Now that Massachusetts allows same-sex marriage, the state's residents are realising that gay couples want the same on their big day as everyone else, reports Anna Mundow.

California will always have its summer of love. Now Massachusetts has its summer of . . . well, commitment. In my corner of rural New England handsome grooms and blushing brides are all over the place: peeking out of rose-covered bowers, waving from horse-drawn carriages, smooching for the camera.

The line-up is a little unusual, however. This summer it's Maggie and Karen, Todd and Ken, Sean and Michael, Brigid and Caitlin exchanging vows, rings and, in some cases, frocks (yes, chaps, you may too) in the middle of their customised ceremonies.

Subversive perhaps, but these typically wholesome affairs are a far cry from a 1960s love-in. Today the substance of choice is likely to be echinacea, and instead of grooving to psychedelic rock guests sob and sway to The Wind Beneath My Wings. The real surprise, however, is not how soppy many same-sex weddings are but how straight.

It seems that the majority of gay couples who are making history with their unions also want to make a big, conventional splash. Ring bearers, rehearsal dinners, engraved invitations with that silly piece of tissue paper enclosed. (See below, by the way, for the historical origin of the silly piece of tissue paper. You need to know.)

All of which makes the wedding industry very happy indeed; matrimonial marketing has not looked this healthy since the 1950s. Indeed, with all those tuxedos and corsages it could be the 1950s - but this time with money and taste. Tacky floral arrangements? Plastic cake decorations? I don't think so.

Forget sentiment for a minute and consider these numbers - these big numbers. According to Forbes magazine, the US wedding industry generates the equivalent of almost €60 billion a year. The average cost of a wedding here is €18,000, and about 1.1 million new couples pledge their troths each year.

The US Census Bureau estimates that 594,000 homosexual couples were living together in 2000. Assuming that roughly 546,000, or just over 90 per cent, of those couples would wed if they could, Forbes magazine reckons they would spend €13.8 billion on their weddings.

That's over several years of course, but, as reporter Aude Lagore pointed out: "The industry would still catch the bouquet in the form of a short term gain of prodigious proportions."

Wedding vendors will, in other words, rake it in. You could even call gay marriage a godsend (but not in front of George Bush).

Take my acquaintance Maggie, a college administrator in her late 50s who will marry Karen, a corporate manager, this summer and whose wedding will cost roughly €25,000. "We could have just joined the stampede on May 17th," Maggie explains, referring to the day on which it became legal for same-sex couples residing in Massachusetts to marry in that state. "But we have been planning a commitment ceremony for over a year, and we wanted this one day to be memorable. Besides, we wanted our wedding to be a wedding, not a news story."

Tess Ayers, the author with Paul Brown of The Essential Guide To Lesbian And Gay Weddings, insists, however, that every same-sex marriage is a news story of sorts, at least to friends and family. "Think of the invitation as your press release," she writes, adding that it can be as irreverent as you are. "Print your invitation on a beach ball and mail it (preferably deflated) to announce your beach- party wedding."

Those responding to the event may also have to be inventive; congratulations cards for same-sex couples are still hard to find, although traditional greetings-card giants, such as Hallmark, are avidly researching this new market. Meanwhile, boutique firms such as Heygirl of Memphis, Tennessee, and Rainbow Galaxy of Savannah, Georgia, eagerly fill the gap.

One of Rainbow Galaxy's best-sellers was inspired by a hung-over drag queen spotted by the firm's founder in a New Orleans gay bar. The card depicts a burly bride with hairy arms and an unshaven chin. Inside the greeting reads: "Congratulations on your big fat gay wedding."

Stressing that a couple should, above all, do "whatever feels right", Ayers observes that "in modern weddings you're apt to find the bride walking down the aisle unescorted or the couple's golden retriever appearing as the ring bearer".

Then we have Beth and Patti, who told Ayers that their "mutual contemporary spiritual path has been to spend thousands of dollars on psychotherapy. In light of this we asked each of our therapists to preside at our wedding. We feel that these are the true contemporary ministers . . . who have helped us heal and create this kind of committed relationship. Both were highly honoured, and one even cried".

Free-form marriages have, of course, been taking place for ever. Who among us has not squirmed listening to maudlin vows written by the blissed-out couple and liberally peppered with quotes from The Prophet? Everybody onto the grass for a barefoot circle dance, then dig in to those tofu burgers.

But that is neohippy stuff. Now, instead of putting wedding professionals out of business, alternative weddings have spawned a whole new breed of wedding planner. Gay Weddings Ireland, for example, with offices in Dublin and Cork, boasts of having "created medieval, Thai, Moroccan, Celtic and 'D'Artagnan' (Three Musketeers) weddings for many Irish and international clients". The company's same-sex ceremonies, by the way, are private, not legally sanctioned, affairs.And Three Musketeers? Maybe we shouldn't ask.

My Gay Wedding Companion, a computer program, arms the obsessive planner with software such as Guest Manager, Seating Manager and Label Manager.

Another company, Gay Honeymoons Inc, can book the newlyweds on a Costa Rican walking tour, a Texan cattle drive and practically anything in between.

Next month San Francisco will mount the extravagant Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Wedding Expo, with fashion shows, concerts and more than 80 booths selling a variety of matrimonial enhancements, from Hawaiian honeymoon destinations to biker sex toys.

In Massachusetts even staid establishments such as the Sheraton Commander, in Cambridge, and the Lenox Hotel, in Boston, announced their first Pink Wedding Expos in May to coincide with the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

None of which sounds revolutionary. "One day you turn around and look in the mirror and, my God, you're like any straight bride or groom, steeped in wedding regalia," Ayers warns in a section of her book called 'The Lesbian Bride of Frankenstein'. Confronted by the combined forces of tradition and consumerism, even hard-core rebels may be forgiven for waving their lace-edged handkerchiefs in surrender.

That silly piece of tissue paper: back in your grandmother's time a sheet of tissue paper was inserted to keep the oil-based ink on an engraved invitation from smearing as it slowly dried. Now it is a genteel affectation