Cuba does not recognize same-sex marriage or any other form of LGBT partnership, but there’s going to be a mass symbolic wedding of same sex couples this weekend.  And organizing the symbolic nuptials is Mariela Castro – daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and niece of longtime President and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

“We couldn't hold a wedding, but we wanted to hold a very modest celebration of love with some religious leaders who have always been by our side,” said Mariela, a member of the Cuban National Assembly and the head of the National Sex Education Center, at a press conference.  “In the future we'll see what more we can do.”

The ceremony will be modeled after a mass wedding of more than 100 LGBT couples in Toronto, Canada last year, and many of the same religious figures will take part in Havana. 

Although Cuba still doesn’t recognize any same-sex unions, the country has made enormous social progress in the past few years.  The catalyst came in 2010, when Fidel Castro took responsibility for persecuting gays in the years after the 1959 revolution by sending them to labor and reeducation camps.  Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1979.

Cuba’s National Assembly last year approved a labor law that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.  Mariela Castro voted against it because it didn’t also ban discrimination based on gender identity.