A Little White Chapel Elopement: How the Day Really Goes

An elopement at A Little White Wedding Chapel takes less than an hour on the property. You book a package and a room ahead of time. Both of you check in at least 30 minutes before your slot, already dressed and holding your marriage license. The ceremony runs 7 to 10 minutes. Then you get roughly 15 minutes for photos around the grounds before the next couple comes through. After that the rest of the day is yours.

I’m McKenzie, and I’ve photographed weddings in Las Vegas every year since 2010, over 300 of them, including inside this chapel. The chapel has been marrying couples on Las Vegas Boulevard since the 1950s, and it runs on a tight schedule. The chapel guarantees your ceremony time and does not guarantee any photo time on the property afterward. A lot of couples don’t know that before they book. So most of the photos you end up loving come from choices you make outside that hour: what time of day you book, which room you pick, and where you go when you leave.

Get your marriage license before you go

Both of you have to appear in person at the Clark County Marriage License Bureau, and no chapel package includes it. The bureau is at 201 E. Clark Avenue downtown, open 8 a.m. to midnight every day of the year, holidays included. The license costs $102, and there is no waiting period, so you can be married the same hour you walk out. If you fill out the online application before your trip, all you do at the counter is confirm your details and pay.

If you want the whole process, ID rules and payment details, I wrote them up in how to get a marriage license in Las Vegas.

What happens at the chapel, start to finish

The chapel books ceremonies about every 15 minutes, and your wedding is one of those slots. Here is how the hour runs.

• 30 minutes before your ceremony time. Both of you check in together, dressed and ready, with the license in hand. Your guests are asked to be there by then too. The chapel will not hold the room or push your ceremony back for anyone who shows up late, so get dressed at your hotel and leave yourself extra time for traffic on the Boulevard.
• Your slot. The ceremony itself runs 7 to 10 minutes. If you want to say your own vows, the chapel suggests about a minute each. If you book an Elvis package, an Elvis tribute artist sings two songs during the ceremony, and on some packages he performs the ceremony as well.
• Right after. You get about 15 minutes around the grounds for photos, and then it is the next couple’s turn.
• Total time on the property. Under an hour, arrival to departure.

Here’s what happens during those 7 to 10 minutes. The chapel doesn’t publish a script, so this is usually the part couples know the least about. Someone from the chapel brings you into the room when your slot comes up. The indoor rooms have pews and an aisle, so one of you can walk in or the two of you can go up front together, whichever you tell them you want. Traditional wedding music comes with some packages, so check whether yours has it. The officiant runs a short ceremony, religious or civil depending on which one you asked for when you booked. You say your vows, you exchange rings, you kiss, and then you walk back out. There’s nothing hidden in there. It’s the wedding you have pictured, just a short version of it, and the ceremony itself comes down to two choices you make when you book: religious or civil, and whether you’re writing your own vows. I’ve watched it plenty of times, and it goes faster than couples expect it to.

The 15 minutes afterward is the part to plan carefully, because the chapel treats it as a courtesy rather than a promise. The chapel’s own photographers have priority on the photo spots, so on a full Saturday the spot you wanted may be occupied when you get to it. If those 15 minutes matter to you, you can protect them by booking the ceremony slot right after your own. Ask for it at the same time you book your ceremony, and say plainly what you want. You want the next slot held in your name, so nobody is scheduled into it while you are still outside taking pictures. The chapel does not publish a price for that, so ask what it costs when you ask for it.

You also can’t make up the time by arriving early. The chapel does not allow anyone to take photos on or around the property without a booked ceremony, and that includes the public sidewalk if chapel signage is in the frame. Everything you photograph there has to happen inside the time you booked. That’s the main reason I tell couples to plan a second stop somewhere else in the city.

What can you get photos of in 15 minutes?

Fifteen minutes is two or three spots, not a portrait session. That’s my read as the photographer rather than a chapel rule, and it’s worth hearing before you book.

What I plan for is the room itself while it’s still yours, the pink Cadillac parked in the covered lane, and the gate out front under the chapel sign. Whether we get all three depends on the day. Walking between them takes a few minutes each time, and other couples are moving through the same spots. So decide which one matters most to you before you get there. If the picture you want is the two of you under the sign with nobody else in the frame, tell me that when we start, because that’s the one that gets skipped when the next ceremony is already coming through the door.

