County officials all over Iowa began accepting marriage license applications from same-sex couples this morning, making it the third state to allow such marriages.

Following a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this month, Iowa joins Massachusetts and Connecticut in allowing the practice. Such marriages will also be permitted in Vermont, come September. They were allowed in California for about six months until voters banned them in November.

On April 3, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a decade-old state law banning such marriages violated the state’s constitution. The ruling also spurred a new set of issues that public officials and others have been racing to sort through over the past three weeks.

State officials hurried to change the wording on marriage license applications to reflect the change. The forms now allude to “Party A” and “Party B,” and leave applicants an option to describe themselves as “bride,” “groom,” or “spouse.”

Though the Supreme Court’s ruling had no direct effect on religious leaders, many of them are now left to decide individually whether to marry same-sex couples or not.

Civil magistrates can also choose not to marry same sex couples, but will then be barred from marrying any couples, legal experts said. (At least one magistrate announced last week that he no longer intends to perform any marriages.)

And there were increasingly tense questions for the state’s 99 county recorders, who must handle the administrative elements of same-sex marriage, including processing their applications for marriage licenses on Monday. Opponents of same-sex marriage called on the state’s recorders to refuse to process those applications, but the state’s attorney general, Tom Miller, issued an advisory informing recorders that, under the Supreme Court’s decision, they are obliged to take applications.

There are cautions for those pondering marriage as well. Iowa has no residency requirement for marrying, leading some to predict that people from Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nebraska will drive here to wed.

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