PrideBride
in the Globe and Mail
Here
come the brides
Gay wedding planners help couples get the details right
By
TRALEE PEARCE
Saturday,
June 14, 2003 - Print Edition, Page L8
Web entrepreneur Rita isn't waiting to find out how the issue of
same-sex marriage fares in Parliament or the Supreme Court. She
has weddings to plan, sister.
Winnipeg-based Leonard and her partner, Paula, started pridebride.com,
a wedding-planning site marketed to gays and lesbians, four months
ago.
"The whole culture of weddings is based around the guy and
the girl," Leonard says. "And I'm not talking about the
moral sense of it; I'm talking about the business sense of it. We
saw that as an opportunity."
And often, it's the most traditional wedding-day details same-sex
couples want to get right.
Same-sex cake toppers. Wedding albums that don't have bride and
groom labels. The invitations. The rings. And, certainly, the honeymoon.
"It would just be tragic if you had a great wedding and you
went somewhere on vacation and people are looking at you funny or
giving you a rude comment."
Since she started the site, Leonard has fielded 150 queries. Traffic
is increasing 300 per cent each month. Eighty-per cent of the clientele
is American, often from smaller communities on the edges of large
urban centres.
Rita expects a spike in business after this week's ruling by the
Ontario Court of Appeal in favour of same-sex-marriage. And now
that Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has promised to invoke the notwithstanding
clause to quash same-sex rulings,
Rita has a hunch she'll be fielding more hits from gay couples in
that province.
"We were already aware of a big market in Alberta. That just
highlighted it for us!"
Leonard says a key to her success is sparing couples from having
to come out to every wedding-service provider, especially for people
who live in less-than-sophisticated towns.
"If you're in a smaller community, you're not going to walk
into Joe Jeweller and have to come out to him. It's freakin' annoying
to have to come out every day of your life."
Finding celebrants to officiate at a wedding is still the biggest
challenge for her American clients, she says. On the lighter side,
she's often asked to source customized cake toppers
"When we started research, we were disgusted. One place had
taken two separate cake toppers and grabbed the brides off of both
of them and stuck them together. Give me a break."
Two brides in dresses may represent some lesbian couples -- but
not all.
"There's such a diversity in our culture, some women like to
identify as butch, some as feminine."
She's proudest of sourcing the perfect cake topper for an African-American
lesbian couple, one who identifies as butch and was going to wear
a tuxedo, the other who sees herself as femme and had chosen a long
dress.
"It was a real tough task, but I found it!" says Rita,
who seeks out small businesses across North America who will customize
their orders.
"We're not these big froufrou designers. We're about helping
people locate those little things to make their celebration different."
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