Civil Partnership Exhibition

Sapphic Central was invited to attend a Civil Partnership exhibition in York by the organisers Daltonspire. Sometimes when you’re asked to cover an event you’re not quite sure what to expect. Are you supposed to talk it up because you’ve been invited, or do you have free reign to give an objective summation as a ‘customer’?  Thankfully Jane Boyle at Daltonspire wanted the latter, and more – a ‘no holds barred’ approach. “I really want this to work,” she said “but I know there are things we can do better. Give us some feedback as to how we can improve it for next time”.

With our remit sorted we ventured up to York, a beautiful and historic city, and easily found York Racecourse, the venue for its first civil partnerships exhibition. We were disappointed though to be directed into the racecourse by ‘Wedding Fair’ signs rather than Civil Partnerships Exhibition signage. As such, the likelihood of attracting any gay passing trade was slim. It was perhaps just as well, because although Daltonspire had an impressive list of exhibitors – over 80 – not many of them seemed to have made the effort to target their gay audience for the day. The majority of stands displayed ‘his and her’, ‘bride and groom’ pictures so as a gay couple looking to tie the knot, if they had made the effort to attend they would have been largely disappointed. The look and feel of the exhibition was that of a traditional ‘wedding fair’ (so the signs were right after all!), impressive in its own right but with a bias towards the hetero-couple, not the civil partnership event that would have been expected by its target audience.

There are many within our community that practice a little bit of reverse snobbery - a ‘straight’ organisation offering a service to the gay community is often given short shrift, but business is business and consumers are consumers, gay or otherwise. And if a company wants to sell to our community fair play to them, but to be successful they need to be seen to be making an effort to target or market to us specifically, otherwise they probably deserve the ‘exploitative’ label that is often slapped on them. Yes, in an ideal world as a gay consumer I would be spoiled for choice of service providers, and yes, I would probably choose to buy from a gay-owned business – marketing statistics support that fact. But it is the product I want first, and if there is no gay-owned service provider offering it, I will choose the ‘straight’ business that genuinely offers a gay-friendly service, and this exhibition unfortunately showcased very few of these companies.

Gay-owned businesses aside, many of the exhibitors (it seemed) had simply brought a

Not quite what we were expecting!

long their tried and tested (straight) wedding displays. (To the photographic studio (who shall remain nameless) floundering in the face of an ‘interested’ gay couple, the term you were looking for is ‘civil partnership’).

That is not to say however, that there was a complete dearth of genuinely gay-friendly services available because they were there and, if you looked hard enough, there were a few gay-owned businesses too, so as a gay couple visiting the exhibition, all was not lost! Thumbs up to Celebration Films, Pink Wedding Days, York Pavilion Hotel, John Lewis, Ark, Hilton Hotels, Cakes by Sandra, Moases, Heaven Sent Honeymoons, Angela Parkinson Photography, Redworth Hall Hotel, We R Travel, Dawn Glen Designs, The Grange Hotel, red nell designs and Saunts who all caught our attention for their gay or gay-friendly displays and literature. (We’d like to think that we missed some so if we did apologies to those exhibitors for not listing you here!). 

Unfortunately for organisers and exhibitors alike there were too few attendees this time around but this was probably due to the date – it was run very near to Christmas – and the levy of an entrance fee may also have deterred some. From our perch as observers all sides seemed vaguely disgruntled: from exhibitors - some of whom were singularly

Jean & Mandy

unimpressed by the lack of attendees (although others were pragmatic “It’s the first event, these things always get better over time.”) - through attendees like Mandy and Jean from Hull who felt that “You can’t really browse anything without someone pouncing on you, but it’s been interesting – if a bit over the top.” Together seven years and contemplating their own civil partnership some time over the next 12-18 months they lamented the lack of gay-specific services. “I don’t think either of us will be rushing out to buy a meringue-style wedding dress though, shame the catwalk display was so straight.”; to the organisers themselves “We’re disappointed with the turnout, we did a lot of publicity in the gay media, but we know there are so many things we can improve on for next time.”

And improve they will, their attitude is enthusiastic and genuinely gay-friendly. The debate rages on in our community as to whether or not we ought to rush to the civil partnership altar at all when our ensuing rights are still a far cry from those provided to our straight, married peers. But regardless, we have far outstripped the government’s original projections for civil partnership take-ups in the 12 months since they have become legal. The demand is very obviously there for civil-partnerships-related services and where there is demand, supply will follow. The market is still very much in its infancy and exhibitions like this one are still too few and far between but we are optimistic that through the continued work of gay and genuinely gay-friendly organisations the services available to us will become increasingly more relevant to our community, eventually ousting the current one-size-fits-all approach to ‘weddings’ that currently prevails and so obviously misses its gay target.