For some, the rush of business has become a test of sensibilities and business ethics in an industry that has suddenly shifted radically. Some wedding professionals have opted out of same-sex marriages on religious and moral grounds. Others set the bar somewhat differently, electing to take on the work even though it goes against their personal beliefs.
Eric Nelson of Nelson Photography in Lake Forest is a wedding photographer and ordained minister through the Trinity Evangelical Christian Church.
Nelson has already booked a same-sex wedding in July, but his religious beliefs and his business sense took him in two directions.
So he'll only be taking the photos. He will not officiate gay weddings, which he said conflict with his Christian beliefs.
"To me, it's not about being uncomfortable," Nelson said. "It's a choice, like a choice of what clothes to put on in the morning." Photographing a same-sex wedding is not the same as "solemnizing a wedding," he said.
The south Orange County photographer-minister said he would likewise turn down officiating weddings for heterosexual couples who he knew were involved in drugs or crime. "If you come to me and I find out you don't live in the best lifestyle and are not the type of person I would perform a wedding for, I wouldn't do it," he said. "I have a choice."
Others didn't seem torn at all.
The Conference and Visitors Bureau in Newport Beach, normally a staid community with a reputation for leaning to the right, sent out a news release inviting same-sex couples to honeymoon in the city and at the Balboa Bay Club and offering a "romance package" for newlyweds.
An informal survey conducted by the Sacramento-based Assn. for Wedding Professionals International found that most of their California vendors would participate in gay weddings, said Richard Markel, the association's president. Only nine out of 720 respondents said they would refuse, he said.
"Most of the time, you get into this business to do any wedding: straight, gay, interracial, even if there were alien weddings," Markel said.
Several business owners told The Times that because of their personal beliefs they would refuse to be involved in same-sex marriages. But they declined to be identified out of concern that their business would suffer.
Tom Mitchell, a videographer from near Lake Mathews in Riverside County, is also opposed to same-sex marriage. Still, he believes the paying customer is always right.
