“We’ve had a pretty stable day-to-day life for a long time,” Eck said. “We’ve owned two houses together, we’ve done all the things that people do during the day, like get up, get The New York Times, the Boston Globe, get breakfast in the dining hall...it will pretty much be the same.”

Eck said, however, that her marriage will grant many legal rights and lend a special religious significance to her partnership of 28 years.

“It certainly has legal dimensions to it that are very important, especially as you get older as you have things like property, illnesses, family—these are put at risk by not being able to be married,” Eck said.

Their legal marriage also makes their families very happy, Austin said.

The couple is currently planning a large ceremony for after their wedding, and will have friends and family coming from Mexico, England, Canada, India and the Palestinian territories.

They plan to marry on July 4, at Memorial Church.

“It will be a celebration of our constitution, our nation, the courts—it’s a wonderful day. And there will forever be fireworks on our anniversary,” Austin said.

“It’s certainly not going to look like a traditional wedding,” Eck said. “Everyone always asks what we’re planning on wearing, and to be honest we do not know yet.”

MARRIED IN THE PACK

At 1:45 a.m. on Monday morning, Paul J. McLoughlin II, assistant dean of Harvard College and first-year proctor in Pennypacker Hall, filed his intent to marry his partner Jason K. Schumaker, who is a financial aid officer at MIT. They were couple number 82 in the line at Cambridge City Hall.

The couple, who has been living together in Pennypacker since September, will get married on June 1—McLoughlin and Schumaker’s fifth anniversary. They met in 1999 in Burlington, Vt., where McLoughlin was finishing his graduate work in education and administration at the University of Vermont, and where Schumaker was vacationing.

McLoughlin said that they already had a large outdoors commitment ceremony last October 25, at Schumaker’s parents’ home on the Chesapeake Bay. Their legal marriage on June 1 will be performed by the city clerk of Cambridge, without guests present.

“Our real marriage, emotionally, in our minds, with our friends and family, was on October 25, this is just a legal thing,” McLoughlin said.

“So this is nice. So it gives it legitimacy—not to us—but to the outside world perhaps, and now we can get all the rights that other couples can in this state.”

McLoughlin said that the students in Pennypacker have been very supportive and are excited for their marriage.