The Marrying Kind

New York City clerk Michael McSweeney sounds remarkably calm for someone at the center of a civil rights whirlwind. As head of the agency that maintains the city’s Marriage Bureau, he oversees offices in the four outer boroughs and the Manhattan location, where the bulk of the weddings in the state are expected to take place on Sunday, the day the new marriage equality law goes into effect.

“Most people are kind of pumped up and excited because they know this is going to be a very special day in the history of civil rights and everyone knows they are going to be playing a role,” he said. “It’s a time that will be long remembered in the history of New York City, and I think there is a feeling that this is going to be an exciting time to be part of this.”

This weekend McSweeney and his full-time staff of more than 60 people, plus a small army of part-timers, interns, and volunteer judges, will face an unprecedented assignment, with marriage bureaus throughout New York City opening for the first time on a Sunday to accommodate hundreds of couples, most of them same-sex and local, who entered a public lottery for the chance to marry on the historic day. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council speaker Christine Quinn, and the city clerk announced the contest this week in response to overwhelming online demand for marriage applications since July 5, when more than 2,600 couples expressed an interest in marrying. Some 823 couples entered the drawing for 764 spots, and city officials announced Thursday that they planned to accommodate all of them.

Entrants include 459 couples offered a slot in Manhattan, where they can obtain their marriage license and, if they choose to complete the process there, have a marriage ceremony for a grand total of $60. The number of couples to be served on Sunday represents seven times the average amount served in at the Manhattan bureau on Mondays through Thursdays, according to McSweeney, and almost four times the number normally served on Fridays, the most popular day to get married. The city set a record on Valentine’s Day, 2003, for the most marriages ever in one day, at 621, followed closely by 610 marriages on August 8, 2008, a day considered lucky in Chinese numerology.

“It was the last time Valentine’s Day fell on a Friday. Because of the leap years that followed, the calendar has not followed suit with a Valentine’s Day on Friday,” said McSweeney of the record set more than eight years ago. “There’s always a little bit of anticipation.”