Civil Unions Tonight!

Tonight my wife and I will be attending One Colorado's Civil Soiree and we are quite excited. We will eat, drink, dance and party with hundreds of other Colorado gay and lesbian couples who have waited for Civil Unions to finally come to Colorado. Then at midnight we will follow the crowd over to the Webb building where happy couples will apply for their Civil Unions.
And then what? Well... the next day we will probably get out of bed a little hung over and go about our day knowing that our state legally recognizes our relationship. Not as a marriage yet, but it is a step in the right direction.
We will still have to carry around our marriage certificate as proof of our rights to visit each other in the hospital. We will still file our tax returns separately, and pay inheritance tax on all of our things if one of us dies. We will still prepare back up legal documents in case anything happens to either of us, and wait for our employers to decide whether or not we can join each other's health plan. But now if we have a child we may be able to do a step-parent adoption instead of the grueling second parent adoption process. It's still a process, but rumors are a better one. People will continue to be startled when I say "my wife," and mumble to themselves, "not in this state." But we will be legally bound to each other in an almost-marriage kind of way here. That is something that we didn't have before and for that I am very grateful.
I will celebrate tonight with the community I love and I know my heart will be big, proud, bursting and gay for all of the public displays of love I will witness in these next few days. To all of the happy couples -  I wish you a very happy union and a long and loving future together.