Summertime used to be prime wedding season for the Rev. Kate Wilkinson, a minister at an oceanside chapel in Provincetown. When Massachusetts made history in 2004 as the first US state to legalize gay marriage, Provincetown became one of the most sought-after destinations in America, and the world, for LGBTQ+ couples to wed.
And Wilkinson’s Unitarian Universalist Meeting House was a popular venue. She’d sometimes officiate three weddings a weekend, and up to 20 a year, mostly crammed into the summer. She had to hire four wedding chaplains.
That all changed in 2015, when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. That year, the number of LGBTQ+ weddings Wilkinson officiated dropped to nine. Ever since, she’s done about five a year.
Most wedding vendors would bemoan such a large drop in customers. But in Wilkinson’s eyes, it’s actually a positive turn of events. Advertisement “People have started to get married in their home states and their hometowns,” Wilkinson said.
”It’s a wonderful reason to lose wedding business.” The federal legalization and increased acceptance of same-sex marriage in the US has meant that Provincetown wedding businesses, which have long catered to this industry, are facing more competition — and that LGBTQ+ couples have far more options. Between 2005 and 2020, more than 5,200 same-sex couples got married in Provincetown, according to the state’s Registry of Vital Records and Statistics.
Eighty-three percent of tho.
