Wedding chapels look for PR splash as Vegas tries to clean up industry

By Joe Schoenmann

Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Amid the traditional Valentine’s Day wedding crush, some Las Vegas chapel owners hope a new city proposal creates a positive public relations splash to erase a year of bad publicity — and, in so doing, reverses a three-year decline in local weddings.

The reality, however, is that a proposed ordinance to place downtown Las Vegas’ numerous quickie-wedding chapels in the same category as strip clubs is fueling anew animosities among chapels that in the past have spawned sometimes dangerous fights among chapel representatives trolling for business outside the courthouse.

The city’s Finance and Business Services Department, which is seeking input until late this month from chapel owners, has not finalized a proposed ordinance. But the measure’s initial form seems just what the minister ordered.

Under the proposal, chapel handbillers would have to stay 100 feet from the front entrance to the Clark County Marriage Bureau. And chapel owners would have to obtain “privileged” licenses, meaning they would have to pay for employees’ criminal background checks in addition to other fees associated with the licenses. Other privileged business categories include astrology, auctions, gaming, gun sales, hypnotists, liquor sales, massage therapists, pawn shops, rock concerts and teen dances.

Established chapels would be grandfathered in and would not be required to obtain the privileged license. Even so, Glen Davis, co-owner of Vegas Adventure Wedding Chapel, is strongly against the proposal.

“I think it’s very vague and the cost could be prohibitive, especially to smaller chapels,” he said.

Wedding chapel business licenses in Las Vegas now cost $400 annually, according to a city spokesman. A privileged license would add roughly $350 to the cost.

Davis and others also worry that the proposal could undermine Las Vegas’ reputation as a hub of wedding chapels by prompting chapels to open shop in outside of Las Vegas inClark County, which doesn’t require the privileged license.

Though Davis hasn’t forgotten the wedding chapel controversies of the past five years, he says the situation has improved so much that it’s largely a nonissue today.

“There are still some problems, but it’s 90 percent better,” Davis said.

It’s difficult, though, to understate how bad it had become.

Last spring one chapel handbiller was arrested and charged with attempted murder in the stabbing of a handbiller from a competing chapel. Chapel owners kept files filled with pages of complaints they had made to Las Vegas police about handbillers’ intimidating behavior.

Smiling couples leaving the county Marriage Bureau, at 201 Clark Ave. in the Regional Justice Center, complained about being accosted by handbillers. Others told horror stories of the shabby treatment they received from chapel operators, especially those of the Garden of Love.

Last fall one of the co-owners of the Garden of Love was arrested and charged with burglary and other offenses after allegedly taking a high-tech printing machine from a convention after the merchant refused to sell it to her at a large discount. A hearing on that case is scheduled for March 24 in Justice Court.

The City Council held a two-day special hearing, something of a minicourt, to hear the case against the Garden of Love and its owners, who were trying to keep their business license. In the end, the council voted the Garden of Love out of business.

No one thought eliminating one business, even one that was the source of as many complaints as the Garden of Love, could remake the chapel industry’s image — and reality. That was going to take a city ordinance with teeth, some said.

“Frankly, I’m surprised that anyone is objecting to it,” said Cliff Evarts, owner of Vegas Wedding Chapel.

Second in the world only to Istanbul, Turkey, in the number of weddings performed annually, Clark County hosted 108,000 weddings last year, down from 112,000 in 2006, continuing an annual drop that began after nuptials peaked at 128,500 in 2004.

“That’s huge,” Evarts added. “The industry has been battered.”

There has been talk of extending the hours of the county’s marriage license bureau to a 24/7 schedule, its format before the hours were reduced in 2006 to 8 a.m. to midnight. But though some think the longer hours could translate to more weddings, Linda Foresta, the bureau’s administrative manager, said the hours have nothing to do with the downturn.

“People just aren’t getting married as much anymore,” she said, noting that it’s a nationwide trend.

Even Valentine’s Day, Foresta said, has taken a hit. Historically, Feb. 13 and 14 have been so busy that the Marriage Bureau hires extra security and has more people on staff to handle the hordes of newlyweds-to-be. That remained the case this year, Foresta said, despite the fact that 2007’s numbers were down substantially from previous years.

Over those two days in 2007, 804 couples received marriage licenses at the bureau, about 36 percent more than in an average two-day period last year. Just one year earlier, however, the two-day Valentine’s marriage crush saw an 82 percent increase over the average. And in 2005, the increase over the average was 85 percent.

“We were pretty surprised” by 2007’s numbers, Foresta said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen this year.”

Even with that trend, Las Vegas still holds more than 4 percent of the country’s weddings.“And that’s more market share then we’ve ever had,” Foresta said.

Local chapel owners hope the recent years’ decreases are more of a blip than a trend. The new ordinance and the image enhancement resulting from it, they say, could be just the thing to push the wedding numbers back up.

“I think creating a privileged license is the first step in rebuilding the image of the wedding industry here,” Evarts said. “We’ve got some work to do.”