Cities across the nation were gearing up Sunday for what were expected to be especially well-attended and exuberant gay pride parades following the U.S. Supreme Court decisions restoring same-sex marriages to California and granting gay couples the federal benefits of marriage they were previously denied.

The 84-year-old New York woman at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court decision granting gay couples federal marriage benefits is a grand marshal of the city's gay pride march, according to the New York Daily News..

Edith Windsor is among those leading the march down Fifth Avenue. It's been 44 years since the city held its first pride march. But it's only days since the Supreme Court used Windsor's lawsuit to strike down the provision of an act that defined marriage as only between a man and a woman.

Also serving as this year's grand marshal is musician and activist Harry Belafonte.

The parade stepped off at noon and this year's theme is titled "Rain to Rainbows."

The gay pride celebrations scheduled in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Seattle and St. Louis are annual, and in most cases decades-old events whose tones and themes have mirrored the gay rights movement's greatest victories and defeats. This year's parades, coming on the heels of the high court's historic decisions, should be no exception.

In San Francisco, the four plaintiffs in the case that led to the end of California's gay marriage ban will be riding in a contingent organized by the city attorney, said CBS News. Newlyweds Kris Perry and Sandy Stier of Berkeley, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo of Burbank, were able to marry Friday after a federal appeals court lifted a hold it had put on same-sex marriages while the couples' lawsuit challenging the ban worked its way toward and then through the Supreme Court. City officials decided to keep the clerk's office open throughout the weekend so couples who were in town for the celebration could get married.

On Saturday, defeated backers of the state's gay marriage ban made a last-ditch effort to halt the ceremonies. Lawyers for the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom filed an emergency petition to the high court asking for a halt to the weddings on the grounds that the decision was not yet legally final. The filing came as dozens of couples filled City Hall in San Francisco to obtain marriage licenses.

The parade in New York City, where the first pride march was held 44 years ago to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots that kicked off the modern gay rights movement, also will become a sort of victory lap for Windsor, who was forced to pay $363,053 on the estate of her late wife. Windsor was picked as a grand marshal for the New York parade months ago, before the Supreme Court used her lawsuit to strike down the provision of the act that defined marriage as only between a man and a woman.