New York legislators had voted just hours before to legalize same-sex marriage, and already the phone was ringing at the Falls Wedding Chapel. It was a lesbian couple in central New York, looking forward to an August wedding after 28 years together.
Owner Sally Fedell and others in the wedding business in this careworn city once famous as a wedding and honeymoon destination hope the change last week will provide an economic spark once the unions become legal July 24, a month after the law was signed.
“They were literally giggling over the phone,” Fedell said of the couple who called. The buzz is statewide.
Retailers are predicting an upswing in wedding sales and services once the state joins Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C., in offering same-sex weddings. Caterers, hotels, florists and banquet halls all could benefit, experts say.
Richard Crogan sees the new law from two perspectives: He’s president of the Main Street Business and Professional Association in Niagara Falls – and he and his partner, Michael Murphy, are thrilled to finally be able to marry at the falls. He’s envisioning a homecoming for gay people who left to marry elsewhere, including across the river in Canada.
Weddings are big business: The average cost of a U.S. wedding is $26,500 – part of an $84 billion nationwide market, according to Conde Nast publishing’s bridal group.
An analysis by the New York City comptroller in 2009, the last time gay marriage was debated in New York, found that the practice would push $210 million into the state’s economy over three years.
Mary Ellen Keating, spokeswoman at Bloomingdale‘s, said she expects a surge in the retailer’s registry business in Manhattan. The department store changed its site from “wedding registry” to just “registry” in the 1980s.
But in Niagara Falls, the benefits could be as wide as the famous falls themselves in a town that would like to revive its gilded identity as a romantic getaway.
“It has this brand that existed from the 1800s, when we were the only place you could get to from the East Coast for a long-distance wedding or long-distance honeymoon,” said John Percy, president and chief executive of the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. “Then the states exploded and Las Vegas appeared and Orlando appeared and all these other places appeared that became honeymoon destinations, as well.”
“I’d love to bring it back,” he said.
Tourism officials there suggest they can capitalize on the city’s already-established rainbow theme. It’s an ode to the rainbows that appear in the falls’ mist, but the rainbow is also recognized as a symbol of gay pride.
