Hundreds of LGBTQ couples in Thailand tied the knot on Thursday after the country’s landmark marriage equality law took effect. Thailand is the first country or region in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, and the third in Asia after Taiwan and Nepal.

More than 100 couples tied the knot in a mass ceremony at a shopping mall in central Bangkok on Thursday.

“We are so happy that Thai people are here – now they can express their love in public and they can be accepted around the world,” Ruchaya Nillikan, 45, who got married at the ceremony, told CBS News affiliate BBC News. “It means everything to us… We had to fight a lot to have today.”

One couple who got married said they had waited 13 years, while another said they had waited 17 years.

“Every love is the same, every love is the same inside,” Porsch Apiwatsayree told Sky News. He and his partner got engaged 11 years ago.

“I am particularly excited today that we will have a law that will protect us both,” Chanatip Sirihirunchai told the BBC.

“Our next official plan is to change my documentation, because I have him listed as my brother. Now I can officially call him my spouse,” Sirihirunchai’s new husband Pisit told the British network.

“I want Thailand to be a country that inspires our neighbors ASEAN to open the door of freedom for all humanity,” newlywed Setthapas Na Thalang (43) told the BBC.

Thailand has long been considered more accepting of LGBTQ people than neighboring countries. In June last year, his senate adopted a significant law on marriage equality. The draft law changed gender-specific conditions in Thailand’s marriage laws to gender-neutral ones, The Guardian newspaper reported.

Activists on Thursday praised the new marriage law as a good first step, but said other reforms are needed to offer better protections to LGBTQ couples. Mookdapa Yangyuenpradorn, an activist with the group Fortify Rights, told The Guardian that changes are still needed in the country’s civil and commercial laws.

“In the eyes of the law, biological parents are still recognized (in terms of) the man as the father and the woman as the mother,” Yangyuenpradorn said, meaning that in a same-sex couple one parent would have no legal relationship with their child.