If you were to elope tomorrow, where would you go? Chances are high that it’s Vegas. They don’t call it the Wedding Capital of the World for nothing—dubbed so in 1953 by the London Daily Herald, in 2022 Clark County issued its five millionth marriage license. Today about four percent of the city’s income is attributed to weddings. And that includes big names: celebrities from Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow to Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton have all tied the knot in Sin City, and you probably recall some more recent star weddings there, too.
For Vegas, weddings were a strategic tourism push. By 1931 the state of Nevada relaxed its marriage laws, tossing out waiting periods and blood test requirements. Couples flocked to the desert for their quickie nuptials, and intrepid resort publicists sent announcements to their newspapers back home to promote the destination. More Vegas chapels started being built in the 1950s, including the famous Little White Wedding Chapel, and today there are about 100 in total. “You can get your marriage license seven days a week, 8 am to midnight, 365 days a year,” says Melody Willis-Williams, president of Wed Famously, operator of Little White Wedding Chapel, Vegas Weddings, and Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel. “And you can literally get married that same day.”
“You can get your marriage license seven days a week, 8 am to midnight, 365 days a year.”
Compared to months (if not years) of planning and hassle, elopements are virtually stress-free. “You just kind of have to know your date, know your partner, know when you're coming and where you’re staying, and we can pretty much handle the rest,” says Willis-Williams. They’re split into two types: micro-weddings, which include close friends and family, and the traditional intimate, furtive, affair. It’s the latter that’s especially appealing to the well-known.
But though they are perhaps the easiest weddings to have—besides just going to a courthouse—for a celebrity elopement there’s still some extras to consider. Security and privacy most of all. It’s also an all-hands-on-deck affair for the chapels. Willis-Williams isn’t usually involved in much of the day-to-day operations of the properties, but for big names and high-demand dates like the recent 12/31/23 (123123), she gets into the mix. “There's a lot of moving parts,” she says.
We recently spoke with Willis-Williams about Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s wedding at the Little White Wedding Chapel, Usher’s wedding to Jennifer Goicoechea at Vegas Weddings’s The Fast Lane drive thru, and what it’s like to be a celebrity elopement planner.
Thrillist: When big names come to you for their Vegas elopement, what do you have to consider beyond a regular ceremony?
Melody Willis-Williams: Those are a little bit stricter in the way that we have to plan their ceremonies, because we have to figure out, OK, based on the time of this, are we open to the public? We want to be very respectful of their experience too. Because weddings are more than a job for us. We absolutely love weddings, so we care about that.
We bring in additional security. Sometimes you even do a walkthrough with their security before they arrive, just to make sure everything's good. We make sure the last wedding has cleared out before we close to the public, and then we try to figure out with them how many guests we're going to have and what range of time we should be expecting them. Because it's a little bit different with celebrity schedules, right? They're not just booking an 11 o'clock and they're going to be on time. It doesn't work that way. So we look at a range or a block and a chunk of time, and we know they're going to arrive between that time frame.
Are there NDAs?
Certainly, it's their experience to share. Once the marriage is filed—and it must be, legally—it's a matter of public record, but we would never break the news beforehand.
It sounded like J.Lo and Ben Affleck did theirs very much on the fly, though. Were you able to pre-arrange anything for them?
We had, I would say, roughly a 30 minute heads up, and the chapel was wrapping up for the day. So the good news is we were able to clear out the last wedding, and then we just stayed open because they got there right before midnight. They still needed to get dressed, which we didn't know until they got there. We famously now have Ben's bathroom where he got changed. J.Lo actually got ready in the chapel's staff break room bathroom. So it was a little chaotic. To tell you the truth, it was probably the smallest entourage I think J.Lo's probably traveled with, but they had some of their crew and stylists with them.
They got married inside of the Little White Wedding Chapel, but they had to have pictures of the iconic pink Cadillac in the drive thru. Once it was over, we just kind of let them have their moment. The chapel was closed to the public at that point, so they just kind of walked around and took pictures.
So it's unusual that they changed in the bathrooms, I gather. Where do people usually change?
See, that’s the thing with what I call rock and roll weddings, which are quick and inexpensive: You come dressed and ready. There's just not a lot of time, and there isn't a lot of changing room. We can do weddings literally every 15 minutes. We can do up to like four or eight in an hour, depending on where they’re getting married, because there's a variety of venues. So it moves pretty quickly. So everybody had to come dressed and ready, but when J.Lo calls you just kind of let J.Lo do her thing, you know?
