Love in Vegas

Peijin Han met Yang Wang on League of Legends, a popular online game played by millions. While Han posed for her portrait, Wang looked on in a navy blue suit. “My English isn’t great,” he admitted when asked about their wedding. “So you can ask my girlfriend.” It dawned on him. “No, my wife!”

(Left) The vintage gloves of Katy Leighfield. She first met her husband, Andy Nicholls, when they were kids in England, 27 years ago. “I always had a crush on her,” Nicholls says, but he wasn’t sure if it was reciprocated. (For the record, it was: “He was crap at reading signs,” Leighfield says.) Then life happened. They went off to University, and Leighfield moved to Australia for 13 years. One day, they reconnected through Facebook, and then they fell in love. Dressed in matching powder-blue outfits, which Katy sourced through both vintage and mainstream shops, they say of their Vegas wedding: “It’s more us.”

(Right) Dorothy Chamber-Smith married James Horan in the backseat of A Little White Wedding’s Pink Cadillac. “We wanted something special, just for the two of us,” she says of their 7-minute ceremony, where she wore a dress and veil by Needle & Thread. Chamber-Smith and Horan have been together for 10 years. Traveling from West Sussex, England, Vegas is just a stop on their American adventure: after this, they are trekking south to the Grand Canyon.

Charolette Richards, the owner and grand dame of A Little White Wedding Chapel, with her poodle Franswai. Says one of the chapel’s three Elvises: “She’s a Las Vegas legend.”

Reneika Robles gazes upon her ring in A Little White Wedding Chapel’s dress rental shop, right after marrying in front of a crowd of family and friends (Robles’s gown is her own). Before the ceremony, she cried tears of joy.

Miss Charolette is in her mid-eighties, but if you ask her, she’s “21.” Her origin story: In the 1950s she fell in love, and got married. Her husband took her to Kentucky and promptly dumped her with his parents. “Six months later, he wrote a letter and said, ‘Would you come to Las Vegas?’” So Richards took the car, their three children, and drove West. She waited for days and days at the Stardust Hotel. He never showed up.

Thanks to a stranger she met while pacing outside her motel, she got a job working at a wedding chapel. She worked there for several years. One day, A Little White Wedding Chapel went up for sale. A friend lent her $50,000 for a deposit, and she bought it.

Over the next few decades, Vegas turned from a wild frontier into a boomtown, commoditizing eroticism and excess. And Miss Charolette turned one chapel into five. She added a beauty salon, a rent-a-wedding dress shop, a rent-a-tux shop, a flower shop. In 1991, she added the Tunnel of Love, a drive thru chapel where you could wed in your own car. At one time, she even had a hot air balloon. With a hot air balloon song! “In my magical balloon, our hearts will go soaring, you and I. We’re going to get married in the little white wedding chapel in the sky. We vow to each other that we’ll never ever part, as long as we live I’ll never give you an achy breaky heart.” But then she heard about a tragic hot air balloon accident, where everyone onboard died. Miss Charolette sold her flying chapel soon after.

On February 14, 2019, Miss Charolette arrives to A Little White Wedding Chapel later than she likes, due to a funeral. She wants to know where the pianist is, where the violinist is, and wait, did someone say Elvis was looking for her? Franswai, her poodle with red painted nails and a pink tutu, trots alongside her. They make a sudden stop in the waiting room. “Have you been married?” she says to everyone, anyone.

Christina Garcia and her now-husband are high school sweethearts. The LA County couple’s plan after their ceremony? Back to the Cosmopolitan to play the Titanic and Sex and the City slot machines.

Three generations of women—bride Maryamawit Asebe, her daughter, Neya, and grandmother Belaynesh Desta—pose against the Chapel walls.

Sam O’Neal identifies with butterflies. “I am a flighty one. I am known for taking off when things get hard,” she says. But then she met Steven. He was a bartender, she, a bar regular. He was in the Air Force, she was in the Army. Now, “he’s the perch I don’t ever want to fly away from.” Here, she poses on a butterfly shaped bench.

A camera, jutting out of the muraled wall of the M.J. Chapel (named after its most famous visitor, Michael Jordan).

