Marc Ostrofsky, who earned a permanent place in domain history when he sold Business.com in a deal valued at a record $7.5 million when it took place in 1999, was married to Beverle Rivers Gardner Sunday (June 29) in Aspen, Colorado. The ceremony was held at picturesque Maroon Bells followed by a reception at the exclusive Aspen Mountain Club. 60 close friends and family members were guests at the wedding including the couple's five teenage daughters (two of whom, Kelly and Shelly Ostrofsky, are identical twins that were recently featured on the front page of the Houston Chronicle after graduating first in their high school class of over 550 student to be named co-valedictorians). Below is an exclusive wedding photo showing Marc, Beverle and their five daughters on their big day:

Ostrofsky is also widely known as a co-founder of iREIT.com and owner/operator of Blinds.com, CuffLinks.com, eTickets.com and many others. Wedding guests included a former Disney President, a CBS Executive VP, Playboy's Barbie Benton, domainer Chad Folkening and Bianka Krausch. Marc and Beverle are currently off on a honeymoon that is taking them through Italy, Istanbul and the Greek Islands. Incidentally, Ostrofsky has finished work on a new book, Get Rich Click™ that is scheduled for release in 2009.

In another sign of the (good) times for the domain industry, a story at Internet Retailer yesterday described how a chain of flower shops in Texas (Marc Ostofsky's home state) gave 

their business a big boost by closing most of their brick and mortar stores and moving their business online. The six-store chain has already closed four stores with a fifth to be shuttered soon.

The owner of Forth Worth's Bice’s Florist, Keith Riewe, said  the company is buying up domain names as part of its strategy to drive more customers to their site and boost e-commerce sales. By purchasing 35 to 40 domain names such as eflowersite.com, nationalfloraldelivery.com and blossomlink.com, Riewe said Bice’s has increased traffic by 47% to about 68,000 unique visitors a month and that annual sales are up by $1.5 million to about $3.7 million. 

Riewe, who comes from a computer technology background, said he started looking into purchasing domain names as a way to drive traffic and sales soon after he purchased Bice’s six years ago. Most of the domains redirect to Bice’s home page with the BicesFlorist.com URL displaying in the address bar. The only difference is that a unique identifier is tacked on to the end to help track each domain.