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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Gay wedding industry brings in lots of money


Now that California has joined other states allowing same sex marriages, there is more opportunity than ever to get into the gay wedding business. A recent study has shown New Jersey alone will make over $102 million a year off gay weddings. Gay marriages require the same things as heterosexual marriages, but with a twist that affects many aspects of the wedding, including:


  • cake toppers – two men or two women needs to be atop the cake

  • guest books

  • invitations

  • gay friendly honeymoon packages

  • wedding attire – either two tuxes or two dresses

The websites twobrides.com and twogrooms.com was started in 1999 when Gretchen Hamm wanted to help her lesbian daughter get married. She had difficulty finding wedding supplies at her local gay bookstore in Dallas, Tx. Apparently gay wedding supplies didn’t exist back then. Gretchen’s friend suggested she start a website twobrides.com and Gretchen immediately started to work on the website, with a goal of having “mother approved shopping sites for same sex weddings”.


In January 2005, Gretchen’s daughter Kathryn took over the site so that Gretchen could focus her time on being a spokesmom for gay and lesbian couples.
Gayweddings.com was started in 1999 by KC David. KC had a friend whose partner died, and within days his partner’s family had taken everything from him, including his dogs, house and business. Even though they were together fourteen years, the partner was not even allowed to attend the funeral because there was no legal paperwork of their relationship. This story inspired KC to start the website, and soon it became the most popular and complete site to offer information on gay marriages.

In 2005, Kathryn and Gretchen acquired gayweddings.com, and the three sites are now under the direction of KC David.


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there! Thanks for recognizing our site on your blog! We are quite proud of all we have accomplished since Gretchen founded the company almost 10 years ago!

Just wanted to offer a quick clarification... We, Themis, Inc. -- owners of TwoBrides.com and TwoGrooms.com -- acquired GayWeddings.com from KC David and we (Themis, Inc.) are now the owners and directors of all three sites.

We continue to offer our great specialty boutique, but have also expanded our services to include planning articles and a gay-friendly directory.

Good luck with your writing and thanks for including us!

Best,
Kathryn Hamm
President, GayWeddings.com

Mommy Meryl said...

Great posting!!! The last part of your post made me sad though. .

t said...

I also thought of something, what about scrapbooks/memory books? Not being gay nor married I could be wrong, but I do know that with being a single mother, I had a hell of a time finding scrap books that did not mention the father in them. I would imagine the same could be true for gay couples trying to put together a wedding scrapbook?

Ben Moreno said...

This 4th of July weekend I went up to Big Bear and saw the fireworks show. There was surprisingly a lot of anti-gay marriage protestors up there holding signs and shouting at cars driving by.

Then later on there was a smaller group of people in the same place holding up pro-gay marriage signs. It was pretty interesting.

It bothers me that straight people make such a big deal about gay people getting married. It is truly, none of their business. I am a straight person and I could care less if gay people want to be married.

I noticed that most of these anti-gay arguments are religion influenced. This is lack of education in my mind.