One fun couple dressed to the nines chooses drive-by “I dos” at A Special Memory
 
   
 

When Allure Wedding Chapel, located downtown on Third Street and Hoover, opened in 2006, it booked 50 weddings a week thanks only to its website. Now, even advertising and the dedicated handing out of courthouse flyers produces only 20 a week. “Things are really slow,” Allure co-owner Wilma Herrera says. “A lot of couples are basically not thinking about coming to Vegas because of all the expense.”

Indeed, fewer than 92,000 couples married in Clark County last year, the smallest number since 1993. So to stay in business, many chapels are thinking outside the box. The newest trend is to focus on couples renewing their vows, which does not show up in the declining license statistic but does bring in something more important: cash. “It’s a huge market that’s really untapped,” says Cliff Evarts, the CEO of three wedding chapels on Third Street (not including Allure), which he reports have maintained about the same level of business since the recession, thanks to the number of couples renewing vows. Saying an “I-Redo” appeals to certain couples as a rekindling of a romantic spark, a chance for their offspring to attend the ceremony, or just as a do-over. Savvy business owners like Evarts are making sure the whole shebang is easier than ever to put together.

“Our first wedding was very traditional,” says Marcie Wahrer, Eric’s bride, a 29-year-old blogger and the mother of three. “Tuxedo, white dress, blah blah blah.” Although Marcie and Eric, a Valley auto mechanic, had a conventional first wedding, they are more of a tattoos-and-rockabilly sort of couple. So for their fourth anniversary, they selected the $500 Relive package at Vegas Weddings, which includes a unity candle ceremony, bride’s garter, six-rose bouquet with boutonniere, and 12 photos. “We wanted to do it a little more our way this time,” Marcie says, flashing a back tattoo that reads family. “This was a little more us.”

Vegas’s commitment to recommitment is growing. For Evarts, couples renewing vows represents a 10 percent jump in business. At his Little White Wedding Chapel, he says, overall business is up by about a third. And at nearby Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, vow renewals constitute 40 percent of the business. As with a first-time walk down the aisle, renewals can come with all the kitschy Vegas fixings: an Elvis, Spock, or Marilyn Monroe impersonator as the officiant, and a Hawaiian, Liberace, or gangster theme. Plus, there’s plenty of fun on the Strip to keep your guests entertained and out of your hair during your special weekend.

“Vow renewals are where the real opportunity in the future is,” Evarts says. According to him, 100,000 couples tie the knot in Las Vegas every year, but 40 million people visit the city—and 78 percent of them are married. “So instead of 100,000 unmarried couples,” he says, “you have a potential market of 15 million couples who are eligible for vow renewal.”

It seems strange that Las Vegas, the US city most unabashedly associated with sin, hosts nearly five percent of the nation’s nuptials. But the Vegas wedding has deep roots in Americana. Perhaps that is why so many A-list celebrities choose to walk down the aisles of our city’s chapels, to have their moment to declare love like a “normal” American.

“There’s no place else like Vegas, and there’s no better way to show your love for someone than by getting married,” says Little White Wedding Chapel owner Charolette Richards, who officiated the nuptials of Britney Spears, Joan Collins, and Bruce Willis and Demi Moore (“I didn’t even know who they were,” she says. “I have never felt somebody else’s love so strong.”). Among other Hollywood heavyweights who have done their chapel “I dos” here: Angelina Jolie, who married Billy Bob Thornton in a $189 ceremony at Little Church of the West in 2000; Richard Gere, who wed Cindy Crawford at the same chapel on December 12, 1991; and singer Sinead O’Connor, who married Barry Herridge this winter in a December 8 drive-thru (she chose a pink Cadillac) at A Little White Wedding Chapel. Mickey Rooney, however, takes the cake. He married in Vegas seven times in various locations: Betty Jane Rase in 1944, Martha Vickers in 1949, Elaine Mahnken in 1952, Barbara Ann Thomason in 1958, Marge Lane in 1967, Carolyn Hockett in 1969, and Jan Chamberlin in 1978. Chamberlin hit the jackpot. Their 33-year union has outlasted all of Rooney’s other marriages combined.