Think ahead for 2 a.m. Vegas weddings

LAS VEGAS — Jogging up the stairs of the courthouse, clutching hands and looking tense, Holly Otero and Blain Moos became the last couple to secure a wedding license at midnight Friday, rushing from the airport to the clerk's office before the door shut.

Josh Harris was not so lucky. His flight from Arkansas was delayed in Dallas, killing his chances to surprise his girlfriend with a late-night trip to the court and a witching-hour wedding at the Little White Chapel, which he called after midnight, nearly starting to cry when he realized he would be too late.

There are things people like to do in Las Vegas at 2 a.m. that they cannot do anywhere else, like pulling on a slot machine while their clothes run through the spin cycle, discussing sumo wrestling with a topless circus performer and getting married on an indoor gondola.

But anyone who wants to say "I do" in the middle of the night will now be required to use a bit of forethought.

On Friday, the marriage-license bureau in Las Vegas ended its tradition of staying open 24 hours on Fridays, Saturdays and holidays, limiting licensure to what only in Vegas could be considered the outrageously unfair hours of 8 a.m. to midnight, 365 days a year.

Of course, ending middle-of-the-night marriages in Las Vegas would be akin to shutting down bikini mud wrestling at Gilley's.

"People can still get married," said Stacey Welling, a spokeswoman for Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. "As long as they can find a chapel. They just have to plan to get a license earlier."

The bureau, which began operating a weekend and holiday graveyard shift in 1979, will save $200,000 in the county's $1.4 billion budget by ending the shift, during which Welling said about 5,000 of the 122,000 marriage licenses the county issues each year are acquired.

Charlotte Richards, who owns the Little White Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip, said her coffers would reflect a loss. "I am really upset about it," she said.

She said she conducted 10 to 20 weddings each weekend night, with at least three of those couples needing the marriage-license bureau in the middle of the night.

Furthermore, she said, celebrities who want to wed in Las Vegas do not want to have to stand in line for a license with the rest of the world and enjoy the discretion of post-midnight hours.

She should know, because she said she has married plenty of them, though she would name only a few: Joan Collins, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, Michael Jordan, and Britney Spears and "her first love." Spears took advantage of the graveyard shift to get her license in 2004 for her ill-fated first marriage that was annulled after two days.

The chapel's late-night weddings will continue, Richards said, "I just have to work through this with a lot of hurt."

Shirley Parraguirre, the county clerk, is not particularly tickled to hear about Richards' displeasure. The roughly 80 wedding chapels around the city were sent notices of the change and asked for feedback, Parraguirre said, but she had heard zip.

"We had an open public hearing, and no one showed up," she said.

On Friday night, outside the wedding-license bureau in the courthouse, the "chapel rats," so called by the security guards for their forceful hustling of chapel services to slightly bewildered couples, hawked.

Michael Williams, who guards the bureau, said that scores more couples than normal showed up Friday, anticipating the closing hour. "The new deadline won't stop drunk people from getting married in the middle of night," Williams said. "They show up drunk all day long. I keep them from getting married."

Parraguirre said most people who showed up for a wedding license during the graveyard shift had no intention of racing off to get married anyway.

"We think there is a misconception here," she said.

Weddings have been a mainstay of the Las Vegas experience since the 1920s, taking off with the widespread use of the automobile in the 1940s, when the Hitching Post and the Wee Kirk o' the Heather opened their doors. Inspired by the lax licensing laws — no blood test, no waiting — couples flocked from around the region, and eventually the country, to wed.

Several chapel owners said Friday they were indifferent to the change. "They probably were losing money, and there is no point in it," said the Rev. David Nye, a co-owner of A Las Vegas Wedding Chapel.

"Who would this affect? Britney Spears, that's all," Nye said.