Hundreds of LGBTQ+ couples in Thailand made Thursday a life-changing day by legally registering their marriages on the first day a legislation was passed providing them the same rights as heterosexual couples. Thailand has become the first Southeast Asian country and the third in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, following Taiwan and Nepal. According to the Department of Provincial Administration, around 1,832 same-sex couples had married across the country as of Thursday night. More than 1,000 people registered at district offices, while 185 couples married at a daylong gala event at a retail center in central Bangkok.

Apiwat “Porsch” Apiwatsayree and Sappanyoo “Arm'” Panatkool, both actors, married at Bangkok’s Phra Nakorn district office. “We can love, and we can love equally, legally,” Sappanyoo remarked.

“And we can build our family in our own way because I believe that every kind of love, every kind of family is beautiful as it is,” his spouse, Apiwat, said. They then posed on the office terrace, smiling and waving as they clutched a bouquet of flowers.

Approximately three dozen nations throughout the world have allowed some form of same-sex marriage, including more than half in Europe. According to Taiwan’s Department of Household Registration, 526 persons registered on the first day after same-sex marriage was legalized in the country in 2019.