Provincetown hopes gay wedding bells ring in profits

PROVINCETOWN -- The storefronts on Commercial Street are boarded up, and the plywood won't come down until the weather turns in April. But behind the sleepy winter facades, the town's business owners and local officials see another image: a wedding mecca.

They are hoping legalized gay marriage -- set to start in Massachusetts in mid-May -- will turn this well-known summer tourism spot into a year-round destination that will revive the town's economy.

With that in mind, the town clerk asked the Board of Selectmen last week to raise the wedding license fee from $30 to $50. Later this month, Provincetown will launch a $10,000 advertising campaign, featuring same-sex couples in the winter, spring, and fall, and tout the town at the Gay and Lesbian Expo in New York City. Caterers, limousine companies, and bed and breakfasts are expanding, setting the town abuzz with entrepreneurial glee.

"It's the gold rush of the millennium," said David "Dixie" Federico, a drag queen who has spent $80 for an online certificate declaring him an ordained minister. "I'm going to be as excited as the grooms and the grooms, and the brides and the brides."

As residents tailor their companies to the wedding industry -- opening honeymoon suites, and hiring bakers and florists -- few appear concerned with opposition to gay marriage from President Bush and lawmakers on Beacon Hill, or fears among gay activists that Governor Mitt Romney will block licenses until voters decide on a proposed ballot initiative that would bar gay marriage in November 2006.

"Most people are very optimistic," Assistant Town Clerk Aaron Leventman said. "People think this is a sure thing."

Known to gays since the 1920s, when a train from New York City's Greenwich Village brought artists to the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown is a popular destination for gays and lesbians. Its population, about 3,400 in February, jumps by 20,000 in the summer.

The town established a domestic partnership registry for gay couples in 1993, and 701 couples have signed up. Now, with the Supreme Judicial Court declaring gay marriage legal starting May 17, more couples are expected to tie the knot -- formally.

Twenty-five couples requested licenses from the town on the day the SJC ruling came out. At least four have called every day since. Patricia Fitzpatrick, the tourism director, said she hopes to attract 1,000 couples from May to October.

"This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," she said. "It just fell into our laps."

Town Manager Keith A. Bergman said he could use the windfall. In the last two years, he said, the town lost $100,000 in state aid, despite rising health care costs for municipal employees. A publicly operated nursing home, Cape End Manor, loses $1 million annually.

Expanded benefits for gay Provincetown employees who marry will cost the town $150,000 a year. But officials said the expense will be easily offset by rising room tax revenue -- a predicted 6 percent increase over last year's $970,000.

The increased tourism, town officials said, could help reverse declining year-round population, and a 14 percent drop in the housing stock since 1990.

"It's like San Francisco, everybody is going to want to come here," said Maghi Geary, who plans to hire additional staff at her flower shop, The Provincetown Florist. She said business will quadruple in May.

Several store owners have already invested in the wedding industry. David Schermacher, owner of Ptown Parties caterers, is buying a closed restaurant to host wedding receptions, and hiring two pastry chefs for wedding cakes.

At the Provincetown Museum, curators hope to erect a tent for wedding ceremonies next to the 252-foot high Pilgrim Monument. The owner of the White Wind Inn, Michael Valenti, is organizing a wedding planning business, with packages including sand dune tours and a traditional marriage ceremony at the town's two beaches, Herring Cove and Race Point.

A former selectman, David Atkinson, 62, is applying for a $45 mail-order reverend's license, hoping lovebirds will ask "Reverend Nude" to officiate their knot-tying.

"You'd be surprised how many people want to be naked," he said. "The sky's the limit."

In all, Fitzgerald said, 50 businesses have called Town Hall hawking wedding services, including an opera singer from New York and an Abraham Lincoln impersonator from Martha's Vineyard.

Last week, two limousine services joined the local chamber of commerce, as did P-Town Pedicabs, which offers romantic cart rides, propelled by a three-wheel bike.

Local shops are stocking up on tuxedos and gowns, and a resident has turned her seaside vacation home into a honeymoon cottage.

At the Unitarian Meeting House, one of only two chapels that will welcome the expected crowds, the white pine pews sit empty, with the mahogany pulpit covered by a black trash bag.

Candice Collins-Boden, the chamber's executive director, said tourism is the largest sector of Provincetown's economy. The fishing fleet, she said, is down to 13 boats, from 57 in 1970. Many residents, she said, are depending on a crush of honeymooners.

"I'm still a little cautious," she said. "What happens if this is deemed illegal? They would be in a bit of trouble."

But with registration for the chapel up, and room inquiries at the White Wind Inn up from once a month last year to three times a day, residents said they had reason for optimism.

"We're hoping and expecting it goes through," Geary said.

Benjamin Gedan can be reached at gedan@globe.com.