Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Hold the rice: Couples scramble to reschedule Las Vegas weddings

Wedding plans shelved

Katelyn Faye Photography

Southern Nevada residents Jessica and Edwin Harris had to cancel plans for a much-larger wedding after the statewide shutdown of nonessential business out of COVID-19 concerns. Instead, they got married in a downtown chapel, which the couple characterized as an elopement.

Logan Charnell was worried that his leave from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana might not happen due to the coronavirus outbreak, but he held out hope that he could get away.

He had an important personal mission: He was planning to marry his fiancee, Alyssa Bayudan, in Las Vegas.

“I had (leave) the 20th to the 24th, and I was going to stay in Vegas over the weekend to get married,” he said. He had seen a “wave” of leave getting canceled due to the coronavirus, so he decided the week before to try to extend his leave and come to Las Vegas on March 18, a Wednesday.

He never got the chance. Two days before he was scheduled to head to Las Vegas, President Donald Trump announced a ban on domestic travel for military members effective. Charnell learned about it in a text from Bayudan. He was stuck in Louisiana.

“I just kind of looked at my phone, and I had a wave of curse words that just came out of my mouth,” he said.

Charnell, a communications technician, likely wasn’t the only person talking a blue streak in recent weeks after their plans for Las Vegas weddings were disrupted by COVID-19. Exact numbers aren’t known, but the outbreak has brought weddings to a virtual halt in a city that has long been one of the nation’s top destinations for couples looking to tie the knot.

After Gov. Steve Sisolak ordered the shutdown of all nonessential businesses this month, leaving major tourist areas dark, Clark County announced it was closing its marriage license bureau to help slow the spread of the virus. As of now, there’s no way to get a marriage license in the county, and marriages in Clark County aren’t legal without a license.

The problem is not just one for visitors: Local residents Jessica and Edwin Harris had to change their plans last minute. Initially planning a larger wedding, the pair decided to hold a much smaller ceremony they characterized as an elopement after watching businesses on the Strip start to shut down. Jessica is a lifelong Las Vegan, while Edwin, a native of Springfield, Mo., moved to Nevada in July 2016.

The couple were married in the Lucky Little Wedding Chapel downtown. Jessica Harris said she never thought she’d have a chapel wedding as a native Las Vegan.

“We were just kind of seeing more of the casinos closing, and we noticed they were closing all the MGM properties. That was kind of our breaking point of saying, ‘Yeah, we need to cancel,’” Jessica Harris said. Around 20 people, she said, had already canceled their RSVP by the time they changed plans.

“We had a pretty strong sense that there was going to be, basically, the order to shut down all nonessential businesses, so with that, we wanted to just go ahead and elope,” Edwin Harris said. “We had already waited over a year since I proposed.”

Nicole Buse and Justin Barnes had planned to travel to Las Vegas from Kansas to be married. Engaged for a little over a year, they had around 90 people coming to the Flamingo to see their wedding. They decided, after businesses began to shut down, that they would postpone. They were concerned, Buse said, for older family members coming to the wedding.

“We definitely didn’t want to … jeopardize their safety: our parents and grandparents,” Buse said.

Buse said that by the time she and Barnes reached the decision to postpone, it was actually one of the calmer times in the ordeal.

“The uncertainty was pretty stressful. Now that we have postponed it … it’s kind of like starting over again, so that’s been kind of exciting.”

Jessica Harris said the leadup to the postponement was particularly stressful, because she was concerned about the impact it would have on the guests.

“For me, I just felt bad because I knew it would be affecting a lot of people’s travel plans,” Jessica Harris said. “I didn’t want them to be out of money and all that. I think leading up to it I was more stressed, just because of the unknown, just because you kept seeing more and more come out and it’s like ‘we still have one more week,’” she said.

“It was just kind of crazy that we had spent well over a year planning for our wedding to be on March 21, and then with everything that had happened and just trying to plan for the worst, we were able to have our wedding and actually celebrate really less than 24 hours from making the decision, which was pretty crazy. I think living in Vegas is what allowed us to do that,” Edwin Harris said.

Charnell and Bayudan had planned a low-key ceremony in Las Vegas ahead of a big bash in Hawaii. They would get married at the justice of the peace’s office, and go out to eat with their families at Famous Dave’s Barbecue.

They’re not sure now where they are going to get married — maybe somewhere in Louisiana or Mississippi. They said their families, based on the West Coast, probably won’t be able to make the trip due to distance. They looked into proxy marriages, which allow stand-ins to be used and are generally for members of the military deployed into some sort of military operation. Such ceremonies are legal in a few states, but the couple decided against the option.

“Right now it’s just a waiting game for us, just when the travel ban’s going to be lifted,” Bayudan said. “Logan’s projected to go to training in April to August, so he can’t really come to Vegas during that time.”

Buse and Barnes are planning on returning to Las Vegas: the game plan for the Flamingo remains unchanged.

The couples who did reschedule events in Las Vegas said businesses were understanding.

The Harrises have rescheduled their reception in February, and said the businesses they had hired for the event — think florists and caterers — were supportive of the change.

“We already talked to a lot of our vendors, pretty much all of them were 100% supportive,” Jessica Harris said.

Buse said the Flamingo was accommodating in changing the date — it took about 30 minutes to change, she said.

“We got very lucky,” she said.

The uncertainty around the pandemic’s end means other couples may likely face similar situations. Offering advice for other couples caught in the predicament, Buse said taking a step back and going with the flow may help ease some of the stress they’re feeling.

“If you are a bride in this situation, (relax),” Buse said. “It’ll work out in the end. It’s completely out of our control.”