This New Year’s Eve, Las Vegas is gearing up for thousands of couples who are, as the Dixie Cups’ song says, goin’ to the (Little White) chapel and gonna get married.
In fact, Sin City may experience a record-breaking number of weddings this Sunday, The Washington Post reported on Friday. The reason for all the hubbub is the crossover of three popular trends that boost the number of nuptials: a wacky date (12/31/23), a weekend, and a holiday.
“This is kind of a triple crown,” Lynn Marie Goya, the Clark County clerk, told the Post.
The newspaper spoke with a handful of officials, wedding venues, and organizers who are preparing for a surplus of weddings in Vegas. To break the one-day record, about 4,500 couples will need to tie the knot on New Year’s Eve to surpass the current top date: July 7, 2007—7/7/07—when 4,492 duos said “I do,” according to data from the Clark County clerk’s office cited in The Washington Post. The second-most-popular wedding day, with 3,125 couples getting hitched, was November 11, 2011 (11/11/11).
To prepare for the upcoming rush, Vegas is really going all out—and that’s saying something in the city of excess. Couples flying in to Harry Reid International Airport will find a pop-up marriage license bureau in baggage claim, which the city has done only a few times and only ever around Valentine’s Day. And those who hold weddings are staffing up and buying extra supplies: Melody Willis-Williams, who leads three chapels in the city, said she’s ordered 2,000 roses and has nine limos on standby. Plus, her staff of 100 will include at least six Elvis impersonators, who will work all day.
“This one is pretty special,” Willis-Williams told the Post about the upcoming date. “It’s definitely a once in a lifetime.”
While we won’t know whether a new record is set until the first week of the year, Goya said, those in the Vegas wedding industry are already setting their sights on the next 12 months and the years to come. Per usual, Valentine’s Day will be a busy wedding day in the city, and with 2024 being a leap year, February will get an extra boost on the 29th. Willis-Williams even said that she’s already looking for special dates in 2025 and 2026.
Love—and the Vegas wedding industrial complex—is truly everlasting.