And Ben’s pink bathroom is now memorialized with a sign. Whose idea was that?
They were coming straight from wherever they were—I'm pretty sure it was the airport—and they needed to get dressed. And all we had were bathrooms. So Ben goes into the public restroom that the guests normally use. And he takes a selfie. And, you know, the bathroom is a little bit older, it's got some wallpaper on it, it's got some graffiti chiseled into the mirror. But he takes this selfie, and it was featured in People magazine.
Everybody else was horrified. But I thought hey, we need to just leave the bathroom exactly the way it is and put a sign up and call it Ben's Bathroom with his picture. Everybody's gonna want to go in there and take selfies. And lo and behold!
Do you know why they chose you?
Everybody chooses Little White Wedding Chapel. Michael Jordan even chose us. You have to understand the appeal of Little White goes beyond anything you could imagine. The founder, Ms. Charolette Richards, was a marketing genius in her day. Once she put Joan Collins on that sign it was over, then she put up Michael Jordan's name. You go all the way back to Mickey Rooney being married there, and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Then you hit the nineties, you’ve got Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Freddie Prinze Jr. It just continues.
Elvis and Priscilla got married in Vegas. Do people still ask for Elvis as an officiant these days? Is Elvis still… in the building?
Elvis has had a comeback like you can't believe. We have about seven Elvis's—including one female Elvis we call Shelvis—that service all three chapels and on big dates some of those Elvises will have 18 ceremonies in a day. There's a huge population that comes over from Europe, and Elvis is totally a thing for them. They love Elvis in the UK. And it’s a younger demographic. They’ll have their big wedding with their friends and family, maybe in their local hometown in the UK, but when they come to Vegas for their honeymoon, they're dying for that Vegas experience. Even though they’re recently married, they’ll renew their vows with Elvis.
Usher had an Elvis, and that kind of threw me. But that's what they wanted: To get married by Elvis in a white Cadillac in front of that “Love in the Fast Lane” sign.
That drive thru is so fun. I can see why he would want it there.
We actually have both drive thrus in this town. Little White was the pioneer of the drive through industry for weddings in around the ‘80s. Ms Richards, who's passed on, was doing weddings, and she got this idea because she had an elderly couple that found it difficult to get out of the car and get married, so she installed the drive up window so they never had to get out of the car. So Vegas Weddings loved that idea when we were building our flagship location, and called it Love in the Fast Lane. We acquired Little White Wedding Chapel in 2022.
So what's the most elaborate wedding you've had to plan for a celebrity?
Actually, those are the most kind of low key to be honest with you. It's more about just making the timing, the security and the discretion work. If I had to say most elaborate, I'm definitely going to go with Usher's wedding. Again, it was planned very quickly, and with security involved, but he had a huge turnout from his family. So it was so it was larger than probably most of them, and they both had a very specific aesthetic that they were going for: the neon lights, the Fast Lane, and a gorgeous vintage white Cadillac.
And you know those cans you have on the back of the car? They had cute little ones that they personalized. Their kids were involved with the ceremony and they had cake—one for the kids, one for the shoot—and Ace of Spades Champagne that they wanted to toast it with. It was really sweet, it was just a way bigger crowd. But the total time that they were here was like 29 minutes. Max.
He came right after the Super Bowl?
Yes, they had to go back and clear out whatever. That's why they couldn't actually disclose exactly what time they were going to be here. We waited probably about an hour past what they originally said, but—we're always going to wait for Usher and his lovely bride, Jenn. But it took longer, but then it was just a siege of people, but it was amazing. We had a total of three or four days to plan that one.
How did you do security for that one, since the Fast Lane drive thru is kind of open?
We actually closed the chapel to the public; it would have been nonstop paparazzi. The truth is, it was kind of funny, because right before the Super Bowl started, there was a suggestion in the air about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift getting married, because they're in Vegas. So everybody was hyper focused on Travis and Taylor that it didn't even occur to them that Usher was gonna get married. Other chapels were posting, come get married with us, Travis. And I'm just sitting back watching it like, boy, oh boy. Monday's gonna come and everybody's gonna be so confused.
Vanita Salisbury is Thrillist's Senior Travel Writer. She crashed a wedding at the Little White Wedding Chapel. There were two Elvises in attendance.
