The Little Church of the West on Las Vegas Boulevard has hosted its share of celebrity weddings.
Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019 | 2 a.m.
You don’t need to get down on one knee: Las Vegas will marry you. Tens of thousands of visitors and locals are married in Southern Nevada every year, drawn by the relative ease of procuring a marriage license here and by chapels that range in atmosphere from modest frontier church to Taco Bell. (Yes, there’s a chapel inside the Taco Bell Cantina on the Strip.) We have an entire industry in place to bring lovers together in matrimony, and it’s little wonder that over the years, more than a few celebrities have taken advantage of it. Here are some of the best-known Vegas celebrity weddings.
1. On July 19, 1966, Frank Sinatra married actress Mia Farrow at the Sands Hotel, in a secret ceremony that barely lasted 15 minutes. Sinatra was 50, fully 30 years older than Farrow. (Dean Martin reportedly joked that he owned “bottles of scotch that are older” than Sinatra’s bride.) They honeymooned in Palm Springs and divorced in 1968, with Farrow citing the age difference as the reason for the split. (Years later, Farrow told Vanity Fair that their relationship continued, on and off, for years after; she even intimated that her son Ronan Farrow, born in 1987, was “possibly” fathered by Sinatra.
2. On May 1, 1967, Elvis Presley married Priscilla Anne Beaulieu at the Aladdin Hotel. According to a May 2, 1967 Las Vegas Sun article, the couple were wed at 9 a.m. in property owner Milton Prell’s suite, and guests included comic Redd Foxx and Elvis’ parents. The reception, held “just below the hotel’s casino,” featured an artery-choking feast of “ham, eggs, and Southern fried chicken, Oysters Rockefeller, roast suckling pig, poached and candied salmon, lobster, Eggs Minnette, and champagne.” The couple divorced in 1973.
3. On Nov. 15, 1998, Dennis Rodman married Carmen Electra at Chapel of the Flowers. The then-Detroit Piston and Baywatch star got hitched at 7 a.m., following what the tabloids generously described as “an all-night bender.” Nine days later they filed for an annulment, then had a change of heart; all told, the Electra/Rodman union lasted six tabloid-friendly months.
4. On December 12, 1991, Cindy Crawford married Richard Gere at Little Church of the West. It was a last-minute ceremony, held during a one-day break Gere had while filming a movie (Mr. Jones, 1993); things were so rushed that the bride and groom wore rings made of aluminum foil. They split four years later.
5. On May 5, 2000, Angelina Jolie married Billy Bob Thornton at Little Church of the West. Jolie and Thornton’s courtship and marriage were, um, colorful; they wore jeans to their wedding and vials containing each other’s blood as a matter of daily routine. They divorced more-or-less amicably in 2003, and reportedly remain friends to this day.
