After 20 Years, ‘We Never Stopped Being Married’

Jillynn Garcia and Darla Sims Garcia finally made their union official after their first marriage, in 2004, was invalidated by the California Supreme Court.

As part of the celebration of their wedding ceremony on June 2, 2021, and as a symbol of the ups and downs of the 20-year relationship that preceded it, Jillynn Garcia and Darla Sims Garcia made two Manhattan cocktails. Officially, it was the first legal marriage for both. Yet Ms. Garcia, 48, a mental health therapist in Portland, Ore. and Ms. Sims Garcia, 55, a librarian there, both spoke in the same matter-of-fact tone when stating that they had previously been married — to each other. “As far as we’re concerned,” Ms. Sims Garcia said, “we never stopped being married.”