Wedding-day blues take on new meaning as power outage hits

Thursday, Aug. 19, 1999 | 11:11 a.m.

Several couples who came to the Las Vegas to be married on Wednesday traded their wedding day jitters for wedding day blues after a small fire at the County Courthouse temporarily closed the Marriage License Bureau.

"We haven't done a wedding yet today," Pat Gassmann, Little Church of the West wedding director, said Wednesday afternoon.

Eleven weddings had to be rescheduled, she said. "People are concerned. They want to be on their honeymoons."

The chapel that is registered as a national historic site conducts an average of 10 weddings a day during the week. Tuesday it had 18.

"Hopefully the appointments for later today already have their licenses," she added.

The courthouse was closed Wednesday after a transformer malfunction burned electrical circuitry shutting the entire computer system down. Normally the Marriage License Bureau is open from 8 a.m. until midnight. To service the anxious couples the bureau temporarily moved its offices midafternoon to the Office of Civil Marriages at 309 S. Third St.

But it was too late for a Tulare, Calif., couple who canceled their Wednesday wedding at the Flamingo Hilton where more traditional weddings are conducted in the outdoor Garden Chapel.

In desperation the couple drove to Mesquite, hoping to get a license, but found the Mesquite Courthouse closed on Wednesdays, Kris LaBuda, chapel manager said.

Another couple from Indiana changed their wedding to today, but had to hold the "post-wedding" dinner Wednesday night for the 31 guests arriving from all over the country.

"Most of the guests don't get their license till they get here," LaBuda said. The Graceland Wedding Chapel, which promotes itself as "home of Ceremonies with the 'King' " was able to go on with five weddings, only having to reschedule one.