Well, bridesmaid's gowns aside, it appears tha NYC will now be recognizing out of state gay marriages...
"New York City To Recognize Gay Marriages
by Doug Windsor
Posted: April 7, 2005 5:01 pm ET
New York City will recognize same-sex marriages and civil unions - but only if they were performed outside the state in areas where they are already legal.
The announcement was made by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's special counsel, Anthony W. Crowell and comes two months after the mayor appealed a ruling by a New York City judge that denying marriage to gay and lesbian couples violated the state constitution.
While the appeal works its way through New York's appeal process, the Mayor's decision to recognize the marriages of New Yorkers who went out of state to marry or form civil unions was welcomed by LGBT civil rights activists.
"We applaud Mayor Bloomberg for taking a step in the right direction and working to ensure that same-sex couples who live in New York City and have been married in Canada, Massachusetts and other places are now as legally married as a couple who got a license at City Hall," said Allan Van Capelle, the executive director of Pride Agenda.
New York City becomes the sixth locality in New York State to pro-actively affirm that it recognizes marriages of same-sex couples, according them the same rights as all other marriages within their local jurisdictions. Other localities are Buffalo, Rochester, Brighton, Ithaca and Nyack. The announcements follow Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's opinion that marriages and civil unions of same-sex couples performed outside the state should be treated as valid marriages in New York State.
"The Mayor's pro-active announcement on same-sex marriage means that 8,591,000 of New York State's 18,976,457 people, or more than 45% of the state's population, live in jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is a legal fact," said Van Capelle. "Given that Massachusetts has a population of only 6,349,000 people, there are now more New Yorkers living in jurisdictions where same-sex marriage has been declared legal than there are people in all of Massachusetts."
But, it may be a year or more before gay and lesbian New Yorkers find out if they will be allowed to marry in their own state.
A bid to expedite Bloomberg's appeal, and one in Ithaca where a judge ruled against same-sex marriage, was rejected by the state's highest court last month. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that the cases must work their way through the lower court appeals process first.
In addition, those marriages performed in New Paltz are not recognized by the state.
But, while the issue of same-sex marriage drags on in the courts a poll released Wednesday shows that most people in New York State support marriage for same-sex couples.
The Global Strategy Group survey found that 51% of New Yorkers support marriage for same-sex couples while 42% do not. A similar Global Strategy Group poll conducted for the Pride Agenda last year in March 2004 found 47% in support of marriage and 46% opposed."