In February, they came in their thousands to argue over who loved Ulster the most, but yesterday the only arguments were about clashing clothes and hair getting wet in the rain. More than 2,000 people took part in the annual gay pride march through Dublin city centre, lighting up a dreary June day with a colourful and noisy parade.

Indeed, it was more grey pride than gay pride as a drizzly day kicked off with a champagne breakfast in the Outreach centre on Capel Street. A variety of Sister Sledge and Madonna songs helped ease the rainy blues for the group who gathered to eat and, more importantly, to toast the day with an early morning glass of bubbly.

Breakfast over, the group moved down onto Parnell Street to link up with the slowly forming mass of pride.

At the Garden of Remembrance, under the shadow of the statue of the Children of Lir turning into swans, they gathered, growing in both numbers and confidence as the clock ticked closer to 2pm.

The rain may have been pelting down but that didn't stop the rainbows, hundreds of which were dotted throughout the crowd as marchers waved their gay pride flags. Among the groups on display was Labour Youth, proudly declaring its support for same-sex marriages from an open-top bus that appeared to have been taken over by men in sailor uniforms.

Drag queen Davina Divine surveyed the crowd from her stiletto-enhanced perch, her eyes located firmly above the heads of most of the assembled crowd. It was Davina's fourth gay pride parade and she wouldn't miss it for all the Gucci in Milan.

"It's about equality, " she said. "It's about showing people that gay people do exist.

Gay people are everywhere. It is statistically proven that every family has a gay person in it."

At 2.20pm, the crowd finally began their march towards O'Connell Street, from where they would cross over the Liffey, before ending their parade with a party outside the Civic Offices. As the crowd arrived at the Parnell statue, the scene of the fighting at February's Love Ulster parade, it was bubbles and not bricks that rained down on gardai, who responded to the attention flourished upon them by the crowds with nervous humour. After all, with a variety of uniforms on display, there wasn't much to distinguish the arm of the law from costumed crowd.

At the top of the parade, marchers carried a variety of national flags. Parade organiser Myra McGuirk said the flags represented the diversity of the gay community in Ireland.

Large numbers of people brandishing cameras waited along the pavements of O'Connell Street to greet the marchers, some taking the opportunity to get into the spirit of things and have a quick boogie to the samba band that was filling Dublin's air with drumbeats. Others, however, weren't so sure about joining in.

"Jaysus, what's the world coming to?" laughed one elderly lady as she stood under the Spire. "Would you look at them dancing together and everything?"

Among those taking part in the parade was drag queen Victoria Secret, who has been performing for Dublin's gay community for over a year.

The rain wasn't getting Victoria down, "There's always a great atmosphere on the parades, " she said. "It's important that gay people can have an event like this where they can be proud of who they are."

Love Ulster? Who's he?