(ABC) – Two women tied the knot Tuesday in Northern Ireland’s first same-sex wedding, after the region became the last part of the United Kingdom to legalize gay marriage. Care worker Robyn Peoples, 26, and waitress Sharni Edwards, 27 married at a ceremony in Carrickfergus, near Belfast. The couple said they had not intended to be the first to wed, but were thrilled to become symbols of change in Northern Ireland.
“We fought so long and hard for this opportunity to be seen as equal and now we are here and it’s just amazing,” said Robyn. She and her wife both took the married name Edwards-Peoples. She said the significance of the negotiation was “to show that we are equal to a man and a woman. Our love is just the same, it’s no different.”
Northern Ireland’s legislature did not follow the British and Scottish parliaments in allowing same-sex marriages starting in 2014. The socially conservative Democratic Unionist Party, the biggest group in the Northern Ireland Assembly, opposed legalization. READ MORE
