When the clock struck 12 Friday morning, same-sex couples in Pennsylvania who had rushed to get their marriage licenses on Tuesday after a judge struck down the state's ban were at last able to officially wed.



Ashely Wilson and her partner Lindsay Vandermay – now Lindsay Wilson – were the first same-sex couple to marry in Philadelphia. Both wearing white dresses, the couple tied the knot atop the city's iconic art museum steps, the Philadelphia Daily News reported.

“Ash and I feel like we’re just normal people and now something great happened to Pennsylvania that we can be a part of,” Lindsay Wilson told the paper.



Under state law, couples who wish to marry in Pennsylvania must wait three days after filing their application before they can wed unless a judge grants a waiver.



Some Pennsylvania residents like Suzanne Rotondo are celebrating the decision for another reason: the right to divorce. Rotondo told the LA Times that she and her partner married in Massachusetts a decade ago when the state first allowed same-sex marriage, and then moved to Pennsylvania, which did not yet recognize gay marriages. The couple broke up years ago, but, until now, could not be granted a divorce in Pennsylvania.



On Tuesday, US district judge John Jones struck down Pennsylvania's ban on same-sex marriage, and the Keystone state became the 19th state to legalize gay marriage, along with Washington DC. Following Jones' ruling, same-sex couples rushed to get marriage licenses on Tuesday, and some clerks' offices stayed open late just to handle the surge of applications.



The following day, the state's Republican governor Tom Corbett announced – to the surprise of many same-sex marriage advocates –­ that he would not appeal the judge's decision. Corbett opposes same-sex marriage, and supported attempts to amend the state's constitution to ban it.



He said: “Given the high legal threshold set forth by Judge Jones in this case, the case is extremely unlikely to succeed on appeal.”



Jones had concluded in his ruling: "That same-sex marriage causes discomfort in some does not make its prohibition constitutional. Nor can past tradition trump the bedrock constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. Were that not so, ours would still be a racially segregated nation according to the now rightfully discarded doctrine of 'separate but equal'."



Amid the torrent of states advancing marriage equality, a coalition of couples filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn South Dakota's gay marriage ban, making North Dakota the only US state with an unchallenged law prohibiting gay marriage.



The addition of Pennsylvania on Tuesday created a bloc in the US northeast of 11 states plus Washington DC where gay couples can now wed.

And earlier this week, a judge in Oregon overturned the state's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, making it the 18th state to legalize gay marriage. On the same day, a federal judge in Utah decided the state must recognize the more than 1,000 marriages that took place the weeks-long period during the US supreme court intervened and issued an emergency stay.