Web entrepreneur Rita Leonard isn't waiting to find out how the issue of same-sex marriage fares in Parliament or the Supreme Court. She has weddings to plan, sister.

Winnipeg-based Leonard and her partner, Paula Rutledge, started pridebride.com, a wedding-planning site marketed to gays and lesbians, four months ago.

"The whole culture of weddings is based around the guy and the girl," Leonard says. "And I'm not talking about the moral sense of it; I'm talking about the business sense of it. We saw that as an opportunity."

And often, it's the most traditional wedding-day details same-sex couples want to get right.

Same-sex cake toppers. Wedding albums that don't have bride and groom labels. The invitations. The rings. And, certainly, the honeymoon.

"It would just be tragic if you had a great wedding and you went somewhere on vacation and people are looking at you funny or giving you a rude comment."

Since she started the site, Leonard has fielded 150 queries. Traffic is increasing 300 per cent each month. Eighty-per cent of the clientele is American, often from smaller communities on the edges of large urban centres.

Leonard expects a spike in business after this week's ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal in favour of same-sex-marriage. And now that Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has promised to invoke the notwithstanding clause to quash same-sex rulings, Leonard has a hunch she'll be fielding more hits from gay couples in that province.

"We were already aware of a big market in Alberta. That just highlighted it for us!"

Leonard says a key to her success is sparing couples from having to come out to every wedding-service provider, especially for people who live in less-than-sophisticated towns.

"If you're in a smaller community, you're not going to walk into Joe Jeweller and have to come out to him. It's freakin' annoying to have to come out every day of your life."

Finding celebrants to officiate at a wedding is still the biggest challenge for her American clients, she says. On the lighter side, she's often asked to source customized cake toppers

"When we started research, we were disgusted. One place had taken two separate cake toppers and grabbed the brides off of both of them and stuck them together. Give me a break."

Two brides in dresses may represent some lesbian couples - but not all.
"There's such a diversity in our culture, some women like to identify as butch, some as feminine."

She's proudest of sourcing the perfect cake topper for an African-American lesbian couple, one who identifies as butch and was going to wear a tuxedo, the other who sees herself as femme and had chosen a long dress.

"It was a real tough task, but I found it!" says Leonard, who seeks out small businesses across North America who will customize their orders.

"We're not these big froufrou designers. We're about helping people locate those little things to make their celebration different."