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The Venetian Courts Weddings

In this age of multiplex theaters and movies opening on thousands of screens simultaneously, it probably had to happen. And there was probably no place better than Las Vegas, arguably the wedding capital of the world.

The Venetian is building a triplex wedding chapel complex to penetrate the marriage business as deeply as possible and upgrade wedding services as a profit center, said Venetian spokesman Kurt Ouchida.

The bridal industry is big business nationwide and especially here in Las Vegas.

It has grown steadily to more than $72 billion spent each year on 2.4 million weddings in the United States. Another $8 billion a year is spent on honeymoons and $19 billion a year is spent on wedding gift registries, according to the Association of Bridal Consultants.

Already 110,000 of those weddings are held in Las Vegas, representing a disproportionate 5 percent of the market nationwide.

"We are taking a very serious approach to penetrating this huge and blossoming market, even more than in the past," Ouchida said.

The new Venetian chapel complex, part of the Phase IA project expansion that will add 1,000 hotel rooms and new parking and meeting space is set to open next summer.

The goal is to capture a large share of that 110,000-wedding-a-year business and even grow that number, Ouchida said.

"With the new chapel, we intend to further cultivate our domestic and international wedding packages distributed to wholesalers and travel agents with a commission base to ensure continued growth, especially during traditionally slower business months," Ouchida said.

The 3,500-square-foot wedding facility is designed so it can be broken into three chapels or opened into one large chapel accommodating more than 200 guests.

The chapel complex, including multiple surrounding gazebos, will be on the garden level of the new hotel tower, now under construction on the south side of the resort.

"Currently, The Venetian conducts more that 150 weddings per month and about 1,800 per year," he said.

Already, an increasing number of people want to get married on The Venetian's Italian hand-carved gondola or on a bridge overlooking the Grand Canal because they are a little more over the top than the typical Las Vegas chapel wedding, Ouchida said.

"We hope to double and possibly triple that number when the new chapel opens by generating as much as $5 (million) to $10 million in wedding services alone," Ouchida said.

"We intend to tap into this booming market and turn it into a profit center for The Venetian and a unique marketing tool for our hotel," he said.

"What makes us different than other wedding facilities is that we are selling the romance of Venice.

And, with that in mind, we currently offer something that is uniquely Venetian in the form of a traditional, white wedding gondola accompanied by a serenading gondolier, or on top of a replica of the Rialto Bridge overlooking the Grand Canal," Ouchida said.

"Our reason for building (the chapel complex) is really to keep up with the increasing demand for weddings at The Venetian and we'd like to capitalize on that opportunity at a set location like a chapel that is unlike the existing opportunities on a gondola or an arched bridge over the Grand Canal," he said.

"Once the new tower is complete, we will offer a Venetian garden with gazebos and fountains," Ouchida said.

In addition to further penetrating the wedding business in Las Vegas, The Venetian intends to "further enhance its existing wedding offerings and build on our brand in the eyes of wedding planners that The Venetian is a unique wedding destination," he said.

And the proportion of return visitors is expected to increase as the number of weddings taking place at the resort grows.

The Friedmutter Group is the designer of the new wedding chapel in The Venetian hotel expansion.

Currently, the local wedding business is littered among 45 wedding chapels up and down the Strip. That is up from 16 chapels 20 years ago.

The resort's wedding services department believes it has only touched the tip of the iceberg and that it now needs to be well positioned to capitalize on this exploding market, Ouchida said.

Las Vegas is the top spot nationally for out-of-town weddings. Trailing Las Vegas are Hawaii (20,000), U.S Virgin Islands (5,000), Jamaica (5,000) and the Bahamas (4,000).

Among visitors, 4 percent say their main reason for coming to Las Vegas is to attend a wedding, although not necessarily their own, according to the Las Vegas Visitor and Convention Authority which tracks primary purposes for coming here.

That translates into about 1.5 million visits a year revolving around weddings.

"Las Vegas must be ranked as one of people's favorite destinations for weddings and honeymoons," said LVCVA spokesman Rob Powers. "Las Vegas' appeal has only increased in recent years with the development of the visitor business."

The average wedding budget is $20,000 and the average honeymoon budget is $3,657, according to the bridal association.

Las Vegas is a particularly popular destination for weddings among Europeans, especially Germans, Powers said. "It's seen as a trendy thing to do. But it's also seen as a great value with no hassles and a great place to have a honeymoon."

Las Vegas got on the map as a wedding destination when Roy Rogers sang at the first wedding at The Little Church of the West Wedding Chapel in May 1943 when a tank commander friend of his was the groom.

It went cosmic when Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret were married after filming the movie "Viva Las Vegas."

Most recently, the city's won kudos not only for gondola borne weddings, but also ceremonies on an 1800s-era British ship at Treasure Island, at the top of a faux Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas, in from of the Sphinx at Luxor, amid medieval jousters at Excalibur and high in the sky on the balcony of The Foundation Room atop Mandalay Bay.

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