The Perpetual Tourist

I love Nevada. Reno and Las Vegas are both fantastic places to vacation on the cheap or have a really luxurious stay, and there’s never a shortage of entertainment. They’re also world famous for being a hot wedding destination — but do you want to have your wedding there?

I also write for a site called AisleDash that covers all things wedding, and we hear from brides and grooms all the time who are so fed up with their wedding planning that they want to just drop everything and go elope in Nevada. Many of them end up doing just that.

When you stay in a major hotel in Vegas, there are two guarantees: it will have a casino and it will have a wedding chapel. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find Sunday services in Vegas, but there are chapels everywhere just for the purpose of getting you hitched in a hurry.

Nevada is a convenient place to get married, because there’s no waiting period for marriage licenses like many other states require. In fact, it’s so easy to get married in Vegas, you can even go to a drive-thru window and leave a newlywed. For some couples, this is perfect. It’s low-stress, simple, and cheap. But for couples who dream of having a fairytale-style romantic wedding in Vegas, I say, don’t kid yourselves.

Vegas is fun, exciting, and sexy, but it is not romantic. Do you really want to exit the chapel after saying your vows only to open the door to a smoky casino full of drunk tourists? And where do you suppose you’ll do your wedding photos? You only get to rent the chapel for an hour, because there will be others lined up behind you, and the only place you’ll find any privacy is in your hotel room, unless you shell out big bucks to rent a fancy party suite. Okay, if you have that kind of wedding budget, then I suppose you can have a nice wedding in Vegas. But why bother, when the same budget would go a lot farther someplace farther away from all the drunk tourists?

If you’ve never had dreams of a perfect wedding and you just want to have a laid back ceremony surrounded by friends, then a Vegas wedding could be ideal. After tying the knot, you can run around the city with all your buddies, seeing shows and going up against the one-armed bandits. As a guest, that’s the kind of wedding I’d love to attend. It’s just that most brides have different visions of how their weddings should be. But a honeymoon in Vegas might be just the ticket to follow your fairytale wedding somewhere else.