Gay Weddings are Good for Business

Research, data, advice and tips on the business of same-sex weddings from Bernadette Coveney Smith, the nation's leading gay wedding expert. In 2004, Bernadette opened 14 Stories, the first company in the U.S. to specialize in planning legal same-sex weddings.

What You Can Learn from MyKateParkerWedding.com

Bernadette Coveney Smith - Wednesday, December 23, 2009
For the past month and a half, I've been working with Kate Parker to make her new website, www.mykateparkerwedding.com inclusive of all couples.  I've made some changes to their language and photos so that gay and straight couples will feel comfortable.  I've written some expert advice articles for the site so that engaged gay and lesbian couples who find themselves there will realize that they are welcome and that there is content just for them.  And you'll even see some real gay weddings up on the site.

This is all very significant for a number of reasons:

  • The site itself is very cool, intuitively and smartly designed, very useful for couples and vendors.  It's a great resource for any couple that I'm proud to be associated with.
  • There are currently two wedding worlds on the internet - the straight wedding world (such as TheKnot.com and Brides.com) and the gay wedding world (such as GayWeddings.com, SoYoureEnGAYged.com).  MyKateParkerWedding.com is the first online wedding resource to seamlessly integrate both worlds.  The key word is integration (which requires a certain degree of fearlessness).
  • Some vendors listed on MyKateParkerWedding.com have been trained by me on how to work with gay couples and others are coming to my upcoming workshop.
Check out the site - I think you'll see some of the tips I've been discussing in these blog posts at work in the site. 

In an ideal world, there won't need to be gay wedding websites and straight wedding websites, but we're just not there yet.  MyKateParkerWedding.com is the first site of its kind to even come close and I'm really proud of what they're doing.



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Comments
Kelly Prizel commented on 23-Dec-2009 10:29 AM
Do you know if every vendor on MyKateParkerWedding.com is willing to work with the LGBT community? This may be too early a question to ask as it's in the demo stages, but I was interested to see how MKPW will continue to support equality in terms of vendor listings.
With all your amazing articles and gender neutral language, I'm not getting married, but I'm on their newsletter list now!
I can't wait for it's release and can't wait to see what you have been working so hard on!
Bernadette commented on 23-Dec-2009 10:58 AM
Kelly, that hasn't been determined yet. All of the vendors on the site are aware of the partnership with 14 Stories and some have proactively sought training. Many others have not but I'm confident that's not a testament to their gay-friendliness or lack thereof. Distinguishing between those that have been vetted and those that have not is a barrier we are working on. Thanks so much for your comment.
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