Wedding bills: Marriage is a $250 million industry in Utah

They met at Columbia University in New York, where he's studying political science and she's studying English.

They fell in love over a fall weekend spent together when school was closed for a break and all their friends had traveled home. One year and three months after they met, he proposed on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Now, Stephanie Baker, 19, and Jake Summerhays, 23, are planning a wedding — in Utah. From New York.

Over a hurried Christmas break, Baker booked the reception center, scheduled a date in the Timpanogos LDS Temple, selected wedding and bridesmaids' dresses, debated colors and visited cake decorators and florists.

The date is May 24 — just days after spring-term finals.

"I got a lot of it done over the break," Baker said. "The rest of the stuff I'll do through phone calls. I'll come home for spring break in March. Invitations need to be sent."

In a culture that promotes marriage and family life, about 25,000 couples along the Wasatch Front take the plunge each year. The wedding industry in Utah is big business.

In 2006, brides, grooms and their families spent an estimated $250 million on weddings in Utah, according to BrideAccess.com. For comparison, data compiled by University of Utah's Bureau of Business and Economic Research show that the 2007 Sundance Film Festival resulted in $59.6 million statewide economic activity. Nationally, people spent about $70 billion on weddings in 2006.

Utah has about 450 "wedding professionals" — companies in which all or most of the business comes from weddings: reception centers, florists, caterers, dress and tuxedo shops, photographers, wedding planners or coordinators, and wedding Web sites.

Weddings in Utah not only mark the beginning of a couple's life together. They also launch businesses and careers of thousands of people.

"As soon as you say 'wedding,' the price will double," said Wendi Cooper, founder of YourWeddingInABox.com, an Ogden-based wedding planning company. "They know you're going to spend money. They're going to charge you for it. There's lots of ways to save money. You just have to look."

Cooper is a wedding coordinator who says she can work with tight budgets. She works with a group of "preferred vendors" who promise also to work on the cheap, and she has discovered some cost-cutting tricks along the way. For instance, she orders flowers wholesale and arranges them herself. She also makes wedding accessories such as garters and ring-bearer pillows to save her clients money.