A Gay Wedding Windfall for New York Same-sex nuptials are boosting sales for companies across the state

A Gay Wedding Windfall for New York

Same-sex nuptials are boosting sales for companies across the state

Florist Joe Rizzo says gay couples have snapped up his rainbow arrangements

Rachel Barrett for Bloomberg Businessweek

By Esmé E. Deprez

When the New York Senate voted to legalize same-sex marriage on June
24, Michael Watts rushed to celebrate at the Stonewall Inn in
Manhattan, birthplace of the gay rights movement. The next morning,
after a more sober assessment of the news, he bought advertisements in
three gay publications for his catering business. “Congratulations New
York! It’s time to start planning,” read the ads for Cocktail
Caterers, the company Watts founded in 2005 with his domestic partner.
Since then the company has received 50 inquiries about feeding nuptial
guests, up from three in all of 2010. “People are realizing, ‘Hello,
there’s a market in this,’ ” says Watts.
As thousands of gay couples have lined up to exchange vows in New
York, they’ve been courted by florists, caterers, event planners, and
other businesses trying to capitalize on the new market of same-sex
brides and grooms. Even the Manhattan Clerk’s office, which issues
marriage licenses, has started selling wine stoppers and coffee mugs
adorned with two grooms or two brides in its gift shop. “There are no
rules” with same-sex ceremonies, says David Beahm, who plans high-end
parties, including the nuptials of Michael Douglas and Catherine
Zeta-Jones in 2000. “Most grandmothers haven’t been to a gay wedding.”

New York may reap $310 million over the next three years from license
fees, taxes, and tourism related to same-sex weddings, according to a
May report by four New York state senators. Morgan Stanley (MS)
Chairman John Mack, Goldman Sachs (GS) Chief Executive Officer Lloyd
Blankfein, and other Wall Street executives argue that legalization
was necessary for the state to remain an economic leader. As other
places “extend marriage rights regardless of sexual orientation, it
will become increasingly difficult to recruit the best talent if New
York cannot offer the same benefits and protections,” the business
leaders wrote in an open letter in April urging legalization of
same-sex unions.

Joe Rizzo, who has owned Langdon Florist in Lower Manhattan for 28
years, predicts he’ll provide flowers for about 125 weddings this
year, up from the 100 or so he expected before the change in the law.
Gay couples have snapped up rainbow-colored arrangements for the
occasions, some of dyed roses, others a mélange of blossoms that span
the spectrum from red gingers to yellow mums to purple gillyflower.
The arrangements “hit it right on the nose … as far as expressing gay
pride,” says Rizzo.

Sales quadrupled this summer at Hudson Grove, an online jewelry
retailer named for the intersection of Hudson and Grove Streets in
Manhattan’s West Village, a historically gay neighborhood. Hudson
Grove has long focused on sales to gays, and the company says this
year’s bump is due largely to increased sales of wedding and
engagement rings such as a “tie the knot” series of interlocking gold
bands. “A lot of stores are not gay-friendly,” says co-owner Harold
Steinbach. A wedding “is a special event. You want to be treated
specially.”

Bernadette Smith in September moved her wife, son, and wedding
planning business from Boston to New York to capitalize on what she
expects to be a same-sex marriage boom. She has been working in
Massachusetts since 2004, when gay marriage became legal there, and
claims her company, 14 Stories, is the first same-sex-wedding planner
in the country. Smith, who typically organizes roughly 50 weddings a
year, says she has received about 60 inquiries since the New York
law’s passage—more than triple last year’s pace. She’s busy scouting
locations for high-end ceremonies in Manhattan, and she expects
business to pick up considerably next year. “Couples who have been
waiting a long time are not going to just throw something together,”
says Smith.

The economic boost extends beyond New York City. At the Helsinki
Hudson, a 15,000-square-foot banquet hall and restaurant some two
hours north of Manhattan, reservations for weddings and receptions
have more than quadrupled since last year, says co-owner Marc
Schafler. Since the law was passed, he says, bookings from gay couples
have gone from “sporadic” to “part of the daily routine” at the
converted 1860s mill. “We’re not always motivated by the bottom line,
but in this case the morally right thing also makes business sense,”
says Schafler. “It’s a happy marriage.”

The bottom line: Legalized gay marriage could add $100 million a year
to New York’s economy. Small businesses will get much of that
windfall.

Deprez is a reporter for Bloomberg News.

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