Vegas wedding industry shaken by cancellations after terrorist strikes

Ken Ritter

Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2001 | 10:36 a.m.

The attacks that toppled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon last week also rattled the Las Vegas wedding industry, leaving some marriage planners stranded at the altar.

"We're all shook up," said Cathy Carlson, a wedding planner who lost half her 10 daily bookings last week at the Elvis-themed Graceland Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip.

"First it was people who couldn't get here," Carlson said. "Now it's people who are afraid to fly. We've had a lot of cancellations."

Las Vegas, which calls itself the "marriage capital of the world," saw a steep drop in marriage license applications immediately after terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Cheryl Vernon, a supervisor in the Clark County Marriage License Bureau, said that for three days after the Federal Aviation Administration stopped air travel, the number of marriage licenses dropped about 40 percent compared with the same dates last year.

On Sept. 12, that number was 141, down 41.5 percent from the 241 issued on the same date in 2000.

Vernon said a combined 994 marriage licenses were issued Friday, Saturday and Sunday -- down 20 percent from the 1,243 issued on the comparable weekend last year. Las Vegas issued 122,902 licenses in 2000 - an average of almost 337 a day.

"You have to figure that people had to get here," Vernon said. "Vegas relies on the airlines."

Among the first to arrive Sunday after the skies opened again was Paul Cowland, 32, and Ann Marie Quinn, 26, both of London. They plan to marry Thursday.

"We were planning this huge event at a manor in the countryside with swans and the whole bit and then we realized how much money we were spending," Cowland said. "That's when we decided to buy our tickets to come to Las Vegas instead."

The soon-to-be betrothed couple posed for photos Tuesday in front of the Statue of Liberty replica at New York-New York hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

"I wasn't nervous to fly," Quinn said.

Brandon Reed, general manager of the Candlelight Wedding Chapel farther down Las Vegas Boulevard, observed a difference in the way customers from Europe and Japan are responding to the terrorist attack.

"The British and Germans are pretty resilient to terrorism," he said. "They're bound and determined not to let the terrorists take away their fundamental right to travel."

Reed said Japanese customers appear more skittish, canceling weddings into next year.

Bonnie Brunson, chapel director at the Little Church of the West on Las Vegas Boulevard near McCarran International Airport, said business last week was like musical chairs.

"The airport was like a boneyard," Brunson said. "We had a lot of people who couldn't get in. Others drove. Some are afraid to fly. We're still getting cancellations."

But Brunson said the chapel still filled most of its 18 wedding slots per day -- bolstered by local residents marrying in the face of uncertainty and military couples anticipating a retaliatory strike against terrorists.