Las Vegas weddings

TEXT BY ERIKA EVENLIND

Las Vegas weddings – not just Elvis impersonators and plastic flowers

Are you and your partner dreaming of eloping and getting married – quite literally on the spur of the moment – in Las Vegas? Well, why are you hesitating?! Just do it! At least, that’s what I think, having had the privilege of not only getting married there myself but also attending the wedding I’m about to tell you all about; Welcome to a wedding – Vegas style! Let’s start at the right end, that is, from the very beginning. My good friend, the pop singer, and her future husband, the model, wanted to get married. She’d never ever intended to be a bride, seeing a wedding as a waste of time and money. For her, it was going to be a civil partnership. Then she met The Man with a capital M. And now she wanted to take his surname at any cost. He got down on one knee and proposed to her during a stopover back home in Stockholm, whilst travelling between two modelling jobs around the world. She cried with joy and rang me, saying, with a touch of desperation in her voice:
‘What do I do now?!’ I do want to marry him. But I still don’t want a wedding! Not even a civil ceremony at the Town Hall! I, who was then newlywed following a well-planned trip to Las Vegas, naturally had the answer on the tip of my tongue
: ‘Las Vegas, honey, Las Vegas!
‘ That appealed to both my friend and her future husband. Now all that was needed was a bit of planning, and as that isn’t my friend’s strong point, the task fell to me.

Paperwork

So I started by sending the bride and groom-to-be to the Tax Authority to conduct the examination of impediments to marriage and get a copy of the certificate to take to the State of Nevada. The officiant then signs this, and once you’re back home, you send the certificate to the Tax Authority, after which the marriage is subsequently recognised in Sweden as well. It’s actually a very straightforward process.

Find a
travel provider So a date was set, and I rang to book flights and a hotel room. Las Vegas has a huge range of hotels, and it’s cheap to stay in good accommodation, so go for a luxury hotel. It costs about the same to stay in a deluxe double room or a junior suite for three days there as the wedding suite costs for one night in a major Swedish city. Search online and ring or email to book it yourselves!
Package holidays are for wimps in situations like this – and besides, it definitely won’t work out any cheaper!

Day one

So we bought the wedding outfits and then off we went, with me tagging along as the fifth wheel and best man. (Of course, you can also find a witness there!) Naturally, we carried the wedding dress and the tailcoat in our hand luggage – there’s no room for lost bags when it comes to weddings.

Once in Las Vegas, Nevada, we headed straight to the Clark County Office, which was open in the evening, to sort out a marriage licence. (You then take this with you to the wedding ceremony.) After a quick spin at the hotel casino in the kitschily luxurious Caesar’s Palace on the Strip, we slept soundly in our respective rooms and, after a room service breakfast, set out to find the right wedding chapel. A daunting task, as there are hundreds of them. Every self-respecting hotel has its own, too. But we chose the famous Little White Wedding Chapel, where, for example, Frank Sinatra, Joan Collins, Michael Jordan, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and yours truly have all got married. The question now was whether my friends would get married inside the chapel itself or whilst sitting in the limousine (which the chapel provides free of charge to its customers) at the drive-through window? They opted for the chapel.

So we booked a suitable time and set off again on our hunt – this time for wedding rings – in the city’s many pawn shops. In the third shop, my friends found what they were looking for, and we were able to head back to the hotel for a drink, to catch our breath and to arrange for flowers from the hotel florist.

Wedding in Las Vegas

D-Day finally arrived and we were picked up at the hotel entrance in a long white limousine. Once we arrived at the chapel, the wedding fee (along with any extras such as video recording and wedding photography) was paid in advance, and then it was time.

It felt a bit strange to be the only person present apart from the female officiant, but the atmosphere took hold all the same, and I sobbed quietly into my paper tissues whilst the tape recorder(!) played Mendelssohn’s music. Even if you’re not exactly a whizz at English, you’ll have no trouble answering correctly and at the right moments during the wedding ceremony. After just under a quarter of an hour, it was all over, and then we took wedding photos inside and outside the chapel. Make sure you bring your own good camera as well, and ask someone to take a roll of private wedding photos! Wedding cards usually take months to arrive in Sweden.(On the other hand, my friends avoided having their photo rolls and video footage snatched up by a coachload of overjoyed Japanese tourists who happened to stop outside the chapel after my wedding…)

My newlywed friends then headed off to their pre-booked room service dinner at the hotel – which, according to reports, they enjoyed whilst sitting in the jacuzzi in their bedroom.

I amused myself by handing in their private roll of film for one-hour development and sat in the piano bar drinking champagne with ‘jumping blueberries’ (simply frozen blueberries bobbing up and down in the bubbles) whilst I waited.

On our last day in the gambling city, we went to the Federal Express office and sent wedding photos to the couple’s closest friends and family – who hadn’t been told anything in advance. The photos arrived at the recipients’ homes by courier two days later. To round off the story, I can tell you that my friends organised a fantastic wedding party a week after we got back. The video from the ceremony was shown there, and the newlyweds wore their wedding outfits. …and if you can just cope with any reproachful looks Mum might give you when you come home having missed the ceremony, then a wedding in Vegas is a wonderful alternative.

LINK TIPS:- Organisers of weddings
abroad- Little Wedding Chapel Of The
Flowers– Graceland Wedding Chapel–
A Special Memory Wedding Chapel Las Vegas–
Little White Wedding Chapel

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