The rest of what you’re picturing comes from your second stop. That’s where there’s room to walk, to stand somewhere without anyone waiting on you, and to shoot in light you picked instead of the light your ceremony time handed you.

Which room should you pick?

The chapel has several indoor rooms, an outdoor gazebo, and the Tunnel of Love drive up window. Here are the four spaces it describes most consistently.

Space	Indoor or outdoor	Guests	Good to know
The Little White Chapel	Indoor	10 included, up to 20 for an added $100	The original room, and the one most people picture when they think of the chapel.
Chapel Amore	Indoor	Up to 60	The largest space on the property. Room for the bridal party inside costs extra.
Outdoor gazebo	Outdoor	10 included, up to 20 for an added $100	Outdoors, so your ceremony happens in whatever the weather and the sun are doing that hour.
Tunnel of Love drive up window	Outdoor, covered lane	2 to 4 on the base package; more guests need a bigger drive thru package	You never leave your vehicle. It works with a car, a motorcycle or bicycles, and the lane has a painted ceiling with cherubs and starlights.

The choice changes what your pictures look like more than anything else on the property. The indoor rooms give you steady light at any hour and a place for your guests to sit, so a noon ceremony inside looks about the same as a 6 p.m. one. The gazebo is the opposite, since it is fully outdoors and the light out there goes from harsh to soft depending on when you booked. The drive up window isn’t a light decision at all. The ceremony happens through the window while the two of you stay in your seats, so your vehicle is in every frame, and you want to be sure that’s the picture you want before you book it.

The window has been there since 1991. The chapel’s owner saw a couple with a disability struggling to get out of their car and into the chapel, so she had an opening cut through the wall and couples have been marrying from their vehicles ever since.

The Pink Cadillac is worth explaining on its own, because the name shows up in two places and means two different things. There is a real pink Cadillac parked on the property, in the covered lane under that painted ceiling, and the chapel also sells a Pink Cadillac ceremony as its own package at the same $150 tier as the chapel and gazebo ceremonies. The car shows up in a lot of my pictures from there.

What time of day should you book?

Book as late in the day as your schedule allows. The chapel is a white building on a bright boulevard, and a midday slot puts your 15 outdoor minutes under sun coming straight down, which means hard shadows on faces and everybody squinting. Summer makes it worse. July is the hottest month in Las Vegas, with a normal daily high of 104.5 degrees, so a 2 p.m. ceremony in July puts you outside in the hottest part of the hottest month, in a dress or a suit.

If you want the chapel’s neon in your pictures, you need it dark enough for the sign to read on camera, and that hour moves a lot through the year. Sunset in Las Vegas is about 4:30 p.m. in mid November and just before 8 p.m. in mid July. A November couple who wants the sign lit only needs to be outside after about 4:30. A July couple has to wait until nearly 8 at night for the same picture.

To work out when you’ll actually be standing outside, add the ceremony to your slot time. A 5 p.m. ceremony has you out on the grounds from roughly 5:10 to 5:25. So pick a ceremony time that puts you outside within the hour before sunset, or after dark if the neon is what you came for. I go through this by month in the best time of day for a Las Vegas elopement.

Can you bring your own photographer to A Little White Chapel?

Yes, and the chapel doesn’t charge extra for it. Three conditions come with that. The first is about telling the chapel, the second is about your guest count, and the third is about when photos can be taken on the property.

• Tell the chapel when you book. The chapel asks couples to talk to their chapel coordinator about bringing an outside photographer and to read its policies agreement. It does not publish a deadline, so tell them when you book rather than in the week before your wedding.
• Count your photographer as one of your guests. The chapel counts everyone attending the ceremony toward your guest total, including children, wedding party members and personal photographers. In a gazebo booking that includes 10 people, your photographer is one of the 10.
• Everything on the property happens inside your booked time. No portraits at the marquee an hour early, no coming back the next morning, and no photos on the public sidewalk with chapel branding in the frame.

Those three are what the chapel publishes. For anything beyond them, the chapel points couples and their photographers to its policies agreement, so read that before your date. Book your ceremony time with the chapel first, then book your photographer, because I need your slot before I can hold the hours around it.

