Las Vegas weddings and honeymoons — best chapels, outdoor venues, elopement spots, and luxury honeymoon hotels.
Getting married in Vegas is genuinely easy — a Clark County license, a chapel slot, and you can be married the same afternoon. The city does about 80,000 weddings a year, so the process is smooth and the options run from a $200 chapel to a red-rock overlook at sunrise. Here's how to pick.
Before any ceremony, both people go to the Clark County Marriage License Bureau downtown, in person, with a valid ID. No blood test, no waiting period — you can get the license and marry the same day. The bureau keeps long hours, including evenings and weekends, which is why so many late-night ceremonies happen. Do this first; a chapel can't marry you without it.
The chapels are the reason people fly here to marry. A few worth knowing:
Chapels book slots by the half hour and sell out on weekends and holidays, especially anything with a memorable date. Reserve ahead rather than walking in.
If a chapel isn't your style, the desert around Vegas is the alternative. Red Rock Canyon and Valley of Fire State Park both allow permitted ceremonies against red-sandstone backdrops — you book a permit and usually a photographer who knows the spots. The Neon Museum's Boneyard, full of old Vegas signs, is the offbeat urban option for couples who want something that only exists here.
These take more planning than a chapel — permits, a photographer, and timing around the light — but the photos are unlike anything you'll get indoors. Come in spring or fall; a July noon in the desert is brutal for a ceremony. The best-time guide has the comfortable months.
Once you're married, the honeymoon hotels are the same short list of quiet-luxury rooms couples book anyway. The Wynn Tower Suites come with the city's best spa. The Waldorf Astoria (formerly the Mandarin) is non-gaming, calm, and adults-lean, with a sky-high lobby bar. Crockfords at Resorts World is the newest luxury tower on the Strip. Any of the three gives you a room away from the casino crush for the nights after the ceremony.
A wedding weekend is better with a couples itinerary wrapped around it — a fountain-view dinner, a show instead of a club, and a slow spa morning. Our couples guide has those picks, and most of them pair naturally with a chapel afternoon.
Use the hotel map to keep your chapel, dinner, and room close together, and read where to stay to pick the right stretch of the Strip for the weekend.