For Bernadette Smith, the business of planning weddings isn’t just about helping the happy couple deal with the stressful process of selecting a venue or cake.
It’s about advocacy.
Source: Lydia Dishman, Fast Company
Eleven years ago, when Smith was working for a nonprofit, marriage equality arrived in Massachusetts—the first U.S. state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Smith witnessed the surge of support for LGBT couples to legally marry and the steady flow of same-sex couples tying the knot. A Boston Globe survey found that half of the couples who applied for licenses on the first day had been partners for a decade or more. Two-thirds were women and 30 were raising children. In the first week, 2,468 same-sex couples applied for licenses, including at least 164 from 27 other states and the District of Columbia.
“Someone’s got to plan these weddings,” Smith tells Fast Company. “It might as well be me.” Beyond just helping find a photographer and musicians, Smith says she wanted to help same-sex couples break out of the gender roles that define traditional weddings. “I want to help my clients reinvent and redefine their [ceremonies],” she explains, pointing out that some of them have been together for 20 years and have accumulated a lifetime’s worth of their own traditions. “I also want to make them feel safe,” she says. “It’s become a mission in life.”
With that goal, she started 14 Stories, the first U.S. firm specializing in planning legal same-sex weddings. In 2009, she launched the Gay Wedding Institute, which provides research, thought leadership, and education on gay and lesbian weddings.
Though the wedding market is a big one, with U.S. couples spend an average of $29,000 on their special day, she is quick to point out that those numbers have been called into question, and not just because they are usually based on receptions for 150 or more people. Same-sex couples typically have about 80 guests, and are willing to spend lavishly.
Additionally, “the LGBT consumer is very loyal, and the ideal in many ways,” she maintains, so the business case for planners becomes quite compelling, she believes. According to data compiled by the Gay Wedding Institute, $259 million was spent in New York City during the first year of same-sex marriage alone. The most recent U.S. Census data found that married same-sex couples had an average household income of $103,980, while unmarried heterosexual couples had an average household income of $62,857…