Venetian Las Vegas Weddings: What Each Ceremony Space Is Like

Yes, you can get married at The Venetian, and the resort runs the whole thing itself through its own weddings department. Ceremonies happen in a small set of spaces on the property: the signature white wedding gondola on the indoor canal, a bridge in St. Mark’s Square, an indoor chapel, and a courtyard outside. I’m McKenzie. I’ve photographed weddings in Las Vegas since 2009, more than 300 of them, and I photograph couples at The Venetian out front, under the row of stone arches that runs along the sidewalk. The resort sits at 3355 South Las Vegas Boulevard, on the north half of the Strip.

One thing is worth settling before you pick a space. The Venetian decides who is allowed to photograph a wedding on its property, so find out what it will allow on your date before you hire any photographer, me included.

The ceremony spaces at The Venetian

Four spaces come up most consistently across wedding listings for this property. Two things decide between them: how many people you’re bringing, and whether you want to be indoors or outside.

Ceremony space	Guests, as wedding listings report it	Indoors or outdoors
The signature white wedding gondola, on the Grand Canal	Just the two of you, plus the gondolier and officiant	Indoors, on the canal
The wedding bridge in St. Mark’s Square	Around 20	Indoors
The Venezia chapel	Up to around 100 seated	Indoors
The Venezia courtyard, by the pool and gardens	Up to around 100	Outdoors

Getting married in the gondola on the canal

The gondola ceremony is a wedding for two people. You and your partner ride the resort’s white wedding gondola along the indoor canal with a gondolier who sings, and you say your vows in the boat. Nobody else is in it with you.

Your guests stay up on the bridge in St. Mark’s Square and watch you float past, and at least one wedding listing says plainly that they will not be able to hear the ceremony from up there. That is the part couples miss. If you’re picturing your mom close enough to hear you say your vows, the gondola is not that ceremony. The ride is a few beautiful minutes on the water, and your family watches it happen and cheers you on from the bridge.

You can have the gondola and still have your family hear your vows. Some couples say their vows in a space where everyone can sit down and hear them, then ride the gondola afterward to celebrate. The boat still gives you the best photographs of the day, and it isn’t carrying the ceremony.

The wedding bridge in St. Mark’s Square

The bridge is the small ceremony option. Listings put it at around 20 guests, and it’s indoors, up above the canal in St. Mark’s Square. It’s a bridge rather than a room with a door, so it’s open to the rest of the resort around it and other people will be nearby. Some couples want exactly that, with the canal underneath them and the square around them. Others would rather have a room that closes, and for them the chapel is the better choice.

The Venezia chapel

The chapel is the space to look at when you’re inviting a lot of people. It’s the one indoor room that seats a crowd, around a hundred by the counts I’ve seen. Being indoors answers a few questions before you have to ask them. The room looks the same at eleven in the morning as it does at six at night, so you can pick your ceremony time around your guests and your dinner instead of around the light. Nobody squints into the sun. July feels the same as January in there. Everyone has a seat, everyone can hear you, and the wind isn’t a factor.

The Venezia courtyard

Outside, heat and sun decide a lot about how the ceremony feels, so the month you marry in and the hour you start matter more here than in any of the indoor spaces. July highs average around 104 degrees, so standing still in a suit or a dress on a summer afternoon is hard on everybody, and it’s hardest on your grandparents. Late afternoon is cooler, and the fall and winter months are cooler still. Shade matters as much as the temperature does. Open sun overhead at midday puts hard shadows on everybody’s face and has people squinting through their own vows. I don’t know how much shade that particular space has. So if you’re leaning outdoors, ask to see a photo of it taken at the hour your ceremony would start. That one picture will tell you more than any description, mine included.

What to check with the resort before you choose

I’ve photographed couples at this resort, but always out front, never a ceremony inside one of these rooms. The space names, the guest counts and the layout above come from wedding listings rather than from the resort itself. Take the current list from the resort before you plan around any of it, because resorts rename rooms and revise seated counts from time to time. That list lives on the resort’s own weddings pages.

One more thing is worth knowing when you compare photos online. The Venetian is partway through a $1.5 billion renovation announced in 2024, so parts of the property may not look in person exactly like the pictures you found. Nothing I could find says any ceremony space is affected.

Can you bring your own photographer to a Venetian wedding?

The Venetian sets the rules about who photographs a wedding on its property, and couples have been told different things in different years. What one couple was told in a forum ten years ago may not be what you’re told now, and a policy line published on any page today may not match what you’re told either. The answer you want is the resort’s answer for your own date and your own ceremony space, in an email you can keep.

At big resorts, the paperwork side of this is routine. When a big resort allows an outside photographer, it usually asks for a certificate of insurance, a single page naming the venue and showing the photographer carries liability coverage. Any working wedding photographer already carries that insurance, so that half is paperwork. The Venetian also has its own photography partner. Plenty of large resorts do, and that on its own doesn’t tell you what your answer will be.

So ask the weddings department two questions, in these words:

1. Is an outside professional photographer allowed for our ceremony and for our portraits on property?
2. If yes, what fee applies, and what paperwork do you need from that photographer?

