Jessica Leshnoff said she's used to her partner Holly Beatty coming to her with grand, and sometimes seemingly crazy, ideas.
So it wasn't completely shocking when, in 2011, Beatty pitched the idea of the couple collecting marriage certificates.
The Baltimore couple has had five weddings — four that were legal — deciding then that if they couldn't be married under federal law, "we're gonna get married in every friggin state 'til we can," according to Leshnoff's blog, lunchat1130.wordpress.com.
That mission is no longer necessary following Friday's U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex marriage anywhere in the country.
"Now we're recognized by every state in the union — so there's no need," said Beatty, 40, who said she cried upon seeing the news on Facebook this morning.
"Finally, we don't have to play this game of one state at a time," she said. "It feels like, so many times, we're divided in America, whether it be through race, sex, religion. This is one more step to not being divided."
Leshnoff and Beatty have been together for more than 14 years. Their first wedding, in 2008, was performed by a rabbi in Washington, and two years later, there was a legally-binding ceremony in Dupont Circle, once gay marriage was legalized in the district in 2010.
Then in 2011, Beatty had the idea of a "wedding palooza" where they'd attempt to get three marriage licenses from three states in one day. Though they weren't able to get married in Connecticut — the judge declined after finding out they were already married — they were successful in both New York and Vermont.
"My favorite wedding was in Brooklyn because it was in a courthouse, and it was done by a judge in a court building," Leshnoff, 36, said. "It felt so official. It felt wonderful. It felt legal."
Next, they got married in Maryland after voters decided by referendum to approve gay marriage in 2012. That wedding, their fifth, was thrown together in a few days — just a handful of friends invited via Facebook gathered in their home along with the rabbi that married them the first time.
"It was nothing formal, but it was really special getting married in our our home state, in our house," Leshnoff said. "It was like coming full circle."
Their rabbi, Elizabeth Bolton, said the court's decision makes today "thrilling" for her personally and as Leshnoff and Beatty's rabbi.
"While it is abundantly clear and true that Jessica and Holly were fully wedded from their wedding day forward, to know that now their marriage is recognized across their homeland is a necessary step towards the full enfranchisement of all couples who wish to marry in the United States," Bolton wrote in an email.
When it was ruled in 2013 that same-sex couples would be recognized as married for federal tax purposes, the couple decided they didn't need to worry about going state by state.
"Plus, each state has been going so fast, we wouldn't have been able to keep up," Leshnoff said.
The price tag also would've started to get prohibitive, Beatty said.
For now, their collection of marriage certificates sit at home in a file. Someday, though, they plan to frame them.
"One day, when we have kids and they're older, we can show them all of our marriage certificates," Leshnoff wrote in her blog, "and they'll see that we lived thru this historical time and fought hard for our love and to be recognized as equal — hopefully marriage inequality will be ancient history by then."