Getting Married in Las Vegas

There are dates we never forget. One of them, is when you get married. For being such a special day, you wish nothing but the best and if possible, having a wedding that reminds you of a romantic movie. Las Vegas has always been the magic city that transforms weddings into the perfect romantic movie, just by the unusual way that if you decide to get married one day to another, you can and you still can get beautiful locations and chapels available to satisfy all your wishes. The easy bureaucracy process it’s another advantage of getting married in Vegas. If you always dreamed of having a wedding in Vegas, keep reading to know everything about it, through my own experience of saying “I do” in Vegas.

Tying the knot in Las Vegas was a dream come true for me. Having a quick ceremony to symbolise the commitment to our love was what I always wanted. I knew I wouldn’t be the type of woman that would spend hours, days, months preparing everything for a big wedding. That’s just not me! In Vegas, the process is quick and in just two days you can get married. Although it’s an easy process, there are still some details that should be taken into consideration. So what should you know, if you want to get married in Vegas?

BOOKING THE CHAPEL

There are an infinite number of chapels in Vegas that offer different packages, so it gets pretty hard to understand which one to go for, especially when you are a foreigner and you have no clue about whatsoever!

What I have learned from my own experience is that the best thing to do is to book 2 weeks in advance with the hotel that you are staying in. They provide all the service without you having to go through the difficult decision of choosing the chapel. All the hotels in Vegas The Strip, have their own chapel and they can always upgrade you to an executive or presidential suite room.

In my case, my husband and I booked the wedding 3 days before, so we didn’t manage to have the hotel chapel, but still the hotel where we stayed, The Venetian, when we said we were about to get married, they upgrade us to the executive suite room. The view was magnificent!

If you will be in the same position as my husband and I, that you will have to choose the chapel, here are the best chapels in Vegas:

• The Little Vegas Chapel;
• A Little White Chapel;
• The Little Church of the West;
• A Special Memory Wedding Chapel;
• Chapel of the Flowers.

A Little White Chapel is where Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck got married this week. My husband and I, got married in Chapel of the Flowers.

CHOOSING THE WEDDING PACKAGE

One task that I found really difficult was choosing the wedding package. Because in Vegas, weddings are a big business, the chapel tries to sell you everything and if you don’t make it clear what you want and what you expect, you end up robbed like it happened to us.

Makeup your mind of how you want the ceremony to be. Do you want a photographer or not, how many pictures do you want, what location do you want your pictures to be taken from, do you want the chapel to provide a limousine or not, do you need the rental of the wedding dress or the tuxedo through the chapel, do you want the chapel to do the bouquet of flowers?

You have to ask every single thing to the chapel, if not, you will pay for something that doesn’t match your expectations. That was what happened to me and my husband. In the Chapel of the Flowers, we went for the Magnolia Chapel Specialty Package – Intimate Elopement. The package costed $899 and even though it included a personal wedding planner, now looking back, I think she could have done a better job, for three reasons:

• The package includes pictures, but it’s just a few pictures and everything in just 20 minutes. I thought I’d get more beautiful pictures. From the 50 pictures we got, which were delivered in colour, black and white and sepia, I just like 10 of them. For a special day like this, I was really disappointed.
• You have to pay extra to get the watermark of the chapel out of the pictures, That costed an extra $700!
• The cake they say it’s included on the website. The wedding planner didn’t say anything about it and only now by looking at their website, I realised that we should have had one, and we didn’t!

Nonetheless, there were positive things: the limousine service, the beautiful bouquet of flowers, the nice minister that married us (her name was Genie, like “Genie in the Bottle”) and the video of our wedding.

BUREAUCRACY

In Vegas, you won’t get married if you don’t have a wedding licence done by the Marriage License Bureau. If you want your wedding to be recognised, you really ought to get one. Also the chapel will ask you for one. This is the most important step when getting married in Vegas.

So, here is the step by step of the bureaucracy process in Vegas:

1. Go to the Marriage License Bureau website and fill in the online Marriage License Application form;
2. Next day you have to go to the Marriage License Bureau and get the Marriage Licence. Take your passport with you. You will have to swear that everything is legitimate and do a quick wedding vote to officialise the document. The Marriage License Bureau is open from 8am until 12am;
3. The day of your wedding, take the document with you and give it to the chapel or the minister;
4. The minister will certify the licence within 7 days and send it to the Marriage License Bureau.
5. Once the Marriage License Bureau receives the licence, the next day it will be ready. You can go there and get the document yourself or they will have it sent to the address you gave to them when you filled the online Marriage License Application.

The process is quick, but I would advise you to stay at least 2 weeks in Vegas, for the fact that after getting married, it can take up to 7 days to have the wedding licence certified by the minister that carries out the ceremony. Because we live in the Canary Islands, the post can get lost, so I knew I didn’t want the licence sent through post. I rather preferred go myself to get the licence. Luckily, my husband stayed longer, since I had to return to work, and he got the licence for us

Regarding the bureaucracy that now I will have in Europe, after being married in Vegas, I don’t know yet. I will start next week to take care of the process of changing my documents from single to married. Once the whole process is concluded, I will update this article, but most probably that will only happen next year, since I have 3 countries where I have to change my documents: Portugal, Spain and UK (I’m not looking forward to deal with this).

RENTING THE WEDDING DRESS OR TUXEDO

If you need to rent the wedding dress or the tuxedo, you can do it at the Creative Bridal Wear. My husband rented his tuxedo there and they were super attentive and they made sure that the size was right. In 1 day everything was ready.

I would advise to rent minimum 1 day before the ceremony, just to give them time to do the necessary alterations. Renting the gown or tuxedo and marrying on the same day, it could mean bad pictures, because they didn’t have time to do the alterations and you won’t look your best.

Once everything is decided, they’ll deliver everything to the hotel where you’re staying. Easy!

CONCLUSION

Getting married is so emotional, but it’s a beautiful experience and Las Vegas does add the right “happy feeling” to it! I will never forget this day! I will always remember everyone shouting congratulations at us, on the streets! It was a magical day!

If you’re about to get married or planning a wedding, I wish you the most beautiful wedding day filled with joy, love and tears of happiness! Love is still the most beautiful thing in the world! Love give us hope and hope help us go through the obstacles of life. Without love and hope, we are like dead souls.

Well, enough with my romantic speech! I truly hope this article will help anyone that is planning to get married in Las Vegas. If you have any questions, leave a comment right down bellow.

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