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.
Baker's mother, Linda Baker, hopes her daughter's wedding will cost $6,000. The maximum price she will pay for her daughter's wedding is $10,000.
"I think we're going to end up higher than the target — but we're going to be close," she said.
Utah weddings on average cost a modest $12,500 — half the amount spent on a wedding nationally.
Weddings for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints often have more guests than other weddings across the nation, but the LDS weddings do not have alcohol, and they often do not have catered buffets or bands for dancing, wedding professionals say. Engagements are shorter on average in Utah than outside the state and couples do not have as much time to save for the big day. The result is that Utahns on average spend less.
"If it's an LDS temple wedding, there's no fee for that," said Robin Saville, owner of BrideAccess.com, formerly UtahBrides.com, a Salt Lake City online wedding planning site. "Or if they hold it in a cultural hall (in an LDS church), there's not a fee for that."
However, LDS weddings are becoming more elaborate. The familiar wedding snack of a cup of peanuts is being replaced with light food such as soup or sandwiches. The number of people invited is decreasing, as well, Saville said.
As the makeup of Utah becomes more ethnically diverse and non-Mormon, the average Utah wedding price is increasing.
For instance, many Hispanic weddings are in Catholic churches, Saville said, with elaborate wedding parties paid for by a combination of parents, grandparents and other relatives.
Second marriages also are becoming more common, Saville said. Couples getting married for a second time are older and usually have more money to spend on a wedding.
Saville had been a wedding videographer when he started www.UtahBrides.com with a former partner in 1997.
The Web site is free for brides. Saville makes money on advertising and sponsorships. The site has a budget planner, a to-do list, links to vendors and weather forecasts. About 1,500 to 1,700 brides are registered on the site at any one time. Several thousand more view the site without registering, Saville said.
In 2003, Saville began a television show covering all aspects of wedding planning. The show also gives away free weddings and features a relationship coach to help stressed-out brides and family members.
This fall, Saville renamed his site and show BrideAccess.com, after the show began airing in San Diego and Las Vegas. Locally, the show can be watched on KSL Channel 5 on Sundays at 10 a.m.
"Now we've got interest in several states, including Oregon and Arizona," Saville said.
Wedding professionals are busiest during the first three quarters of the year. "I think engagements are more popular at Valentine's Day than weddings," Saville said. "Most people are hoping for warmer weather."
For their first step in planning a wedding, brides visit businesses and book services. Brides and vendors also meet at bridal shows. Wedding season is typically April through September.
Maria Marcotte — sales and event coordinator for Rose Sachs Gardens, a wedding and reception venue outside Parleys Canyon — remembers that 10 years ago, there were only three bridal shows along the Wasatch Front. These days, there are about 15.
"I used to do them all, and now I've gotten selective," she said. "In any week in January, you've got a show up in Ogden, a show in Salt Lake and a show maybe in Thanksgiving Point."
Wedding shows themselves are big business. Rent for a 10-by-10 foot space can cost $1,000. A full-page color ad in one a local bridal magazine can cost $3,500.
Why pay for a ticket to a bridal show?
"Everything's in one place," said Brooke Tolman, sales manager at Greenband, a show promoter that puts on the Utah Bridal Showcase at the Salt Palace each year.
Wedding professionals said the bridal shows provide them with direct business, as well as name recognition, which can lead to more sales in the future.
About 3,000 brides, their soon-to-be husbands and mothers attended this year's Utah Bridal Showcase and learned that this season, French gathering is in style for wedding dresses and fresh flowers and ribbon can be fashionably draped on wedding cakes. Amid the trendiness, a string quartet advertising its services kept it classical, however, playing Schubert.
Competition in the Utah wedding industry can be cutthroat.
About 12 years ago, Carrie Biggers — a cake baker and decorator who had turned a hobby into a business from her Sandy kitchen — was selling cakes with friends at a bridal show and someone called the health department.
The following Monday, health-department employees showed up at Biggers' house and notified her she couldn't run a bakery out of her kitchen. She needed to have a business license from Salt Lake County. She also needed a commercial kitchen with regular inspections from the Salt Lake Valley Health Department if she wanted to continue working from home, complete with a separate entrance and refrigerator.
"We had to do a major house renovation," Biggers said. "It was a really good thing, because if I had kept doing it in my family kitchen, I would never have grown to the size I am right now."
Carrie's Cakes now employes a handful of family members full- and part-time and sells 600 cakes a year, ranging from $125 to $2,500, with many of the tiered wedding-style cakes going for about $500.
Biggers said many cake decorators hesitate to teach cake-decorating classes in the off-season for fear they'll be vulnerable to a new generation of competition. Biggers never learned who called the health department, but she thinks it might have been a competitor.
"I have my suspicions," Biggers said. "I always tell her whenever I see her, 'Whoever turned me in did me a big favor."'
E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com