Thomas Beatie's eyes filled with tears as he watched his beautiful bride Amber walk down the aisle just behind his beaming seven-year-old daughter Susan, scattering rose petals.

His sons Austin and Jensen, dressed identically in little black suits and striped ties, stood nearby nervously checking the wedding bands in their care.

To the casual observer, 42-year-old Beatie and 46-year-old Nichols looked like any other couple tying the knot. Yet Thomas was no ordinary groom - in 2008 he made headlines as the world's first pregnant man.

Beatie was born female but started hormone treatment at 23 to become a man. However, he kept his reproductive organs and became a miracle of modern science by giving birth three times in quick succession.

But his happiness at becoming a father was shattered as his nine-year marriage to former bodybuilder Nancy unraveled in 2012.

He fell in love with his children's preschool director Amber Nichols, but legal battles over his divorce dragged on for so long that he feared he'd never manage to complete his happiness by tying the knot for the second time.

Now 42-year-old Beatie has revealed the dramas behind his dream wedding in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail Online.

'I was so nervous, excited and frightened all at the same time,' he says.

'When Amber walked down the aisle my breath was just taken away. I saw the boys and Susan, so excited as a flower girl, and I just started crying and I couldn't stop.

'It was perfect - even better than I ever imagined.'

Growing up in Hawaii as a girl called Tracy, Beatie rebelled, refusing to wear dresses and - despite taking part in teen beauty pageants - insisted on being treated as a boy.

'I never dreamed as a child of ever having a wedding,' he says. 'I never went to a prom or wanted to wear a dress, so I certainly didn't see myself at a wedding as either the bride or the groom.'

In 2002 he had gender assignment surgery to remove his breasts and embarked on male hormone treatment but kept his reproductive organs.

After battling to become a legal male in Hawaii, he married divorced mother-of-two Nancy in a quick ceremony before a justice of the peace the following year.

Nancy, a decade older than Beatie, was unable to have more children after a hysterectomy, so Beatie stopped taking his hormone pills and vowed to get pregnant.

The couple chose an anonymous sperm donor and did the artificial insemination themselves. After one failed attempt, bearded Beatie became pregnant with Susan and posed for a series of photos showing off his swelling stomach.

Susan, Austin and Jensen were all born in quick succession, but after moving to Phoenix, Arizona, Beatie and Nancy's marriage fell apart and he fell in love with Nichols, who is four years his senior.

It was then that Beatie started dreaming of a big white wedding - involving all three of his children and Nichols' granddaughter Lily, who also lives with them.

'Almost as soon as Amber and I got together, Susan started asking when we were getting married,' Beatie says.

'She was definitely the wedding planner, she had very definite ideas of what she wanted. And it was then that I started dreaming of a big white wedding.'

But Beatie's divorce took almost four years. Judges in Arizona initially refused to accept that his Hawaiian marriage was legal.

But even after the state's appeal court ruled in his favor, his battle with now-52-year-old Nancy took another 12 months.

The divorce was finalized at the end of last year, with Beatie and Nancy agreeing to share custody of the children.

'Finally, Amber and I were able to start really planning our wedding,' says Beatie. 'But we kept the exact date secret even from the kids because we didn't want anything to derail it.