Country music star Billy Gilman got married!

The singer of “One Voice”, who appeared in season 11 of The voice — married his partner Anthony Carbone in his home state of Rhode Island on Friday, August 23. Gilman, 36, tells PEOPLE the couple chose their venue, a 45-acre horse farm, because it fondly reminds him of his childhood spent visiting his grandparents on their own sprawling horse farm.

When the Grammy-nominated musician first saw the picturesque venue, he was “blown away,” he recalls. Carbone, who grew up on a farm in Southern California, adds that the property “just felt like home.”

When the couple began planning their big day, they had a simple goal in mind, Gilman says: “We just said, ‘We want nice people, great food and great music.’ That’s all. What else do you need?”

The wedding, notes 32-year-old Carbone, was “not about the pomp and all the fuss, but about what it all means to us.”

The couple exchanged vows in front of around 115 guests, most of whom were family members. “I wanted to keep it simple and uncomplicated, with the closest circle of our family and friends who have watched our love story grow every day,” he explains.

The ceremony was presided over by Gilman’s best friend of twenty years, Kim Bruna.

Not surprisingly, Gilman and Carbone took great care in selecting the music for their special day. Both fans of old-school music, they chose “very European jazz fusion music” for the cocktail hour, followed by “Motown and feel-good music,” and some country for the encore. To “get the dance floor going” after dinner, Gilman said, the playlist switched to party music, from the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” to “Cha Cha Slide.”

Gilman surprised his new husband by singing him a special song, and the couple danced their first dance to “My Love” from the television series STAR.

Food was also a top priority for the couple. The self-proclaimed “foodies” hired Providence-based catering company Pranzi Catering, which put together a pre-wedding sample menu that Billy said “literally tasted like it came out of our own kitchen.”

During the two-hour cocktail reception following the ceremony, guests enjoyed appetizers including bacon-wrapped scallops, New England clam chowder, ahi tuna wonton cups, bruschetta and chicken and waffles, followed by a plated dinner featuring parmesan-crusted filet, chicken Statler and pumpkin ravioli with a sage cream sauce.

The couple chose a two-tier cake from Casale Cupcakery and also served a selection of other desserts.

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Gilman and Carbone met through mutual friends at a bar in Providence the night before Thanksgiving. in 2022. Carbone remembers that they immediately “hit it off” and started talking. After that night, he says, “we just kept in touch and life kept bringing us back together.”

Gilman, who came out publicly in 2014, tells PEOPLE that he, too, was instantly smitten. “(Carbone) sat down and I knew immediately… it hit me like a ton of bricks,” he recalls, admitting that he was a little hesitant to start a new relationship at the time. “We met again and that’s when I said, ‘I have to follow my heart.’ I said (to Carbone), ‘Do you want to go on a first date?'”

“We’ve been inseparable ever since, until this one went down on its knees,” Gilman adds. “I’m super grateful to our friends, that’s for sure. It’s just that when you know, you know.”

“We became very close very quickly,” agrees Carbone. “We had been in relationships before and dated other people, but we just couldn’t be apart for a day.”

Carbone says their relationship began on a solid foundation of friendship, with the two having many deep conversations about life, their goals and values.

“That was just such a deep place in my heart where not only is he the love of my life, but he became my best friend at that moment, and to me, I think that’s the foundation of everything, and I think that’s how everything should start. I think that’s where the best relationships thrive the most,” he explains.

The couple got engaged on a rainy evening on September 24, 2023, after attending a Pam Tillis concert in East Greenwich, Rhode Island with Gilman’s parents. Carbone knew this would be the perfect opportunity to propose, as Tillis is Gilman’s “idol” and the artist who first sparked his interest in a music career.

Carbone proposed with two rings he had actually bought years ago when he was a hopeful 18-year-old on a trip to Aruba with friends. The group went to a jewelry store to look around, and Carbone spontaneously purchased two men’s rings – one gold and one silver.

“As cheesy and sentimental as I was, I said to myself at 18, ‘One day these will be the rings for the love of my life,'” he recalls. “I kept them in a drawer and they sat there for 12 years.”

When Carbone got down on one knee in the pouring rain and proposed to Gilman after the concert, it was “like a perfect movie scene,” says the “Roller Coaster” singer. “I was sobbing – but he couldn’t see it because of the rain.”

He tells PEOPLE that was the moment he knew he had found “home” in Carbone and was finally “safe in every sense of the word.”

“I’m home. This is my home, for better or for worse,” he adds of finding love with his now-husband. “I’m really grateful that (Carbone) The somehow a human being because I never thought I would find him.”