Guests and witnesses

Nevada requires one witness at your ceremony, and one is all you need. The only restriction is that it cannot be the person performing the ceremony. If you don’t bring anyone, the chapel provides a witness and lists it as included in its packages, and if I’m photographing you, I can be your witness. You don’t have to find anybody. There is more on how this works in Nevada in do you need a witness to get married in Nevada.

Your guest count is set by the room you booked, so the number in the table above is the number you have to work with. Count everyone who walks in with you.

What a Little White Chapel elopement really costs

The package price on the website isn’t what you end up paying. Two chapel charges and the county’s license fee get added to it. Here’s how it adds up, using what the chapel published at the time of writing.

Start with the ceremony package. The four ceremony packages here run from $150 for the Little White Chapel, the gazebo or the Pink Cadillac up to $450 for Chapel Amore, and the Tunnel of Love drive up window, at $80, is the lowest priced of them all.

The chapel then adds two charges to whichever package you picked. There is a $60 minister fee, and there is a 19% surcharge that the chapel says covers tips and fees. Those two charges are why the chapel’s own out the door figures sit well above its package prices. It advertises that same $150 chapel, gazebo or Pink Cadillac ceremony at $250 out the door, and the drive up window at $167 out the door. Chapel Amore doesn’t have an out the door figure published, so ask your coordinator for it, because the $60 and the 19% get added to the $450 as well. Some packages also add $100 for Fridays, Saturdays and other premium days.

Then add the marriage license, which is $102 at the county and is not included in anything the chapel sells.

So the smallest real number for a chapel ceremony on a weekday is about $352, which is $250 out the door at the chapel plus $102 for the license. A Friday or Saturday date can add $100 to that. Going over the guest count your room includes can add $100. My photography is $300 per hour when you book two or more hours, and $350 for a single hour, and that is separate from anything the chapel charges you. Chapel prices change, so check the chapel’s own packages page against your date before you build a budget on my numbers.

For what the rest of a Las Vegas wedding day adds up to, see how much it costs to elope in Las Vegas.

Where to go after the ceremony

Plan a second stop, because that’s where most of your portraits are going to come from. Two places near the chapel are worth the drive, and they are in opposite directions on Las Vegas Boulevard.

• The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, about five miles south of the chapel. The reason to go is that everybody recognizes it. The sign has stood in that median since 1959, and family who couldn’t be there can see one photo and know exactly where you were. It is free, it is open every hour, and there is a free parking lot right beside it in the median. Everybody waits their turn for the same sign, so allow for the line. Clark County publishes film permit rules for the sign, including a 30 minute limit and applications due at least 10 days ahead. The county’s own wording covers commercial and still photography out there and doesn’t carve out wedding photos, and a hired photographer can land on either side of that line, so I’ll check with the county permit office for your date. My Welcome to Las Vegas sign page has photos from out there and the rest of the rules.
• The Neon Museum, two miles north of the chapel. The reason to go is color. It is where the old casino signs went instead of the landfill, the signs are enormous and still bright red and yellow and teal after decades outside, and almost everywhere else around Las Vegas photographs as some version of tan. You have to book a photo shoot or a portrait hour rather than just pull up, because a regular admission ticket doesn’t cover posed portraits or an outside camera, and my Neon Museum wedding page has the pictures and the details.

Put a full hour in your schedule for whichever one you pick. A session at the sign runs twenty or thirty minutes on its own, and then there is the drive, the parking and the waiting, and you’ll be doing all of it in your wedding clothes.

What if your date is one of the chapel’s busy days?

The chapel publishes a list of the dates it expects to be busy, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day among them, and it warns that the marriage license bureau draws long lines on Saturdays, holidays and those specialty dates. Check your date against that list. If your date is on it and you can move, move it. If you can’t move it, book as far ahead as you can. The chapel takes reservations up to five years out, and it says that on short notice your preferred time, room or extras may not be available.

Let’s plan your chapel day

You can see what the chapel actually looks like on my Little White Chapel wedding photos page, including the pink Cadillac, the drive up window and the rooms inside. If a chapel isn’t quite the day you pictured, we also do an all inclusive outdoor elopement for $2,000 that includes the officiant, the permit and the photos.

Book your ceremony with the chapel first, since I hold dates only for couples whose venue and time are already confirmed. Then email me at mckenzie@msweddingimage.com with your date, your time and which room you picked. Tell me what you want out of the day and I’ll tell you exactly how I’d plan the hour around it. I’d love to be there.