Celebrities, like Jason Mraz, Brad Pitt & Angeline Jolie, and Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard have pledged not to get married until all their friends can. But what about the couples who, understandably, don’t want to—or can’t—wait to get married?

In addition to registering their wedding at home furnishing stores, couples like Elizabeth Pickell and her fiancé Glenn Hicks in North Carolina are using their special day to raise awareness about the issue of marriage equality by encouraging their guests to make a gift to organizations like AFER:

“When Glenn and I announced our engagement last year, we were touched by the kind words of support from many kind friends, family members and colleagues, some of whom are denied the legal protections and support of marriage. So…we decided to use our wedding as an outreach tool to help folks understand the importance of enabling everyone to have the freedom to marry and helping this organization raise funds to achieve full federal marriage equality.”

There are also couples who want to spotlight the issue by giving marriage equality a starring role in their ceremony.

Jason Mitchell Kahn and Michael Zahler, who married in New York last May, decided to include a portion of “8,” Dustin Lance Black’s play based on the actual trial transcripts of the Prop. 8 trial.

“The words are beautiful,” says Jason. “They really captured the sentiment we were trying to  get across.”

The couple enlisted three members of their wedding party to perform parts of Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo’s monologues.

“We chose a part that really spoke to the special significance of being able to say ’husband‘ instead of ’partner,’” says Jason. Here’s a portion of the monologue:

“Husband is definitive. It’s something that everyone understands. There is no subtlety to it. It is absolute, and comes with a modicum of respect and understanding that your relationship is not temporal, it’s not new, and it’s not something that could fade easily. It’s something that you’ve dedicated yourself to and you’re committed to.”

The couple, who met three years ago at a reading of a play Jason wrote, knew that the arts would be part of their wedding.  “We had a friend perform a song, so we thought we’d have a reading from a play too, and that’s very us because we come from theater backgrounds,” said Jason.

The experience planning a wedding has also prompted Jason, a writer and event planner, to write a planning guide exclusively for gay couples. The book, “Getting Groomed,” will be published by Chronicle Books next year.

Here’s the full text of Jeff and Paul’s monologues, and a clip from the Los Angeles premiere of “8,” starring Matthew Morrison:

It’s always an awkward situation at the front desk at the hotel. The individual working at the desk will look at us perplexed, “You ordered a king-size bed. Is that really what you want?” It was certainly an awkward situation walking to the bank and saying, “My partner and I want to open a joint bank account,” and hearing, “A business account? An LLC or S Corporation?”

“No, not my business partner. My partner.” Being able to call him my husband is so definitive. It’s something that everyone understands.

The word marriage has meaning. If it weren’t so important, we wouldn’t be here today.

It symbolizes maybe the most important decision you make as an adult, who you choose.

Husband is definitive. It’s something that everyone understands. There is no subtlety to it. It is absolute, and comes with a modicum of respect and understanding that your relationship is not temporal, it’s not new, and it’s not something that could fade easily. It’s something that you’ve dedicated yourself to and you’re committed to.

We would love to have a family, but the timeline for us has always been marriage first, because it solidifies the relationship. And when we gain access to that language that is global, where it won’t affect our children in the future. They won’t have to say, “My dad and dad are domestic partners.” Because not everyone knows exactly what domestic partnership is.