Phones switched off, a nice quiet meal at home and a good film to watch on the telly – that, say Gino and Mike Meriano, is the perfect way to celebrate their 10th anniversary on Monday.

It’s a far cry from the excitement of the day itself when they were the focus of international attention, appearing on news channels around the world in their wedding suits when, at 8am on 21 December 2005, they were one of three couples who simultaneously made history by tying the knot in the first civil partnerships in England and Wales for same-sex couples.

“It is amazing to think we were a little part of history,” said Gino, who runs a gay wedding planning business in Surrey. “It was an honour to do it that day and it was so fantastic, we had a wedding breakfast and it was a fantastic day.”

But the couple also received homophobic threats after their home address was published in the local paper. And Gino believes that despite the legal milestones that have been met in gay rights over the past decade, there is still a long way to go.

“I still hear all the time from gay couples who have been thrown out of florists, have had people refuse to make their wedding cakes, and bridal stores not wanting their business,” he said.

“It’s very rare to see any imagery of same-sex couples in conventional wedding fairs or businesses, and when you see the first wedding invitations that were being produced by the card companies, they were things like half-naked men wearing top hats – as if you are going to want to send something like that to your elderly aunt.

“One couple I know was told that a hotel was full on the date they wanted. They were suspicious and, sure enough, when I called up asking about dates for a straight wedding, miraculously they were free.

“Even when couples are at their wedding and they go into the garden, perhaps to have their photographs taken, people will be walking by and they’ll get verbal abuse, somebody has to shout something.

“But the gay community is strong-willed and they get on with it. Most people don’t want to live their lives with a flashing symbol above their heads saying ‘gay’, they just want to get on and have a wedding. That’s stressful enough to be organising and the last thing you need is a great dash of homophobia thrown in.”

The couple had their ceremony in Brighton and Mike changed his name to take Gino’s surname.

“For me, civil partnership was really important as a symbol of our love but we don’t want to get married particularly and haven’t. I think it’s really important for opposite-sex couples to be able to have a civil partnership too, and I’ve been campaigning for that. Everyone should have the same rights to choose what suits them best.

Gino Meriano and Mike Ullett at their civil partnership ceremony in Brighton on 21 December 2005. Photograph: Howard Davies/Corbis

“A wedding is not for everyone, especially older people, and at the beginning there were a lot of older couples coming forward to have their ceremonies. It took a lot of the worry out of things too – many of these couples will have been together many years – having your relationship on a proper legal footing.”

By the end of 2006, 16,100 gay and lesbian couples had celebrated civil partnerships. And by 2008 there were between 6,000 and 7,000 couples a year taking part in the ceremony until the numbers dropped dramatically by 70% between 2013 and 2014. This was in part because many people could now choose to get married – same-sex marriage became legal last December and 7,000 couples have since had their civil partnerships converted to marriages.

Figures up to 2012 show only 3% of male and 6% of female civil partnerships had ended in dissolution.

One civil partnership did actually take place on 5 December 2005, before the official start date, when special dispensation was awarded to Matthew Roche and Christopher Cramp, from Sussex, to have the 15–day waiting time waived because Roche was suffering from a terminal illness. He died of cancer the following day. Cramp, now 47, said last week that being able to have the ceremony was a deeply important moment for his late partner. “One of the last things he ever said to me was to thank me for marrying him.”

Other registered partnerships followed and, on 19 December, Grainne Close and Shannon Sickles became the first gay couple to tie the knot in Northern Ireland in a ceremony at Belfast town hall. The two Northern Irish women, together with another couple, are now challenging the ban on same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland and earlier this year obtained a judicial review into the assembly’s refusal to legislate for it.

In all, said Gino Meriano, things have come a long way. “I see now a real trend now towards parents becoming involved in their children’s wedding planning, which is just so nice; it clearly shows that acceptance is becoming more mainstream.

“For me, it’s so nice to see that legal recognition for civil partnerships now means there is a generation growing up for whom being gay and coming out will hopefully be far less of an issue for them and for everyone around them. That’s one of the reasons I’d like to see civil partnerships for straight couples too.

“Everything that everyone has fought for over so many years has brought us here. And I like to think that people like Mike and I helped things to move a little step forward and that made it a real day to remember.”