This news article is picked from the New York Times.



ALBANY —From City Hall in Manhattan to rural hamlets upstate, New York officials began to prepare on Saturday for a surge in gay couples expected to flood clerks’ offices next month seeking to marry.

The state’s same-sex marriage law, which was signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo just before midnight on Friday, will go into effect in 30 days, meaning that gay couples can marry here beginning on July 24.

Gay couples from out of state will also be allowed to apply for wedding licenses and hold nuptials in New York.

Roughly 45,000 gay couples live in New York State, according to census estimates. No exact projection is available for how many will marry here, but officials are readying for thousands, especially in the first week.

“We are training our staff to be prepared for a very large number of people on the first day,” said Michael McSweeney, the New York City clerk, who oversees the marriage bureau. “We are going to be part of history.”

The city has struck an agreement to increase the number of state judges available to perform same-sex marriages. Their workload could swell; John Feinblatt, a top adviser to the mayor, said judges could be bombarded by requests to circumvent the 24-hour waiting period.

Over the next 30 days, state officials must also rewrite the marriage license application form and distribute it to the hundreds of city and town clerks. In Oneonta, a college town of about 14,000 people in central New York, the city clerk, James R. Koury, was expecting a surge in applications, especially on the first day.



Read the rest at here: New York clerks' offices, girding for influx of gay couples

Okay, now there's another destination for you to go if ever you want to get married.

I think marriage has always been some kind of a fantasy, a fairytale that always exist in the books for us in the gay community. With all kinds of factors that are outside of our community and also from the inside, no wonder some of us feel that the "happy ever after" is a mere illusion.

It's a happy thought to know that it has now becoming more and more real with each passing day.

And Lady Gaga cried when she heard the news. You go girl!