Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Charging Love
Yes, you can use your credit card to pay for a wedding at all of the chapels listed
in this chapter. Just pull out your Amex, Visa, MasterCard, or Discover Card, find
the right person to marry, and you should be all set.
owner and former lead singer at the Tropicana's
Folies Bergere.
“And who better to
pull it off than someone in showbiz?” To that end, there's a complete costume
shop onsite, for the bride looking for the perfect wedding gown, or better yet, a
poodle skirt, Marilyn Monroe's famous white dress and blonde wig, or a gold
Cleopatra number, among dozens of other looks (there are equivalent outfits for
the grooms). The lighting's theatrical and sharp, and the sleek, high-ceilinged
Southwestern-style chapel is rigged with trapezelike gear for those who want to
float 20 feet in the air, in a “Cirque”-style wedding. Once you have your guests in
place—the chapel can seat 100, though many bring fewer (a reception hall onsite
seats only 60)—they're treated to a little show with you as the star . . . sometimes
backed up by a small army of dancers and singers. Elvis weddings are, of course,
most popular, and they come in a number of variations from Blue Hawaii to Pink
Caddy (where you drive the convertible right through the large doors of the
church), but you can also have a “James Bond Wedding” officiated by 007,
backed up by Bond girls; a fog-and-candelabra
Phantom of the Opera
ceremony; a
pirate wedding, a hippie wedding, a cowboy wedding . . . if you can dream it up,
they can make it happen. Beyond Elvis, what gets the most requests? Gothic wed-
dings, believe it or not, where the couple dress as ghouls; the minister rises up
from a coffin; and the Grim Reaper appears to speak the words “'Til death do you
part.”
If you've had that picture in your mind of a nervous couple knocking on a
minister's door at 3am in the morning for a living room ceremony . . . well, that
sort of thing doesn't exist anymore in Vegas. The closest you'll come to it is
Wee
Kirk of the Heather
55
(231 Las Vegas Blvd. S.;
%
800/843
-
4566 or 702/382
-
9830; www.weekirk.com;
$
49 for a basic ceremony; daily 9am-9pm),
which has
the honor of being the oldest continuously operating wedding chapel in Vegas
and started life as a minister's home (and, yes, that minister did conduct cer-
emonies in the living room, now a wedding chapel). If you look beyond the
steeple and the gaudy neon sign out front, it still looks like the small, residential
house it once was. Besides the name, and the fact that occasionally the grooms
will wear kilts, there's not much that's Scottish about it. Wee Kirk has the same
pew-and-flower urn, and the somewhat Victorian, somewhat kitschy decor of so
many others, though it's spiffier and less tacky than some, having been recently
refurbished. But the service is genuinely “old school,” warm and caring, which
may be why (along with the history of the place) so many people send their chil-
dren and grandchildren to be married here, and renew their vows at Wee Kirk
when their own 25th anniversaries roll around. If you want to get a glimpse of
what it looks like, rent
Fools Rush In, Mars Attacks,
or
Vegas Vacation
—Wee Kirk
had cameos in all three.
