A photo of a breastfeeding bride has gone viral.

Christina Torino-Benton, 30, decided to feed her nine-month-old daughter Gemma during her wedding ceremony to childhood sweetheart Danny Benton on June 18. The couple’s friends and family are used to seeing Gemma being breastfed, so no one commented and the priest simply carried on with the ceremony at the Resurrection of Our Lord Church in Lachine.

Indeed, Torino-Benton didn’t even know her photographer Lana Nimmons had captured the moment and only saw the picture after the wedding was over.

She loved the image and posted it on Facebook support group ‘Breastfeeding Mama Talk’, where it has received more than 7,600 likes so far.

Torino-Benton, from Montreal, Quebec, told the Daily Mail: “At the church it was like 40 degrees, Gemma was hot, she missed her nap and was overall really crabby.”

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“I don't pump or bottle feed and I'm all about secure attachment parenting. She's never left to cry so when she started crying I couldn't focus on my wedding. All I was thinking about was taking her and nursing because I knew that was the only solution.

“Once I got her in my arms, I was able to calm down and focus. A lot of people think that my feeding her mid ceremony was a bother but actually it was nice having her up there with us.”

The mother of two captioned her photo: ‘Talk about feeding anytime and anywhere. That moment when you’re getting married and your baby gets hungry. Feeling SO proud of myself!’

She couldn’t, however, have imagined that the picture would be shared thousands of times.

“I never expected it to go viral like this. I thought I'd get a few likes from my breastfeeding peers and that's that,” she said.

“I think sharing photos like this is important. Things like this do happen. I'm not the first and I won't be the last and hopefully people will be more accepting and understanding.”

The response has been largely positive, with Instagram users calling it ‘the most beautiful wedding photo I’ve ever seen’. It’s also encouraged other women to share pictures of themselves breastfeeding at their weddings.

Gretchen Deaton wrote: ‘I nursed my son in [my] wedding dress right before I walked down the aisle. Then he got fussy, so my mum brought him to me for me to hold him and while we were saying our vows he was trying to pull my dress down to nurse’.

Jade Wolfe shared a picture of her breastfeeding in her wedding dress, writing: ‘Ten minutes before I walked down the aisle! It’s one of my favourite photos from the day! We were on the way to him weaning so this was the last time we nursed. I will always treasure this picture.”

Mrs Torino-Benton added that her now-husband hadn’t batted an eyelid at her breastfeeding during their wedding.

“Danny has always been so incredibly supportive on this breastfeeding journey, so he just nodded in agreement,” she told the Huffington Post.

But the Canadian also hit back at some of the less positive comments her picture has attracted.

One user wrote: ‘Babies should come after the wedding. I bet guests were pretty uncomfortable. Jeez’.

“Some people are just plain rude. Some people compare breastfeeding to all sorts of ridiculous things and have really weird points of view on the topic,” said Torino-Benton.

"I'm a bit surprised to be honest. Before I posted this I had never felt negativity or judgement towards breastfeeding at all.”

But she added that she’d been overwhelmed by the largely positive response of the online group: “I love that all the women on there are on the same-ish journey and we can count on each other for support.”

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