The Little Chapel of the West, opened in 1942, has seen perhaps the largest number of celebrity weddings in Las Vegas history. Beginning with Mickey Rooney, who married Ava Gardner there the year the chapel opened and continued to return every few years until he wed his eighth wife there in 1978, the chapel has seen a long procession of stars including Judy Garland, Fernando Lamas, Dudley Moore, and most recently, Academy Award winning actors Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie. In June of 1931, the deputy county clerk recorded that a record 117 marriage license applications had been processed that month. Today the marriage license bureau often processes that many applications in a single day. The marriage bureau has its own separate office, open from 8AM to midnight during the week, and 24 hours on weekends and major holidays.
Weddings are the second largest industry in Nevada, and gambling, of course, is the first.
The city is home to large numbers of wedding planners, wedding accessory stores, and 24-hour wedding chapels. Few Las Vegas celebrity marriages, however, endured like that of Clara Bow and Rex Bell. The couple remained married until Bell s death in 1963, while he was running for governor of Nevada. A look at how and why Las Vegas became the wedding capital of the world. Inc. PageWise makes no representations about the content published on this site.