{"id":15546,"date":"2025-11-25T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/this-vallecito-couple-wants-to-make-la-plata-county-a-hot-spot-for-gay-weddings\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:48:13","slug":"this-vallecito-couple-wants-to-make-la-plata-county-a-hot-spot-for-gay-weddings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/this-vallecito-couple-wants-to-make-la-plata-county-a-hot-spot-for-gay-weddings\/","title":{"rendered":"This Vallecito couple wants to make La Plata County a hot-spot for gay weddings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kytt
Kytt McLaughlin, left, and Casey Baird, newlyweds and co-owners of Cinder and Pine Weddings want to promote La Plata County and Southwest Colorado as a haven for gay weddings. (Courtesy of Casey Baird)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Grindr, the dating app for gay men, is not known for fostering enduring love stories and successful business partnerships.<\/p>\n

But Casey Baird and Kytt McLaughlin, flower farmers tucked into the hills above Vallecito, are an exception on both fronts.<\/p>\n

The couple married this fall, nine years after their initial online introduction and more than a year in business as co-owners of Cinder and Pine Weddings, a wedding focused floral company.<\/p>\n

With many flowers grown on their farm, they reduce reliance on wholesalers and can offer couples something more personal and local.<\/p>\n

On their few acres of land they raise pigs, goats, ducks and chickens. Their cut-flower operation runs on a closed-loop system: Scraps feed the animals, manure becomes soil, compost becomes blooms and even cardboard ash becomes dust baths for their chickens.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are always surprised that we\u2019re able to run a cut flower farm in Vallecito,\u201d Baird said.<\/p>\n

Growing anything delicate in an area several degrees colder than Durango took years of trial and error. Both men worked at April\u2019s Flowers before branching out on their own; that experience shaped how they approached the land.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing in this area for so many years and working at the nursery, I gained a lot of perspective,\u201d McLaughlin said. Through testing and experimentation, they found a patch of soil enriched by years of animal bedding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we just figured out how to do it and do it right,\u201d he said. \u201cWater is everything up there \u2013 and this summer was so dry, it was brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baird and McLaughlin said the business thus far has been a great success. Cinder and Pine has already been featured in multiple major wedding magazines.<\/p>\n

Tucked away in a rural corner of La Plata County, where the residents lean more conservative \u2013 at a time when national politics have left many LGBTQ+ people feeling anxious \u2013 Baird and McLaughlin want to take that success and carve out something new: a niche for gay weddings in a rural corner of Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

They want their small farm, and their platform as Colorado\u2019s only gay married couple running a farm-based floral business to challenge misconceptions, boost the local wedding industry and highlight queer joy.<\/p>\n

The pair sees an opportunity for the region: make the Durango-Vallecito area a destination for gay weddings.<\/p>\n

\u201cGay couples have money. Money helps our local economy. They have fabulous weddings,\u201d Baird said with a laugh. Telluride, he noted, is one of the few Western Slope towns that\u2019s actively tapped into that market \u2013 \u201cbut not really this part of Western Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

They emphasized they\u2019re not asking local venues to overhaul their branding or politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not asking the venues to do anything \u2013 let us do the work,\u201d Baird said. \u201cLet us be the voice that this is a good place to come and have a gay destination wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n

They believe the region\u2019s natural beauty, combined with a quieter, more welcoming culture than outsiders might expect, could draw couples seeking authenticity rather than the high-price, high-profile venues of Telluride or Aspen.<\/p>\n

Living in a conservative area, Baird and McLaughlin know that outsiders might expect tensions between them and their neighbors. Instead, they said they have found acceptance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve never experienced any intolerance,\u201d Baird said. \u201cSome of the people we enjoy the most are very, very conservative \u2013 but they love us. And it opens their eyes too. They\u2019ve never been around gay men.\u201d<\/p>\n

While they say it would be naive to pretend national politics haven\u2019t raised anxiety in LGBTQ+ communities, particularly in rural ones, what they seemed to be more concerned about wasn\u2019t hostility but isolation.<\/p>\n

People drifting into separate political identities without ever meeting the neighbors behind their assumptions is a real threat, and one that looms over people on both sides of the political aisle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what\u2019s important in this political climate is, instead of creating two separate tables, if somebody doesn\u2019t want you at theirs, build your own but invite them to sit,\u201d Baird said. \u201cWe have way more in common than what\u2019s being focused on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their own upbringings \u2013 both raised Southern Baptist in deeply conservative environments \u2013 shape how they navigate those divides.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born and raised in oil fields and farming \u2013 hard work, get dirty, be proud of what you did,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cI still have those values. A lot of the far left misunderstands that mentality. And on the other side, people here misunderstand what a progressive person is. When you meet us, it breaks those assumptions both ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their approach isn\u2019t about converting anyone politically. It\u2019s about proximity, familiarity and normalizing what has long been stigmatized.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can help change the mind of one person that thinks extremely backward, that\u2019s all that matters,\u201d Baird said. \u201cAnd if not, we\u2019re still not going to stop. There need to be more safe spaces right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also want young LGBTQ+ people in rural communities to see possibilities they never saw growing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf one gay kid sees us and thinks, \u2018OK, you can be successful, you can be different in this demographic \u2026 you can be weird, you can be whatever you want,\u2019\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be a \u2018gay thing.\u2019 You can just be yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baird added to that, saying \u201cIf one gay kid sees that you can be successful and different \u2026 that\u2019s all that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

jbowman@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Gay couples have money. Money helps our local economy,\u2019 co-owner of Cinder and Pine Weddings says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1357,28,1765,1142,994,1500],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-contests","tag-headlines","tag-lgbt","tag-profile","tag-trueanthem","tag-vallecito"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19714,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15546\/revisions\/19714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15546"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}