My lovely French husband has made the ultimate sacrifice for me – he’s now officially British | Emma Beddington

I haven’t felt great about asking my husband to become British. There was the idiotic Life in the UK test that every applicant has to pass; the cost; the faff; and the uncertainty, which still hasn’t ended. I found out his application had been accepted when he came into the kitchen in June with a face like thunder. “But that’s brilliant! You’ll never need to know how many Scottish ski resorts there are again!” I said, puzzled. He explained that, because we’re going on holiday before he can get a British passport to go with his French one, he’ll be in an immigration grey area that could mean he gets refused re-entry. He should, theoretically, be OK, but it’s confusing.

Why would he even want to come back to this place with its threadbare services, toxic waterways, obsession with “picky bits” and ridiculous politics? His Home Office email arrived just after the Makerfield byelection and that night the news showed the returning officer’s poker-faced declaration again: our future prime minister flanked by a politely clapping Binface and an oversized, blank-eyed fox. I started laughing, hysterically, guiltily. What have I done to him? “Will the world go a different colour when I’m British?” he asked on the train to the ceremony. “Yeah, reverse Wizard of Oz – everything goes grey.”

But if you are becoming British, because you really love your wife or for any other reason, Leeds Civic Hall is a good spot for it. We admired the outside, embellished with large, golden owls, from the terrace of Wetherspoons, where another set of ceremony attenders – a south Asian couple our age, smartly dressed, finishing up an appropriate full English – were taking a “before” pic. We exchanged shy congratulations, then headed inside, where there was dark wood and stained glass, a proper sense of historical gravitas and a brief panic about the travel issue.

An inadequate fan moved stifling air around feebly as the registrar explained people shouldn’t plan trips abroad before getting their British passports, to some overheated consternation. An intensive-care doctor decided to defer, unwilling to risk missing her shifts, but after some shrugging and a few fingers-crossed gestures, everyone else went ahead.

I’m so glad we did. It was kind, laid-back and gently funny in a way that almost made me feel patriotic. There was a warning from the registrar not to laminate citizenship certificates (“You do not want to give the Home Office any more money!”), plus one for my husband that she’d probably say his name, Olivier, “with a Yorkshire twang” (she did; it was lovely). At one point, the whole team decided to move the table with the draped union jack for better photos, propping King Charles, in his clip frame, against the speaker used for a single mumbled verse of the national anthem.

The business part of becoming British was very brief. Olivier had practised affirming allegiance back home (“No, you’re not pledging loyalty to his hair – its heirs”), worried about speaking solo, but it was a group effort. Everyone swore or affirmed, then pledged, then the registrar said simply they were all citizens now – and I found myself crying.

It had been such an act of love for us – I hugged him, whispered my thanks – but also it was impossible not to be moved by everyone else. The frail, stooped woman who left her walker to go up, proudly unaided, for her certificate. The radiant teen in a white minidress who was getting her A-level results the same day, adulthood unfolding in the dazzling sunshine. The tiny mother photographed by her giant, bashful teenage son in a sharp suit and blinding-white trainers. The grey-haired Chinese woman in wire-rimmed glasses, attending alone, who asked me to take her beaming picture. The guy who ducked out apologetically before group photos, saying he had to get to work. The 20 people from Spain, Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Eritrea, France, Ghana, India, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Poland, Romania and South Africa, who had done something hard for love, safety or a different life.

An hour later, we were back on the train. The world hasn’t gone grey for my husband, he says – wait until he finds himself stranded in a foreign airport – and, for a moment, for me, it felt quite golden.