Photo By Natalie Relf
There are few cities in the world that share the kind of diversity Las Vegas enjoys, not just the bodies that people the city, but the sites, the activities, and the experiences. You can jump off the side of an 1149-foot-tall building, eat a three Michelin Star meal, be accosted by hundreds of flyer distribution people, pawn your goods on a cable TV show, see scantily clad girls give it all they’ve got (in a show or on the street), and get married all in one night on the same strip of road. Next to the miniature Elvis that hangs out in front of the Bellagio, the tall ones in the wedding chapels seem a tad lackluster. Unless,you’re looking for the ultimate in Las Vegas kitsch at your wedding.
There is an entire section of Las Vegas Boulevard (LVB) that is nearly as invisible as the
Photo by Natalie Relf
people on it. From St. Louis Ave. all the way to Bonneville on LVB the street sides are dotted with old, and some shoddy, businesses. Peppered in, ONLY on the right side of the road if you are traveling north, is the occasional portal of love, or as some call it, wedding chapel. This particular vicinity owns a saddened, scarred character that is unique to Vegas, and which goes largely unnoticed unless one is in need of a tattoo, a jaunt through the unseemly side of life or a quicky wedding. If you can stomach the overdone, tawdry, undiscriminating sense of decorum that dominates in this dying jungle of the hood, the sad, and the gritty, then you too can create memories to last a lifetime.
Photo by EYEaMUSE
Armed with a digital camera and the exquisitely sharp eye of my best half, we ventured into the land of Vegas-lost yesterday (During the day of course!) to procure these images, which tell the story of a Las Vegas tradition, and the surrounding sadness felt in the living vibrations of the area. Although, it started out as a quirky, fun kind of story after looking deeper we saw the desperation in the eyes of the boulevard inhabitants. The absurdity and jocularity of the dancing Elvis sign was consumed by the heaviness of seeing a young girl in hot pants trying to make a buck in the hot summer sun in front of an adult bookstore. It’s just not your typical wedding scenery. Chapels are haphazardly nestled between peep shows and lawyers. In fact, maybe it’s not so haphazard at all. If you think about it, Vegas isn’t exactly rooted in a history of family values.
Photo by Natalie Relf
Anyway, what IS a cottage industry in Vegas is the idea of having fun till you pay for it! Or pay for having fun, or is it that having fun costs. Pay to play? You play, you pay? I don’t know, but that is exactly what some of these couples are doing. For some people these types of weddings are a necessity, for others it is a choice. Either way, it’s an experience NEVER to be forgotten.
See Flicker photos for the whole story!