CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As more than 1,000 supporters cheered outside City Hall, Marcia Hams and Susan Shepherd raised their right hands at 12:08 this morning and became the first same-sex couple to obtain a marriage license in Massachusetts.
Hams, 56, and Shepherd, 52, had camped outside City Hall for 24 hours to become couple No.1, making history themselves just as Massachusetts did by becoming the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.
"I'm shaking so much," said Hams, a healthcare advocate. "I'm really ready to faint."
Shepherd, a graduate student, said she was "overwhelmed" as the pair wended their way through a sea of supporters.
"This is about so much more than us," she said. "But it's about us, too."
The pair, who met 27 years ago while working as machinists at a General Electric Co. plant, plan to marry Friday.
By allowing City Clerk Margaret Drury to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples the moment it became legal to do so, Cambridge turned a normally mundane bureaucratic process into a giant celebration.
Garlands of white bridal netting tied with lavender bows adorned City Hall's ornate wooden banisters.
The pastry chef from a local hotel baked two elaborate wedding cakes. City officials served sparkling apple cider in plastic champagne glasses. Inside City Hall, three choruses performed, including one composed of the children of couples seeking marriage licenses. The children sang about the joy of diversity.
"They're not just opening the door to us, they're throwing us a party," said marriage license applicant Mark Jones, 55.
On the sidewalk outside City Hall, couples hugged and kissed, and from time to time, hundreds broke into the song "Chapel of Love."
Only Cambridge chose to open its city offices for the all-night session. Other cities were to begin issuing licenses at 8 this morning. Massachusetts requires a three-day waiting period, but many couples were expected to seek court waivers that would allow them to marry immediately.
All seven plaintiff couples in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health -- the lawsuit that generated the court decision legalizing same-sex marriage -- are obtaining waivers and plan to marry today.
But for Austin Naughton and his partner of five years, the celebration at City Hall had a bittersweet quality. The pair will not be trading wedding vows. Naughton's partner, who is Spanish and did not want to be identified, is in the United States on a non-immigrant visa.
