I know, I know. I’m very mildly agoraphobic, so 60 feels big to me. It bad enough being a damn bridesmaid at that thing. Never again.
The movies would have you believe that Elvii roam wild on the streets of Las Vegas, but I spent a week there and didn’t see a single one.
Guess I should’ve had my wedding there, guaranteed Elvis! 
I originally planned a Vegas wedding because of the cheese factor and ended up with a very traditional one at the Excalibur like SaharaTea mentions. They had several packages available and were extremely accomodating to my whims (I don’t like flowers so they were willing to trade the alotted amount of floral arrangements for extra professional photos. In lieu of a bridal bouquet I carried a family prayerbook laced with ribbons in the colors I’d chosen for the wedding.)
Instead of a reception, we took everyone to the “King Arthurs Jousting Dinner” or whatever it is…it was accomodating for kids and adults. The kids especially loved banging their mugs on the table for refills and I have to confess I loved gnawing all my food by hand, especially after having to be so prim and pretty all day.
Vegas has a little something for everyone, which is what makes it a draw. My husband and I had (have) friends and family coming from all over the place and unfortunately they needed a bit of prodding to get them to all meet up in one place. What’s one place everyone (who isn’t a Mormon) can agree on? (And even they can catch the Smothers Brothers a few times a year…and last time we went Donny and Marie were headlining at the Flamingo!) Las Vegas! HELLO!
This was like 12 years ago and the people that went still tell us what a great time they had - one of the people moved there shortly after and lived there for several years. He really REALLY liked it, lol.
I don’t see why the quiet, simple wedding has to happen in Las Vegas. A friend of mine got married in her living room right here in California. Small, simple, no fuss. Only 5 couples were invited. (Me and my wife being one of them.)
It’s so much harder to call it Sin City these days now that it’s no longer a playground for wiseguys and instead has actual playgrounds, isn’t it? 
Oh the wiseguys are there, believe it.
For about 10 years Vegas was really trying to draw in families so they made things a lot more kid-friendly. That has gone by the wayside as of about two years ago. There is definitely more sin in Sin City and plans for much, much more.
It doesn’t, but that’s no reason why it shouldn’t.
If I were inclined to get married, the only thing keeping me from doing it in Vegas would be the lack of a beach. I’d probably choose Key West instead, but the principle is the same; destination wedding and honeymoon in one place, and an excellent, socially acceptable way to invite only the people you really want, with a minimum of hurt feelings. What’s not to like?
Another thing is that Vegas is really geared towards weddings. If you want to go somewhere and have a quick wedding, you could do it in a lot of places, sure. But in Vegas, the license bureau is open 24 hours a day. There are hairdressers that will come to your hotel room on 2 hours’ notice and do your wedding hairstyle. There are makeup artists that will do the same. There are roaming photographers in the restaurants ready for bridal parties to come in, to snap pictures of your wedding day. It’s all just really convenient and easy. Plus, you can see Penn & Teller. What’s not to love?
I wanted to get married in Vegas by Elvis ( really, who wouldn’t?) but the MOM’s in our lives had a collective bee fly up their nose about that idea.
If we ever recover from this economic craphole and can afford to pay for our children’s weddings, I will give them $1000 each for a wedding in Vegas.
Weddings are such a waste of time.
The groom of the couple that got married ahead of us at the Chapel of the Flowers was dressed as Elvis. The minister wasn’t, though. He just looked like Kojak.
Oh yeah, I forgot to talk about photographers. Most wedding packages, it seems, include a certain number of pictures as part of the deal. The Goliath of Vegas wedding photography is Cashman; they seem to be everywhere. At the same time that you book your package, you also make an appointment with a photographer to see your pictures, usually the day after the wedding. You’ll go into their office, sit down, look at all the pictures, and pick the ones you want copies of. You can also buy a CD with the full-sized digital originals and the copyright so that you can print all the pictures you want. And it only takes 'em a day, instead of weeks like some other photographers. One more potential wedding headache, eliminated by the efficient Vegas wedding machine.
In our case, we couldn’t afford the CD, but some time after our wedding (I think it was two years), they called us and said they were clearing out the older CDs from storage, so we could have ours for a cut-rate price, roughly a fourth of the original asking price. We jumped on that offer, so now we can print lovely huge copies of our wedding pictures.
