Viva Las Vegas

Wednesday, February 12, 2014 in Las Vegas | 1 comment

Maybe it was just excess remorse from my hangover but on Sunday morning I was feeling repentant. So I figured it was time for church. One of the most popular—and historic—wedding chapels on The Strip is the cutesy Little Church of the West. Judy Garland, Dudley Moore, and Elvis Presley all tied the knot here (though for The King, it was only a cinematic wedding to Ann-Margaret in “Viva Las Vegas”). So did my mother and father. Not the first time, mind you, but the second time. After a nasty period in the late ‘60s when our family, like a lot of American families, seemed to fall apart all of a sudden.

The details are not important (and, in the end, they divorced again), but after a long separation when my parents lived in separate states (that was fun), they had a temporary rapprochement that coalesced around my mother’s second invite to Las Vegas with my father to renew their vows at what was then the wedding chapel at the Hacienda Hotel. I would have loved to have stayed at the Hacienda, for old time’s sake, except that it was imploded on New Year’s Eve in 1996 to make way for the island-themed Mandalay Bay.

But the Little Church of the West lives on. It was jacked up, loaded on a flatbed, and moved a few blocks down the boulevard. That’s where I decided to spend Sunday afternoon and I was in luck for as I walked into the schoolhouse-sized chapel, a wedding was just beginning. After the ceremony, I gave my heartfelt congratulations to the bride and groom, who were from Japan. They told me they’d picked the chapel from an album of photos in Tokyo and had traveled across the Pacific solely to get married in the same chapel where Elvis wed Ann-Margaret. “Big fans,” they said, grinning and nodding their heads several times. “Big, big fans.” I’m not sure if they meant of the movie or Elvis or even Ann-Margaret. No matter.

The ceremony took less than 15 minutes and the beaming couple was whisked away in a rented 60s-era Cadillac to their reception at the all-you-can-eat buffet at Bally’s. Just the thought made me feel a little nostalgic. I’m sure my parents did something similar.

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1 comment

  1. Allan’s avatar

    Allan on Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 1:40 pm

    The Japanese do seem to fly all over the earth to have their weddings in unusual settings – whether under the Northern Lights or to have an Anne of Green Gables style wedding or this. I wonder what their divorce rates are like? It seems a lot of expense to risk if you’re in the 50-50 lottery which is the North American survival rate for a marriage. But then if you didn’t spend the money, would the divorcing spouse and/or their family later throw that back in your face how you didn’t fully commit.

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