Mondo Las Vegas:
Little Church of the West800-821-2452http://www.littlechurchlv.com/ 4617 Las Vegas Blvd.South, Las Vegas, Nevada 89119 (On the Strip) South of Tropicana |
More about Little Church of the West:
No waiting period for a marriage license means that there is a proliferation of chapels, but this one was the first chapel built on the Las Vegas Strip.Beautiful 1942 National Register building was originally sited at the Last Frontier Hotel and moved twice before landing here. It's the oldest existing structure on the Las Vegas Strip and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building was modeled after a typical California mining town church with a cedar exterior and California redwood interior and little has changed since. The building reminds us of a time when Vegas was just a wild frontier town. Since it opened it has been the site of numerous celebrity weddings (the first celebrity wedding in 1943) from Betty Grable & Harry James to Zsa Zsa Gabor & George Saunders, Fernando llamas & Arlene Dahl, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Buck Owens, Shirley Bassey, David Cassidy, Ray Conniff, Robert Goulet, Dudley Moore, Telly Sevalas ... and more recently Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford.
In addition to enabling "quickie" marriages, the State of Nevada liberalized their divorce laws in the 1930s. After only six weeks of residency, you could apply for a "quickie" divorce. Inexpensive long-term stay "dude ranches" popped up on the outskirts of town for future divorcees and became the forerunners of sprawling Strip resorts.
*** Elvis Trivia! Elvis Presley & Ann Margaret were married at the Little Church of the West in the movie "Viva Las Vegas."
Listed under:
Special Ratings: See it Sometimes | Classic Old VegasEra: Post War 1940s
Categories: Classic | Ecclesiastical | Elvis
Related Links:
The FrontierLittle Church of West in Las Vegas Movies:
Viva Las Vegas
SAVE Classic Historic Buildings and Modern real estate in Las Vegas, NV
all rights reserved.