The first ever Greek gay weddings happened on Tuesday, June 3, in the tiny Dodecanese island of Tilos, despite strong opposition by a supreme court prosecutor that such civil ceremonies are illegal, according to Deutsche Welle.

Tilos Mayor Tasos Aliferis performed two early morning civil ceremonies, between two men and two women, before hundreds of witnesses, including members of the country’s gay and lesbian community, journalists and Tilos residents. About two dozen individuals were part of the actual ceremony.

 One of the women involved, Evangelia Vlami, was bubbling with excitement as she told the BBC she was “so happy. From this day, discrimination against gays in Greece is on the decline. We did this to encourage other gay people to take a stand.” 

Last week, Supreme Court Prosecutor Giorgos Sanides sought to stop the marriage from taking place and issued a directive stating that marriage between same-sex couples will be “automatically annulled and considered illegal.”

A lesbian organization in Greece said it had discovered a loophole in a 26-year-old civil marriage law that would allow gays to marry legally. The group, OLKE, said a 1982 law legalizing weddings and civil ceremonies refers only to participating “persons,” without specifying gender. Theofanou Papzisi, a law professor at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, said that the “civil marriage law does not specify gender, thus no one can be breaking the law if such marriage ceremonies are performed.”