Edwin Ho and Kevin Boreham shared the brief and intimate ceremony with friends Susan Harris Rimmer and Matthew Rimmer and three-year-old Marina Rimmer.

Registration Client Services senior director Danielle Krajina officiated in her role as a delegate to the registrar general.

"We are gathered here today to help Edwin Ho and Kevin Boreham celebrate their commitment to each other by entering into a civil partnership in accordance with the Civil Partnerships Act 2008," Ms Kragina said.

"Edwin and Kevin have indicated to me that they are entering into this partnership because they have shared their lives for 25 years and believe their love for each other shall last forever."

Ms Harris Rimmer then read a few lines from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and a poem by Robert Browning. "Grow old with me! The best is yet to be," she read.

Mr Rimmer read an excerpt from a piece by American novelist Edmund White.

Mr Ho and Mr Boreham later exchanged rings and kissed.

The ACT’s first same-sex civil partnerships were registered in May after the ACT Government, under pressure from federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland, gave up on its bid to enshrine gay civil unions into law.

Mr McClelland had argued the ACT Bill mimicked marriage.

Threatened with the overturning by the Federal Government of the ACT legislation, Mr Corbell reluctantly accepted a compromise that would allow same-sex couples to register their relationship and have a ceremony paid for by taxpayers, but without any legal recognition.

Mr Corbell and Chief Minister Jon Stanhope were scathing in their criticism of federal Labor for reversing assurances it would allow state and territory governments to decide their own position on same sex unions.

Couples have four options for registering their partnership under the amended legislation, from simply handing in the paperwork, to the commitment ceremony.

A spokeswoman for gay lobby group Good Process, Heidi Yates, said while she was still disappointed in the Federal Government’s turnaround on same-sex unions, she welcomed the provisions the ACT Government had made for a ceremony in the registration process. "Providing for an administrative official to be present is significant because it confirms the fact that all relationships, regardless of gender, are recognised at ACT law, and that we value loving, committed relationships of all couples, regardless of gender," she said.

Ms Yates said Good Process would continue to lobby for "full equity" for all couples.