Weird weddings: Viva Love Vegas

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Mar 3, 2002 | by LUCY BROADBENT

The bride is nervous. She's biting the nails on one hand while the groom holds the other - and he's looking a little queasy himself. Tim and Ami have decided to turn their wedding into the ride of their lives - they're getting married on one of the biggest roller coaster rides in Las Vegas. And from where they're standing, the corkscrew turns are looking awfully scary.

"Life is a series of ups and downs, so we thought it'd be appropriate to get married on a roller coaster," says Ami, 29, whose only concession to a white wedding is her knuckles. "Neither of us are formal so it suits our personalities to do something different."

These days, the crowd that flocks to Las Vegas to tie the knot is certainly different as weddings in The City of Lights are increasingly taking an eccentric turn. True love, Vegas-style, means saying "I do" in anything from a gorilla suit to a 1959 Cadillac at the "Drive Thru". Flowers and frills are out. Roller coasters are in. "I should think there'll be a reaction when our families see the pictures," says Tim, after the minister pronounces them man and wife. The ceremony was conducted while the coaster was stationary. The minister had tried saying the lines as it hurtled through the air at 80mph for another couple, but the words got swept away on the wind and had to be repeated at the end to make sure they were married. Tim, 32, an oilfield salesman from Louisiana, insists they are no less serious about each other because they're not getting married in church.

"It doesn't mean our love for each other is flippant just because our wedding day is fun. We wanted to get married because we want to start a family and where we come from it isn't acceptable to just live together. Going on a roller coaster is a fun thing that we can look back on when we're older and smile at."

Last year over 123,000 people came to Vegas to get married - almost half of them will have lost their sense of humour by now as they look back on the occasion as 40 per cent will be divorced.

But despite the statistics the gambling town in the middle of the Nevada desert still holds its title as the romance capital of the States and its busiest days of the year are New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day.

Here, thousands of people flock to the schmaltzy wedding chapels lining The Strip to say "I do".

Minister Charolette Richards is the owner of five wedding chapels and a hot air balloon - complete with organ and seating for 12. She has seen the trend for outrageous wedding ceremonies develop. "There is a vogue to have weddings in strange places," she explains. "I don't know why. A lot of people enjoy the Drive Up Wedding Window - for $50 they don't even have to get out of the car. A lot of people like our Elvis ceremony, which is a bit more expensive. And for $600, including the organist and pilot, the couple can say 'I do' 300ft over Vegas in a hot air balloon. I call it the 'Little White Chapel in the Sky'. It's very romantic." Charolette's performed weddings in helicopters, aeroplanes, convertibles and boats, at the top of bungee jumps, water-slides and mountains and on horseback and motorcycles.

She was also responsible for Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's midnight wedding ceremony, for Frank Sinatra's to Mia Farrow, all four of Mickey Rooney's, Bette Midler's and a host of celebrity nuptials.

Dolores and Nick pull into the Little White Chapel at 10am in a limousine. They're early. Elvis (well, his impersonator) hasn't arrived.

They booked an Elvis wedding the day before and it will be one of 30 ceremonies Charolette will perform in one day. When Elvis turns up with his karaoke machine, Dolores and Nick are telling Charolette that they're such huge fans of the King that they'd never considered having any other kind of wedding.

The King walks Dolores, dressed in white, down the aisle. After Charolette has asked them if they promise to love and honour each other for the rest of their lives, he sings them Love Me Tender and, of course, Viva Las Vegas.

"We've been coming to Vegas every year for the last 10 years," says Dolores, 54, a teacher from Long Island, New York. "We come here to gamble - last year we went home with $16,000. We began planning our vacation last March, then I came home one day and Nick had written in the newspaper 'Let's get married'." "We decided to make it an Elvis wedding," says Nick, 69, a retired detective, then adds: "We thought, what the heck, let's make it something different." The Little White Chapel is full of American kitsch and is festooned with flowers that look almost real and fake candles that really twinkle.

The exterior is particularly well-decorated as this is where cars can pull up at the Drive Thru Wedding Window to proclaim life-long love over the gear stick.

Eighteen-year-old Alvin Withers and 19-year-old Pamela Bails pull up at the window in a convertible limousine complete with an "I Wed U" licence plate.

Six airmen from the Nellis Airforce Base, a military station just 20 miles out of town where Alvin is stationed as an airman, are packed in alongside them.