It was a familiar trip for Molly McKay, who since 2001 has donned a wedding dress and visited City Hall every Feb. 12, National Freedom to Marry Day. For the first three years, she went to the county clerk's office seeking to wed her longtime love, Davina Kotulski. Three times, she was told "no."

On Feb. 12, 2004, the women were stunned to hear "yes." Longtime lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, together for five decades, had wed privately that morning in City Hall in front of 20 weeping friends and family members. And the city's marriage licenses had officially been changed to be gender neutral.

Ninety same-sex couples married that day and 4,037 married over the next month in what became known as the "Winter of Love," a frenzy of couples getting hitched throughout City Hall as florists delivered hundreds of bouquets from strangers around the country. The California Supreme Court intervened to stop the weddings March 11.

The court ruled the licenses invalid, and McKay and Kotulski returned to making their annual Feb. 12 pilgrimage to City Hall from their Oakland home. But on Thursday, there was no need. At least for now, they are legally married, having wed again at City Hall in September.

"Usually we ask for a license, but we already have one," said McKay, of Marriage Equality USA, who wore a white suit instead of a wedding dress. "I like being a wife better than being a bride, and I'd like to keep it that way."

Instead, the women and other same-sex couples and straight supporters visited the clerk's office to give staff long-stemmed red roses for helping them be recognized as spouses.

The couples also discussed their sadness over November's passage of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California after the state Supreme Court ruled them legal in May. The court is scheduled to hear arguments about the validity of the ban on March 5.

The court will also hear views on whether the 18,000 same-sex marriages before Prop. 8's passage should remain legal. Protect Marriage, the group that sponsored Prop. 8, wants them invalidated.

Supervisors Bevan Dufty and David Campos and Treasurer Jose Cisneros, all gay, joined the same-sex couples Thursday.

Dufty said he still vividly recalls that first day of weddings five years ago and the crush of couples - many wearing jeans and sweatshirts - who dropped whatever they were doing to make a mad dash to City Hall to get married. Just about everybody expected the court would halt the marriages much faster than it did.

Newsom did not attend the anniversary celebration, but issued a statement later in the day reading, in part, "Five years ago, same-sex marriages united the city and expanded our capacity to imagine, achieve, and believe in a more equal and just society."

A lot has changed in five years. Newsom is running for governor and has to sell himself as being more than just the man who initiated the controversial marriages. Del Martin died in August, but not before legally marrying Lyon.

And McKay now has nine wedding dresses filling her closet, but won't get rid of them until she's confident she won't have to marry Kotulski again.

"If you open up my closet, it looks like a lemon meringue pie," she said with a laugh. "Davina is very excited for this to be resolved so she can get her closet back."

E-mail Heather Knight at hknight@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle