It was a colourful, mostly pink, occasion save for the clerical grey of the protesters.
Amid the hymns, the banners proclaiming that the wages of sin was death, and the excerpts from Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, gay union supporters waved flowers while others cavorted like circus acts.
A three-metre pink man tottered around on stilts while a trouserless Basil Fawlty lookalike wearing huge underpants poked fun at the ministers. "The Earth is Flat" said his banner. A second placard, hoisted by a man with a mock Hitler moustache, demanded the return of slavery. This prompted the protesters to hoist their "Homosexuality is sin" banner even higher.
Another placard tried to quote religion back at the ministers, insisting that hate was the opposite of Christianity.
A huge hoarding citing God's law and calling for repentance was driven into place by protesters. However, it was the law of the double yellow line that was cited in discussions about the traffic flow.
Belfast City Hall seemed the unlikeliest of settings for the ground-breaking union of Gráinne Close from Co Antrim and her American partner Shannon Sickels. Not normally known as a bastion of liberalism, its austere architecture is associated more with Ulster's defiance and its tragedies.
Yesterday, however, the city, which was the last in the UK to legalise homosexuality, echoed with the shrieks and applause of the couple's happy supporters.
Yet, true to form, Northern Ireland's troubled background seeped to the fore.
Only in Belfast could the talk of reporters and camera crews have been of Stormontgate spy stories and a lesbian civil union in the same breath.
Only in Belfast could some people wonder out loud if Gráinne and Shannon - already a transatlantic alliance - were also a "mixed" faith couple as well as a gay one.
"What religion would the children be?" mused a caller to Radio Ulster's phone-in show Talkback.
Not that such talk seemed to have any impact on the celebrations. The couple drew up their own arrangements for the ceremony, the rumour machine reported. They designed their own rings and agreed a list of favoured pieces of music that was said to have included Dolly Parton.
The exchange of rings seemed traditional enough, but just about everything else, down to the large pink posies in the couple's button holes, definitely was not.