Coast to be gay wedding capital

THE Gold Coast is in an ideal position to dominate Australia’s multi-billion-dollar wedding industry following yesterday’s historic vote to support same-sex marriage, experts say.

Wedding venue owners predicted a $150m windfall over five years as thousands of gay and lesbian couples looked to tie the knot.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday announced 62 percent of registered voters who responded in the unprecedented mail survey favored reform. Parliament will now vote in the next few weeks to make it law.

According to the 2016 Census, more than half of the samesex couples living together in Australia would like to be legally married.

Marriage celebrant Josh Withers said the Byron Bay to Noosa region catered for 30 per cent of Australia’s $4.7 billion wedding industry, so the Gold Coast was in a prime position to cash in.

“With more than 60,000 people in same-sex relationships in Australia, and assuming that in the coming five years half of them desire to enter into marriage, and the average spend on a wedding is over $30,000 that’s almost $500 million entering the Australian wedding industry,” he said.

“Over 30 per cent of Australia’s weddings happen between Byron Bay and Noosa, so that’s $150 million into southeast Queensland and northern

NSW.”

Broadbeach councillor Paul Taylor said he wanted the city to be “Australia’s answer to Las Vegas”.

“We could establish ourselves as the wedding capital of the country but it would take a lot of work and we would need more chapels, among other things,” he said.

Mr Withers said he had already been inundated with inquires about same-sex weddings, but one thing needed to change before the market could be tapped.

“Every week many same-sex couples contact me to talk about their possible weddings,” he said. “The Gold Coast wedding industry marketing is very female-focused, magazines focus on brides and it’s quite male exclusionary.

“If the Gold Coast can redesign itself to be gender-inclusionary instead of exclusionary to males, it could be in line to topple Byron Bay and the Hunter Valley as a wedding capital.”

Marriage celebrant Colleen Low said she was looking forward to her first official samesex marriage. “The vote means freedom and love and it is a win for our local wedding industry,” she said.

Venue manager Emma Jones, from Coolibah Downs, said the estate would definitely cater for same-sex weddings. “We are very excited,” she said.

Mellissa Guy, functions coordinator for Lakelands Golf Club, said same-sex marriage, if passed, would be a significant boost for Gold Coast wedding vendors.