High court ruling spurs gay couples to wed in NY

 The calls started coming in to Shanie McCowen's wedding planning business as soon as the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages were entitled to federal recognition. "I've booked four weddings in the past 24 hours," said McCowen, who started her company, Rainbow Bells, in Niagara Falls when gay marriage became legal in New York in 2011. "I was up all night. It's insane." The high court's ruling Wednesday striking down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act doesn't mean that same-sex couples will be able to marry in states that haven't legalized gay marriage, but those who travel to wed in a state that has approved gay marriage, like New York, will be eligible for some benefits such as the ability to sponsor a spouse for citizenship.

Wedding planners and others say they expect an increase in weddings in New York following the court's action, both among couples who live in the state and tourists. Sally Fedell, owner of The Falls Wedding Chapel in Niagara Falls, said gay couples from conservative states have already been traveling to Niagara to marry at her chapel and she expects to see an increase now. "They always say, 'My state will be the last state to legalize it,'" Fedell said. "So I do think we're going to feel an impact and we're trying to get the word out there and let couples know that we're open and affirming for gay marriage."

McCowen said that before the ruling, some potential clients said, 'Why bother? We're not going to be recognized when we get home anyway. We'll just stay in our domestic partnership." She said the ruling "definitely encouraged people to reconsider and think about it and pull the trigger." New York is one of 13 states plus the District of Columbia that has acted to legalize same-sex marriage. Nathan Schaefer, executive director of the gay-rights group Empire State Pride Agenda, said New York has hosted 12,000 same-sex weddings in the two years since such unions became legal and he expects an increase after the DOMA ruling.

Several couples waiting to marry at the city clerk's office in Manhattan on Friday said the Supreme Court's decision had spurred them to act. Daisy Berks, 38, of Brooklyn, was eight months pregnant as she wed partner Stephanie Boyd, 30. "Before the DOMA decision, we felt chained to New York, and now we feel like we can do anything," Berks said. "This is about solidifying our family as a unit." Melanie Couzzo, 33, and Kelsey Mecklenberg, 23, of Charlottesville, Va., married at the city clerk's office but are planning a big wedding in Virginia whenever that state legalizes same-sex marriage. Perhaps optimistically, they have put May 2014 in their planners.

"We've been waiting for this day for so long," Cuozzo said. "Now DOMA has been overturned, it won't be long before gay marriage is legal at home too." Steven Mandel, a family law attorney in New York City, said his office has been busy since the court's ruling as gay clients puzzle over the legal implications. "I've had a lot of clients who say, 'We don't want to get married until everyone gets married,'" he said. "And of course not everyone can get married, but it's a major step." Mandel said more than 1,000 laws are affected by the ruling.

New Yorker Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the case before the Supreme Court, sued over the $363,053 in estate taxes she had to pay after her spouse Thea Spyer died in 2009. Windsor, who married Spyer in Canada in 2007, would have been exempt from the tax bill if Spyer had been a man. Thanks to the ruling, Mandel said, a surviving spouse in Windsor's situation will now be spared federal estate taxes. If the couple marries in New York but lives in a state that doesn't recognize gay marriage, the surviving spouse would owe state estate taxes but not federal estate taxes.

U.S. citizens marrying a citizen of another country will reap an immediate benefit from the ruling: Their spouses will be eligible for citizenship. That was why Jeff Wyard, 36, of New York, married Tyler Burness, 28, of Sydney, Australia, at the city clerk's office. Burness, who is in the U.S. on a visitor's visa, said that before the ruling, every time he left the U.S., he had to wait six months to re-enter. "It was so unfair," he said. "We don't have to deal with that anymore."