As Travel & Leisure Magazine's Charlotte Sevino writes:

Boston-based wedding planner Bernadette Smith has helped arrange the same-sex nuptials of nearly 75 Massachusetts couples during her five-year career. But she's never seen quite the surge in business as she has during the past few months.

Wedding planners have seen a surge in same-sex couples traveling to New England to tie the knot.

Smith's calendar first started filling up when the 1913 law that banned gay marriage for out-of-state couples was lifted in July 2008. But, she says, things became even more hectic when Proposition 8, the California ballot proposal restricting marriage to heterosexual couples, passed in the November elections.

Now Smith and other wedding planners have seen a surge in gays and lesbians traveling to New England to tie the knot. And the trend is growing quickly: On April 3, Iowa's Supreme Court found its gay-marriage ban unconstitutional; four days later, the Vermont legislature gave same-sex couples the right to marry; and on April 16, New York Governor David Paterson announced he would introduce a bill to legalize gay marriage.

Not surprisingly, hotels and resorts that cater to same-sex weddings are cashing in.

Full article here . . .