Gay wedding industry booms in the US

As same-sex marriages have surged into the mainstream, so too has the gay-wedding industry. Photo / Thinkstock

When Kathryn Hamm 10 years ago started running GayWeddings.com, a "mother-approved shopping site" for same-sex brides and grooms, chats with wedding planners, caterers and invitation-makers often devolved into awkward detentes.

"It felt like begging, trying to convince them that same-sex couples wanted to have a ceremony, that they were an unserved market," Hamm said. "Our litmus test was just if they were going to hang up on me."

But amid rapid changes in America's gay-marriage laws, Hamm's small niche of a site has quickly become anything but. In four years, the number of vendors who told the site they were willing to help wed same-sex couples has exploded, from 20,000 to 120,000. On Tuesday, the site unveiled that it would be bought by WeddingWire, a Yelp-style online rating giant for the $50 billion US marriage-industrial complex.

As same-sex marriages have surged into the mainstream, so too has the gay-wedding industry, now serving one of the matrimonial world's biggest growing markets as a financial force all its own. Same-sex weddings could become a $2.5 billion industry if legalised nationwide across the US, an analysis by finance data site Nerdwallet shows.

Business bottom line

Where once the ceremonies were welcome rarities, they have become an increasingly expected, and important, part of businesses' bottom lines. Even in states like Indiana, where a bakery this year made headlines for refusing to serve cake at a gay wedding, vendors have fought to capitalise on same-sex couples' special days.

"My florists are used more. My linen vendors are used more. My event spaces are used more," said Stephanie Rice, a social catering sales manager at the Conrad Indianapolis, a downtown hotel and wedding venue. "That's more money. Who doesn't like money?"

The growing social norm of gay marriage has made it harder for the competitive small businesses and entrepreneurs of America's wedding industry to stay away. About 61 per cent of Americans told a Washington Post/ABC News poll in April that they support gay marriage, an act now permitted in 37 states and the District of Columbia. This month, the Supreme Court is expected to make a decision that could legalise same-sex marriages nationwide.

With that growth, a flood of wedding planners, venue masters, caterers and others have sought to promote their openness to a quickly expanding market. A WeddingWire survey last year found 86 per cent of wedding professionals were able and willing to serve same-sex couples.

Smaller weddings, spend the same

A study by TheKnot.com, the country's biggest wedding site, found last year that, while same-sex couples on average hosted smaller ceremonies, they still spent about as much as straight couples, about $200 per guest. They were also more likely to spring for a pricier honeymoon, and far more likely to pay for their wedding themselves.

For many vendors, the struggle has been not about whether to serve same-sex couples, but how best to compete with rivals for the couples' business. At last year's Wedding Merchants Business Academy, an annual vendors' conference in Las Vegas, speakers counseled attendees on best practices for attracting the same-sex wedding dollar.

At the Conrad Indianapolis, Rice said she has spent hours helping redesign menus and marketing materials to make them less bride-and-groom-oriented, and she said she's gotten better at knowing the right things to ask, like who wants to walk down the aisle first.

It's paid off, she said: The hotel has half a dozen same-sex ceremonies planned for the coming months, including one couple driving an hour from their home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a 50-person ceremony in the hotel's Vienna ballroom.

Global expansion

WeddingWire, based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, has partnered with GayWeddings.com for years. But news of Tuesday's acquisition - financial terms were not disclosed - made the pairing official, folding GayWeddings' list of "LGBTQ-friendly wedding vendors" further into WeddingWire's expanding hub.

WeddingWire has pushed to expand globally, saying in February that it would buy its Spain-based counterpart and expand across a dozen countries in Europe and Latin America to get a bigger bite of the 40 million worldwide weddings every year. But the GayWeddings move highlights how big the market remains in the United States.

"Everyone has a clear view of where (that market) is headed, and my sense is it's growing at a faster clip," said Tim Chi, WeddingWire's chief executive. But "there's still a lot of education that needs to happen, as well. For vendors, it's not, 'I want to serve a same-sex couple, I'm just going to check a box and I'm done.' It's not that simple."

Welcome change

It's a welcome change for gay and lesbian couples who for years have, as Hamm said, gotten "used to filtering the straight world to get our needs met" at the wedding aisle and beyond. Increasingly, vendors will offer contracts designed for a "couple," instead of a "bride and groom," and alongside planners, photographers and other professionals well-trained in wedding rituals that go beyond the old traditions.

A.C. Warden, an ordained interfaith minister whose Capital Ceremonies leads weddings around the Washington area, said the same-sex weddings she leads nowadays are often far different than years ago, when they were almost always small affairs, often involving travel to a different state.

Today, when she helps customise a ceremony for a couple, she often sees them using the same caterers, planners and party trappings as the opposite-sex couple next door.

"It's not hugely different. It's two people coming together to create a life, to support each other," Warden said. "It's their marriage. They're doing the hard work. I'm just facilitating the process."