On 23 January 2025, Thailand's Marriage Equality Act took effect, allowing same-sex couples to register marriages with the same legal status as other couples. Associated Press photographs directly record couples in Bangkok waiting to sign for and receive their marriage certificates. By the end of that first day, 1,832 same-sex couples had registered nationwide.
More than a thousand used district offices, while 185 joined a daylong mass-registration event at a central Bangkok shopping mall. The amended civil code replaced gendered references to a man and woman, or husband and wife, with individuals and marriage partners. This was more than congestion around a new service. The ordered wait moved relationships long excluded from marriage into the same forms and procedures, one couple at a time.