Jan 24 2004

Weddings Vegas Style

by Megan Edwards

There’s not much argument. Britney Spears’ quickie wedding in a chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard was about as tacky as you can get. Okay, she could have done the drive-through thing, but even though she actually walked down an aisle, there was a marked absence of taste in the whole affair.

Some would say it’s Las Vegas’s fault, that weddings here are automatically tacky, even if the resulting marriage lasts longer than 55 hours. When the phrase “Las Vegas wedding” is uttered across the land, it usually conjures images of plastic bouquets, switch-on candelabra and taxi driver witnesses. Cheap, quick, and followed by a stay in a motel that charges by the hour.

I confess. Before I lived here, I, too, held the common belief that Vegas weddings are, by definition, cheesy. To be non-cheesy, a wedding must be in a hometown. Somebody with the proper credentials must officiate. The music can’t be canned, the flowers can’t be fake, and above all, Elvis can’t be in the building.

Not long after I came to Las Vegas, I met a young woman who later invited me to her wedding. “It will be at the ‘A Special Memory’ chapel,” she told me. I was surprised to hear it. Weren’t those places for tasteless tourists and eloping teenagers?

I drove by “A Special Memory” before the wedding. It’s in downtown Las Vegas, conveniently close to the marriage license bureau. I circled, noting the drive-up wedding window. As I passed the main entrance, the doors opened, and a wedding party emerged. Elvis was right behind them.

But Elvis did not attend my friend’s wedding. Her family did, as did the family of the groom. Yes, the music was taped, the minister was a stranger, and the flowers in the chapel were made of polyester. But the bride couldn’t have looked more radiant, and the groom beamed nervously in his rented tux. Afterwards, we went to a spaghetti restaurant to celebrate.

Was my friend’s wedding tacky? Not in the least. Was Britney’s? Absolutely. It just goes to show that you can’t judge a wedding by its battery-powered candles.

Viva Las Vegas!

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