Get both answers by email, and ask for your wedding date and your ceremony space to be named in the reply. A yes about portraits somewhere on the property is not a yes about your ceremony, and the rules attached to one package may not apply to yours. The resort publishes a weddings policies and procedures page, and it’s worth reading before you call so you know what you’re asking about.

What does a Venetian wedding cost?

Weddings here are sold as packages, and two things move the price: which ceremony space you pick, and how many people you bring. The gondola ceremony for the two of you is the low end of that range, and a seated ceremony for a hundred people costs a great deal more. Wedding listings put the resort’s ceremony packages at two to 50 guests, so if your list runs past 50, ask what happens above that number instead of assuming you simply move to a bigger room. Some packages are also described as including a two night suite stay along with the ceremony. Current figures for each package are on the resort’s wedding packages page, and I’d take them from there rather than from any article, mine included, because resort pricing changes. Receptions, catering and room rental are priced separately and carry their own minimums.

Photography with me is $300 an hour when you book two hours or more, and $350 for a single hour, with prices subject to change, and a $500 deposit holds your date. If you’re trying to work out how long a day like this needs, I wrote about how many hours of coverage to book, and everything else is on my pricing page.

How the day runs, and where your guests go in between

A wedding day here runs the same order as anywhere else. You get ready, you have the ceremony, you go make photographs, and then everybody eats. What’s different at The Venetian is the walking. The ceremony itself is short, often shorter than the walk to it, and every move between one part of the resort and another means elevators, a casino floor, and a shopping level crowded with other visitors. So whatever you think the walk is between your ceremony space and where you want your portraits, add thirty minutes. A group of ten never moves as fast as one person does, and somebody always needs a bathroom on the way.

The gap after the ceremony is the part nobody plans for, and it has a simple fix. While you and I are out front making photographs, your guests need somewhere to be for half an hour or so, and they’re already standing in a building full of restaurants, bars and shops. Name one place and one time before the ceremony, and tell everybody twice. A guest who wanders off in a resort this size is hard to find again, and looking for one uncle costs you the exact half hour you were going to spend on photos.

Give your guests real directions too, not just the address. Self parking and valet are both available, and the resort’s self parking garage sits behind the building, which makes for a long walk once you’re inside. The Palazzo garage next door is generally the shorter one. Anyone in heels, anyone using a cane or a walker, and anyone bringing small children should use valet and should be told so in advance. Parking rates at the Strip resorts change often, so check the current rates with the resort.

The marriage license and the one witness Nevada asks for

You need a Clark County marriage license in hand before anyone can marry you. Both of you go in person to the Marriage License Bureau at 201 East Clark Avenue downtown, and you each need a photo ID issued by the government. It’s open every day of the year, the fee is $102, and there’s no blood test and no waiting period, so you can get the license and get married the same day. The county’s requirements page has the current details, and I walked through the whole process in how to get a marriage license in Las Vegas.

Nevada also requires one witness at the ceremony. One, never two, and the only rule about that person is that they can’t be the officiant. If it’s just the two of you in that gondola, I can be your witness at any wedding I’m photographing. You don’t have to go find anybody. There’s more on that in do you need a witness to get married in Nevada.

Where the portraits happen at The Venetian

My portraits at The Venetian happen at the front of the resort. A long covered walkway runs behind the row of stone arches along Las Vegas Boulevard, with carved columns, green iron lanterns overhead, and marble underfoot laid in a diamond pattern. Every photograph I’ve made at this property was taken there or on the sidewalk just outside it. The walkway is covered but open down one side, so the light comes in sideways and stays soft while the roof keeps the sun off everyone’s face. Step out to the sidewalk and you can put the entire Doge’s Palace facade behind the two of you instead.

I keep the full set of photos from the front of the resort on my Venetian wedding page, where I also say more about how that light behaves. If you want to see how the rest of the Strip photographs by comparison, I put that in Las Vegas Strip wedding photos.

The best time of day, and what the summer does to it

The walkway out front is shaded all day, so the light in there holds steady from mid morning through late afternoon. What changes is how busy it gets. The front of the resort fills up as the day goes on, so early morning is the quietest time to photograph there.

For the Doge’s Palace facade from the sidewalk, you want the end of the day, when the sky still has color and the building’s lights are on. That window moves a lot across the year. Las Vegas sunset runs from about 4:27 in the afternoon in early December to about 8:00 in the evening in late June, a swing of more than three hours, which is why I build your timeline around your actual date.

Summer takes the most planning. July highs here average around 104 degrees, and from late June into September the monsoon can bring a short thunderstorm with little warning. That covered walkway is the reason I’d still book portraits at The Venetian in July. You’re in shade the whole time and nobody is squinting. It isn’t air conditioned, so bring water and keep the session short. I wrote more about working around the heat in my guide to a summer wedding in Las Vegas.

If The Venetian is on your list, let’s talk

Tell me about your day. Email me at mckenzie@msweddingimage.com or use my contact page, and include your date, your ceremony space and whether you’re doing the gondola. I photograph every wedding I book, personally, and there’s no travel fee anywhere in Clark County, so the Strip is included. One thing to know about timing: I hold a date only once your venue is confirmed, so reach out as soon as The Venetian gives you a date in writing. I’d love to hear what you’re planning.