KISS Founder Gene Simmons’ Daughter Sophie is Married

Gene Simmon’s daughter Sophie Simmons is married! She said “I Do” to her longtime love, James Henderson, at an LA courthouse before exchanging vows in front of 50 close friends and family members at her mother’s Malibu home on Feb. 22. “We couldn’t be prouder of our daughter,” Gene and Shannon Simmons told PEOPLE in a statement. They praised their new son-in-law, adding, “James is a solid young man, and Sophie can do anything she puts her mind to. We wish them a lifetime of love and happiness. If they are even half as happy as we are, they will last long.”

Sophie donned a sparkling blush dress by Galia Lahav and Maria Elena Bridal headpiece as Band of Horses’ “No One’s Gonna Love You” played. It was a tribute to her and Henderson’s love story. “When my fiancé and I first started dating nine years ago, he took me to a Band of Horses concert,” she explained. “I was so tired from filming our reality show Shannon & Sophie back then, I fell asleep on his shoulder. We were way too early in the dating phase for me to do that. Luckily, he thought it was cute, and he woke me up for that one song.”

Because of the mixture of religious beliefs between both of their families, they had a judge as the officiant. “We wanted to be respectful to both of our families,” she said. “We thought we would just sidestep religion altogether and make it a non-issue. We wanted to do the ceremony somewhere so beautiful that it wouldn’t matter if it’s not at a church or temple or whatever.”

And for their vows, they didn’t go the traditional route. “[We] took out all the language in the vows about the wife obeying and things like that,” she noted. “We wanted it to be super equal, because our partnership is really equal.”