KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Gay couples across Kansas headed Thursday to county offices where judges granted marriage licenses and waived waiting periods after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for same-sex unions over the objections of the state’s attorney general.

Despite a legal tangle involving the state Supreme Court, gay partners moved ahead with wedding plans. One couple married in front of the courthouse in Manhattan, Kansas.

“We got it!” Joleen Hickman said as she held up her marriage license to cheers, The Manhattan Mercury reported.

She and Darci Bohnenblust, her partner of 19 years, said their vows before the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood declared that “by the power of your love, and in the presence of all the witnesses gathered here today, and perhaps most importantly for this moment as recognized by the state of Kansas, I now pronounce that you are legally married.”

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said Wednesday that a separate lawsuit he has filed with the state Supreme Court should prevent gay marriage in all but the two counties that were home to cases covered in the ruling from the nation’s capital. But his office stayed silent and did not respond to questions Thursday as couples outside of Douglas and Sedgwick counties picked up marriage licenses.

Schmidt previously said it’s his duty to exhaust all options to uphold the state’s gay-marriage ban, because voters overwhelmingly approved it in 2005.

On Oct. 5, the Supreme Court turned away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions in those states and others, including Kansas.

The Kansas Supreme Court issued a statement Thursday announcing that it will begin deliberating gay marriage Monday, but couples and their supporters weren’t waiting to see how that plays out.

Jackie Carter, pastor at First Metropolitan Community Church in Wichita, said a dozen couples applied for or picked up marriage licenses and plan to take part in a mass wedding ceremony Monday at Wichita’s old city courthouse.

“I didn’t think that I’d live long enough to see it happen in this state,” LuAnn Lewis said after getting a license allowing her to marry her partner of seven years.

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