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Historic Day Deeply Personal for Upper West Side Couple

By DNAinfo Staff on July 25, 2011 8:17am  | Updated on July 25, 2011 8:29am

Kawane Harris and Jeanette Coleman walked towards City Hall.
Kawane Harris and Jeanette Coleman walked towards City Hall.
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DNAinfo/Meredith Hoffman

By Meredith Hoffman and Della Hasselle

DNAinfo Staff

UPPER WEST SIDE — History started being made at 5 a.m. Sunday for Jeanette Coleman and Kawane Harris.

In their Upper West Side living room, the couple began readying themselves early Sunday for the ceremony they'd dreamed of for two years.

"She's calming my nerves," said Coleman, 41, as Harris ran an iron through her hair. "I was tossing and turning all night. ...I painted my nails at 1 a.m., and at 4 a.m. I woke up and just lay there."

"Anytime I'm next to you, you're calm," joked Harris, 35.

Coleman says she's always been sure Harris was her match — ever since she spotted her on Myspace in 2008. In 2009 the couple began talking, and within a few months they moved in together.

Last August they had a church ceremony at Metropolitan Community Church in Chelsea, but having the law finally recognize their marriage was something the couple were rejoicing.

"I'll be Mrs. Harris now!" laughed Coleman.

Even earlier in the week, the marriage lottery had felt like another obstacle — until they received a call Thursday evening and were told they could start planning to say "I do" on Sunday.

"We were like ‘we have two days to get ready!’” said Coleman, laying their marriage lottery and registration papers on the couch after her hair was done.

"Last year I was happy because it was a church wedding, but they're going to legally recognize this woman for our life. This means more."

The couple admitted they felt wary of the protesters who planned to be at City Hall, along with the marrying couples.

"Today if I say anything [to them] I’ll say ‘thank you for attending my wedding,'" said Coleman.

"Today’s the day I’m marrying the woman God chose for me. If I’m a bundle of tears, it’s of happiness."

 "I just want to marry my wife and relax," said Harris about potential opposition at City Hall. "It's heart-wrenching if you think about it, ...but anything you really want you have to work for."

As Coleman prepared her make-up, Harris admitted that she wished she could wear flip-flops instead of her red Italian leather shoes.

"I'm hearing the weather's going to be cooler than yesterday, but still 91," she said, putting on a red satin shirt and white suit. "I asked her [Coleman] if she wanted to have a wife who's going to pass out from exhaustion,"  she laughed. 

As she spoke, Harris forgot her role as the "calm one" and began worrying they'd be late to City Hall.

"Look at the clock!" she yelled.

"Baby, I'm trying to put on my girdle!" Coleman squealed from the other room.

Finally Coleman stepped out, ready for the dress. 

"We hid from each other at our ceremony in August [when getting ready], but this time's different," explained Coleman. "She's already seen me at my best, at my worst."

Coleman stepped into her white taffeta gown, which Harris nudged close, and then Coleman ran to pin on her veil in front of the bathroom mirror.

"Oh, breathe," she told herself, gazing at her reflection.

“I thought this wouldn’t come until our kids or grandkids came along. Now if they come to us [and tell us they’re gay] they’ll be accepted…they won’t have to go through this [wait],” she said.

Still, the couple’s teenage daughter, asleep in her bedroom, would not come with them to City Hall.

“We don’t want her to see that kind of hate,” said Coleman of the protesters she feared awaited. “Our last wedding was just church members, friends, and family. But today we know people will be there that hate us just for being a lesbian couple.”

Hugging their daughter goodbye, Harris and Coleman sauntered out the door and rushed downstairs to get a cab.

"This wedding is just like, 'I told you so,'" exalted Coleman.

"We finish each other's sentences...It comes so easily," said Harris, kissing her bride in the backseat of their cab.

Once at the City Clerk's Office, the couple's good spirits remained, despite the sweltering heat — and Coleman's very uncomfortable high heel shoes.

Tears of joy were mixed with deep gratitude. The couple shared a happiness that seemed to be contagious, sweeping over hundreds of nervous couples anxiously waiting to exchange vows in the ever-growing line outside the office.

"It's amazing," Coleman said at one point. "People have waited for so long for this day, and now it's finally here.

"No-one can say that we won't be married. And no one can take this away from us."

Inside, emotions peaked during a few procession glitches. The elated couple became nervous as a  computer listed Harris as a "male" - a mistake more quickly fixed than forgotten.

"You can clearly see that I'm a woman, right?" Harris demanded of the clerk. "Isn't this day about two women getting married?"

But anger subsided into a happy hysteria inside the judge's chambers, where the two had a waiver signed so that they could wed in the park across the street later that day.

Her shoulders heaving with sobs, Coleman thanked the judge who gave her a freedom she never thought she'd feel.

"You have no idea what this means to us," she managed to squeak out between tears.

The ceremony, however, was surprisingly calm, perhaps because of the outpouring of support the couple found from friends and fellow members of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, a Midtown congregation that seemed to have temporarily relocated downtown for the day.

The couple's friend Lieutenant Dan Choi, 30, the poster boy of the campaign to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, was among the many who gathered with the couple as they kissed, threw flowers and posed for what seemed like a million pictures.

"The reason I'm here? Because my friends are getting married, and I was the maid of honor," Choi said, joking that it was a big promotion from "flower girl."

"I even had to throw the bachelorette party on Wednesday. It was the most stressful thing I'd every planned."

Despite the stresses for all couples, however, Choi underscored that this day was a huge leap for human rights.

"Love wins," he added. "As they say, love is a battlefield, and today, love won."