Twenty years ago, the first LGBTQ couples were married in Massachusetts. The state was the first in the country to legalize same-sex marriage.
Since that day, well over 30,000 LGBTQ couples have gotten married, according to available state data.
The only mishap was that Leal forgot to unlock the phone rotation, “so the whole wedding was sideways.”“It took like an hour and a half to get through all the toasts,” Wood said. “And two bottles of champagne,” Leal said. For their first date, Corey Yarbrough asked Quincy J. Roberts to the Cheesecake Factory, in Boston’s Prudential Center.That first date was 16 years ago, and the couple is now happily married and settled in Dorchester with their son. “So maybe Cheesecake Factory should be everyone’s first date,” Roberts, 42, said.
When they started dating, they connected over growing up in the South and learning to find their way in Boston. Part of Yarbrough’s dream was getting married in his church. The couple are members of the Union United Methodist Church — one of the oldest historically Black churches in Boston. But when the couple was ready to make their vows in 2016, the church had never held a same-sex wedding ceremony before.
“That's bittersweet to reflect on, but I think it is a testament as well to the love community that we had created here in Boston and that support that we were looking for was still there for us on that big day.” They walked down the aisle to different songs — Roberts to Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing,” and Yarbrough to Craig David’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water .”
"I just was taken with her right away," Bailey said."She called my name, you know, calling a roll call, and when I said 'here' ... wow.""I was like, well, there's still smart, handsome butch lesbians out there to be found once I saw her," Nania said."So it's like, OK, there's hope for me." They didn't know it at the time, but both of them had been at rallies advocating for the right to marriage in the early 2000s at the State House. They weren't part of the"movers or shakers," Bailey said, but"we were both called to be there to push it over the finish line.""I didn't want to marry her or anyone," she said."I was really not into being married at all, but I felt like this is a right we deserve.
"We wanted to make it a celebration of joy, and protection for us as a couple, and we sure did," Nania said.They had an all-woman swing band, called The Mood Swings, and a DJ. A hundred friends joined. Nania's mom came to the wedding, but otherwise the couple didn't invite family.Liz Nania and Sandy Bailey's photo book from their wedding day.
“We had one date and it was terrible. They carded me, and wouldn’t serve me alcohol,” López, who is now 66, remembered. “It was just this madness so we decided to never have another date.”They didn’t really plan on being together — “at least for the first week or two,” said López. Soon enough, though, López and Sherman never wanted to spend time apart.
The couple was together for almost 20 years by the time the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry violated the state’s constitution. “But once you could get married, we did go the first day we were, we were beyond excited,” Sherman said.
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