pie, live with my mum.”
“My mum was the kind of person that would say, ‘Oh you’ve left him now, you’re fine’. But that couldn’t be further from the truth,” she added.
“Obviously any situation is better than being with your abuser, but when you’ve left that kind of abusive situation, it’s like starting all over again. You have to learn to trust people. You have to learn to trust yourself.”
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