Photos via Out (left) and Marriage Equality NZ (right)

The past week has brought  great progress for the LGBT community worldwide in the fight for marriage equality. Last Wednesday, Uruguay, the first South American country to allow civil unions, legalized same-sex marriage when the country’s lower house members overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill—71 out of 92 members!

“We are living a historic moment,” said Federico Grana, a leader of the Black Sheep Collective, a gay rights group that drafted the bill proposal. “In terms of the steps needed, we calculate that the first gay couples should be getting married 90 days after the promulgation of the law, or in the middle of July.”

Now just one week after Uruguay, New Zealand joins as the 13th location in the world where same-sex marriage is fully legalized, and it is also the first in the Asia-Pacific region to do so, according the Associated Press.

New Zealand lawmakers voted 77 to 44 on Wednesday night, and the announcement was welcomed to a standing ovations by lawmakers who supported the bill and viewers in the gallery broke into song and dance after, singing the New Zealand love song “Pokarekare Ana” in the indigenous Maori language. Watch the announcement and singing below:

The new law in New Zealand will allow gay couples to jointly adopt children for the first time and will also allow their marriages to be recognized in other countries, and will take effect in late August.