The Vegas Chapels Are Open, and Waiting

For {couples} in search of a quickie marriage ceremony, or a whimsical one, Las Vegas is prepared.

On some days, the road on the metropolis’s famed Marriage License Bureau — the place the engaged want nothing greater than picture IDs and a $77 price — wraps across the block.

The bureau closed for six weeks initially of the pandemic, however since reopening in late April, it has churned out licenses from 8 a.m. to midnight, seven days per week, together with holidays. That license is the ticket to a legally legitimate marriage at one of many metropolis’s dozens of chapels, which provide quick, budget-conscious companies in themed settings starting from elegant to rococo.

“In a way, Vegas is set up for something like this,” Lynn Marie Goya, the clerk of Clark County, Nev., mentioned of the protection restrictions and different social modifications the virus has wrought. The metropolis’s neon chapels are full of stand-alone rooms and personal nooks for small ceremonies, which could be rapidly cleaned between bookings. And they’re stocked with all of the nuptial trappings — flowers, a photographer, props and even rings — for these in search of one-stop buying. Some venues supply drive-through ceremonies and video streams of the occasions for family and friends.

Despite its reputation, the town’s marriage ceremony commerce, like many different industries, was battered this 12 months by the slowdown in tourism and shutdowns attributable to the virus. Losing the town’s regular deluge of worldwide guests has particularly damage. Ms. Goya’s workplace issued simply over 50,000 licenses this 12 months by means of the top of November, a 24 % drop from final 12 months’s whole over the identical interval.

But these within the enterprise see glimmers of hope. October was the busiest month ever at Vegas Weddings, mentioned Melody Willis-Williams, the venue’s govt director.

“There are couples who have planned two or three weddings already and don’t want to go through the pain of telling everyone and rescheduling again. So they say ‘Enough, let’s go to Vegas,’” Ms. Willis-Williams mentioned. “With the way things are going, people don’t want to wait to express their love.”