wedding party

A nice Boston Globe article about the first gay weddings there (excerpts):

"What started in the afternoon [of May 16] as a sedate lawn party in front of City Hall, with running children, glow sticks, and panting dogs, had by midnight become a celebration so huge that it was hard to walk across the thin lawn without getting a face full of bubbles, knocking into someone with a sign reading “Mazel Tov,” or colliding with women singing “Going to the Chapel” accompanied by a brass band.

The cheer that went up at about 10 minutes past midnight, when it became clear that the first gay couple had filed their application for a marriage license, was so long and so loud that it nearly drowned out the final strains of Mendelssohn’s wedding march.

By 12:30 a.m. [May 17] those cheers were erupting every minute or two, as each couple emerged from the building, marching down an impromptu aisle cleared by the crowd, one step closer to full-fledged marriage.

By then the throngs had spilled into the center of Massachusetts Avenue, which police closed off from Central Square to Harvard Square. It was filled with local well-wishers, college students in school T-shirts, families from nearby towns who came out to cheer their friends. Some threw rice, others roses, and one man passed out cupcakes with pink hearts on them.

[...]

Inside, there were more people than could fit in the City Council chamber or the overlooking balcony so couples waiting to apply for marriage licenses clustered on stairways that had been draped with bunting, some holding hands, some chatting with friends. They held gifts they had been given from supporters outside -- flowers, Mardi Gras style beads. Some were garishly flashing oversized rings on their fingers."

Sounds a bit like the happy hoopla at San Francisco City Hall when Mayor Newsom started handing out marriage licenses Valentine's weekend.