MUSCATINE, Iowa — Stephanie Coronado is still beaming one week after she slid a gold band on her high school sweetheart’s finger and kissed the bride.

Coronado’s marriage on May 15 to LeLani Cooper was the first same-sex marriage recorded in Muscatine County since the Iowa Supreme Court ruled on April 27 that the marriages are legal.

Another lesbian couple has also applied for a marriage license in Muscatine County. Debra Krebill, 47, and Janet Powell, 54, were married Sunday in Marion, where they live.

“We would have gotten married probably as soon as they legalized it, but my grandfather threw a fit and wanted to be there,” LeLani, who changed her last name to Coronado, said Thursday.

The women, who will celebrate their 22nd birthdays in June, moved from California to Wilton about a year ago.

LeLani Coronado’s grandparents, aunt and cousins flew from California for the wedding ceremony officiated by Magistrate Judge David Newell at the Muscatine County Courthouse.

“We did mark groom and bride (on the marriage license),” LeLani Coronado said. “So he called Stephanie my husband and did it like a normal ceremony.”

Iowa has changed the format of its marriage licenses to allow each person to describe himself or herself as bride, groom or spouse.

Stephanie Coronado listed herself as the groom, she said, “because that’s just how we felt.”

She wore black slacks, a blue button-up shirt and tie for the ceremony.

“She really wanted me to wear a dress, but (I’m) just not that girly,” said LeLani Coronado, who also wore black dress pants and a white blouse.

Peggy Lubbers, one of her aunts who lives in Wilton and convinced them to move there, “took pictures of us putting our rings on each other, and kissing and stuff like that,” LeLani Coronado said. “And my grandfather was crying.”

They celebrated with a family meal and gambling at a Bettendorf casino after the ceremony, and with friends in Iowa City the next night.

The experience was something Stephanie Coronado never imagined she would have when she started dating her high school classmate almost five years ago.

After about two years together, both knew they wanted to be married.

“I just wanted it legalized, so that if anything ever happened to me … everything goes to her,” LeLani Coronado said.

In the past, she has also been unable to be with her wife, who suffers from diabetes, while she was ill.

“That’s a big problem,” LeLani Coronado said. “They’re (doctors) like, ‘You’re not immediate family’ … so they won’t let me go in there or leave work early.”

The couple had recently moved to Iowa when California legalized same-sex marriage. They could not visit before voters banned it in November 2008 by approving an amendment to that state’s constitution.

They continued to live in Wilton, where both work at CDS Global, and waited for the Iowa  Supreme Court’s ruling on the issue.

“We didn’t get too excited because you never know what’s going to happen,” LeLani Coronado said. “You don’t want to get your hopes up.”

Both women said they were surprised by the state Supreme Court’s ruling.

They did not know until they went to the Muscatine County recorder’s office in early May that they were the first same-sex couple to apply for a marriage license in Muscatine County.

“It was exciting!” LeLani Coronado said.

For Stephanie Coronado, being married is more than just exciting —  it is a dream come true.

“It’s like everybody has a dream to always get married and have kids,” she said. “And it’s just always been our dream to get married.”