The wedding pictures that they took at the actual chapel were kind of lackluster, in our case. However, the impromptu pictures that the professional photographer on staff at the Stratosphere restaurant took were fantastic, and we bought a package of those instead. (To be clear, we didn’t arrange for photographs ahead of time, or even make reservations. We just showed up wearing a wedding dress and a tux, respectively, and the staff photographer came up and asked if he could take our pictures.)
We would have married in Vegas, but since I was my parent’s only daughter (their wedding was pretty spare and almost shotgun) and his only brother got married at a courthouse 10 states away, and in the preceding year we had both had major family members die, we decided our families needed a big party.
We didn’t want to have to plan, we didn’t want to have to invite a bunch of people, and we especially didn’t want our moms to throw in their 2¢ (which would have quickly gone beyond 2¢) and we wanted to take our friends somewhere fun and cheap. Everyone had a really good time at our wedding, us included, but we still wish we could have just done Vegas.
You mean, besides Las Vegas itself? 
I could think of a hundred more places I would prefer to go to than that air-conditioned monument to consumerism. But that’s just me. Last time I was there I found the Strip somewhat fascinating but mostly tacky and repelling. It’s like going to a museum of bad art.
My wife and I got married in Vegas a couple of years ago.
We did the ceremony at the Flamingo. The night before we had a “rehersal” dinner at the Imperial. (It was really just a dinner for everyone that managed to make it to LV. We didn’t have any attendants or anything). After the ceremony we had a buffet of appetizers at a rest. nearby.
The whole thing probably cost us somewhere around $2000.00, and that included an open bar at the reception.
LV allowed us to invite a lot of people, but not have to worry at all about them getting into town, finding rooms available, finding transportation, entertaining them, etc. I have family and friends spread all over the nation.
It was beautiful, easy, cheap, and fun. I highly reccomend it to anyone who is looking for a destination wedding on the cheap.
You nailed the reasons I was going to suggest. Living here, I have had lots of family and friends come to Las Vegas to get married for the exact reasons you mention.
- Usually far, far cheaper than the “whole shebang” back home.
- Combo wedding/honeymoon in one nice, inexpensive package.
- You can invite every single person you know because you don’t have to deal with where they are staying or what they will do before and after the ceremony - and not so surprisingly, lots of people love to use the excuse “I HAVE to go to Las Vegas for a wedding…” when they take off work.
- Last couple here wound up getting about 40 people from back home gladly coming to Vegas for the wedding - after the wedding ceremony, they reserved a private section of the buffet at Mandalay Bay and paid the entry for each guest…everybody got to eat whatever they wanted, they hung around for a few hours and got a chance to talk and nobody had to stress about menu or who is sitting where and it turned out great!
- You get hang out with some friends on that day, other friends that night, some family members the next morning - but everyone is entertained and nobody feels slighted if you don’t spend every minute with them. Perfect for those couples with, uh, varied types of friends and family who normally might not mix well in one room for hours on end.
BTW, many later opt for a small reception back home for those who could not make the trip to Las Vegas.
But all in all, Las Vegas makes perfect sense for many people getting married, and almost every single large hotel/casino has wedding planners and packages to fit all budgets. Almost totally stress- free!
True, and I’m no fan of Vegas or the strip, but you can see some awesome shows, night after night, and dine in decent, varied, and relatively inexpensive cuisine.
But a night or two there every 2 decades works okay for me.
The Mrs. and I do find it a convenient place to fly into (more direct, cheaper flights) when we head into the Mojave or Joshua Tree or Coachilla valley.
I was personally not thrilled about the idea of visiting Las Vegas per se (I mean, apart from the excitement of getting married) because I am not interested in gambling or showgirls. However, I was pleasantly surprised that in the two days we were there, we managed to see and do some pretty cool stuff, like the aforementioned Penn & Teller show, and the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton. (Which I sadly hear is no longer there.)
If I may ask, how much was the original asking price?
If I remember correctly, it was in the neighborhood of $800-900, which would include every picture the photographer took and the copyright (a little certificate in case any photo printers question you). The last-chance offer was, as I recall, either $150 or $175.