Same-sex couples finally able to tie the knot in Ireland

This week the Marriage Law 2015 came into effect in Ireland, making it possible for same-sex couples to legally wed.

In a national referendum in May, the country voted overwhelmingly in favour of legalizing same-sex marriage.

Dolores Murphy and Mabel Stoop-Murphy have been in a civil partnership since 2011, but on Nov. 18, 2015 they were legally married in Cork, Ireland.

Today, the pair went out in public for the first time as a married couple. As Murphy tells As it Happens host, Carol Off, the community of Cork has been very supportive.

"We went grocery shopping in the supermarket across the road and we felt really, really kind of wary going in, [wondering] will people be nice to us when they recognize us or not. And they were so nice. They were coming up and congratulating us and one woman even gave us a bouquet of roses," says Murphy.

The couple have a two-year-old son named James, to whom Stoop-Murphy gave birth. Murphy says being legally married now makes her relationship with her son much more secure. She can now sign legal papers for him or take him to the hospital without issue.

"A couple of months back he got really, really sick and we had to take him to the hospital. They put him straight up into the ward, and as they were taking him in one of the nurses came in and she said 'which one of you is the real mother?' And I was asked to stand back. I had no right to even be in the hospital room with him. It's kind of scary when you think about it."

She says it's great not to have to worry those aspects of her life anymore.