Ida Stanley, from Augusta, Maine, smokes a cigarette while waiting for her groom, Lushie. Her future mother-in-law fans her veil.

Dan Xie traveled to Las Vegas from Hunan Province, China. She spoke limited English, however, her friend was able to answer why she decided to wed in Vegas: “Tourism!”

According to the Little White Wedding Chapel staff, the space is immensely popular amongst Chinese tourists.

Some think there’s a type that gets married here. The shotgunners, the too-many-shots-gunners. But there’s no type. Some couples are old and some are young. Some are from down the street and some are from oceans away. Some wear sweatpants and Nike slides, some wear veils and white dresses. Some have known each other for years, some for months, some are sheepishly vague on a timeline. Some just want something quick. Hell, some just want something inexpensive—the average American wedding now costs over $30,000. A Little White Wedding Chapel package ranges from $50 to $800.

Most, though? They just want a ceremony that’s. . .fun. “I love, love Elvis,” one bride says. “If it’s good enough for Britney, it’s good enough for me,” another shrugs.

Getting married at A Little White Wedding is a choose your own adventure-style experience. Door one? The backseat of a baby pink Cadillac, with a license plate that says “4 LVIS.” Door two? Chapel L’Amour, that, with its heart-shaped love seats, gilded Roman pillars, and landscape mural, looks like Liberace, Michelangelo, and Bob Ross did a decor collaboration. Door three? The M.J. Chapel, where Michael Jordan married Juanita Vanoy at 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning in 1989. Door four? The original, traditional chapel, with rosy stained glass windows, white wooden benches, and a healthy contingent of cherubs.

On February 14, a steady stream of brides flow in and out of all them. There are tears of joy, scowls of disappointment, sighs of relief. Some arrive with friends in a limo, or party bus. More arrive with just immediate family, or a trusted confidante. Plenty of couples don’t come with any witnesses at all. Elvis, or the staff photographer, act as the legally required one.

The interior of Chapel L’Amour, a Little White Wedding Chapel’s largest ceremony space. The red heart balloons are a special touch for Valentine’s Day.

(Right) Bride Lisa Lakey in the M.J. Chapel. Her soon-to-be husband, Chad Carey, rests his hand on her shoulder.

A Little White Wedding Chapel offers a dress rental. The room is extensive, featuring racks and racks of gowns, veils, shoes, and hats. Here, Candace Brouillard tries on the gown she will eventually wear for her wedding.

Brouillard met Douglas Siebert at a repair shop near Parry Sound, Canada (a few hours north of Toronto). They began chatting, and Brouillard, a widow, realized something. “I hadn’t laughed this hard in years.” Siebert jokes he had a different selling point: “I had a lake without a boat and she had a boat without a lake.”

There are those, however, who don’t want the King’s kitsch, or photographic proof. They only want each other and the approval of a higher power. So Miss Charolette will just grab the closest neutral body. It can be the desk clerk. It can be the dress attendant. And on February 14, 2019, at 10:32 p.m., it can be a writer.

The couple pulls up through the Tunnel of Love in a silver car. He drives. She sits in the back, nursing a baby. Agewise, they are young. Lifewise, they aren’t—one was married before, the other married twice. “Do you have a ring?” Miss Charolette asks. “No,” he answers.

Miss Charolette recites the vows, and they repeat them, craning over headrests to lock eyes. When he fumbles the words slightly, she smiles and gently rocks their child.

“By the power vested in me in the state of Nevada, I pronounce you legally married, husband and wife,” Miss Charolette says softly. “Now, I don’t know how you are going to kiss her, but you gotta kiss her.”

He stretches over the seat and strokes her face. She presses her lips against his, a tear streaming down her cheek. When they let go, they laugh. They just got married—in under three minutes.

And then they speed off onto South Las Vegas Boulevard, as man and wife, as loners and dreamers, as sacramenters and sinners, the neon signs illuminating their way to a life unknown.

Bride Phasinee Samrejkij is originally from Bangkok, Thailand. She married a gentleman from Los Angeles, with her friend acting as witness.