Our Vegas wedding only cost $10,000. It didn’t feel cheap and our guests had a blast.

By: Courtney Kocak

I’d never dreamed of my wedding day — I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get married — until I met Wade seven and a half years ago. We had a great first date, but I’d finally gotten the hang of online dating, and I thought I should keep exploring.

“He’s gonna be great for somebody else,” I told my best friend.

Still, we kept dating, and our fun, easy dynamic made a strong case for settling down. Within six weeks we were exclusive and within six months, we’d moved in together. Years went by — full of silly trips to Target, trying out new restaurants, and marathoning TV shows together — without any rush to get married.

Then summer 2022, after we’d made it through the worst of the pandemic, my brother got married, which inspired my boyfriend to propose. Of course, my answer was yes.

We decided on Vegas so our families could go

Still, we didn’t rush into wedding planning. Not until our beloved dog died in December, and grieving that loss made it painfully apparent that time was not infinite. My fiancé wanted to go to the courthouse immediately, just us.

But I felt like that wasn’t fair to my parents, who’d been patiently waiting to celebrate this milestone with me. Plus, you don’t get that many opportunities in life to bring all your loved ones together. Since our families are in Minnesota and Texas and our close friends are scattered around the country, Vegas seemed like the perfect place for us to meet up.

My fiancé wasn’t immediately on board. He lobbied hard for a picturesque tennis resort in Phoenix called the Wigwam. Ultimately, we decided to go with my idea.

I joked that Vegas felt apropos because “every relationship is a gamble.” However, the odds seem to be with us. Neither of us is typically a gambler, but when we arrived on Friday night, Wade made a random roulette bet — $100 on green with eleven-to-one odds (aka not good) — and won $1100. It felt like an excellent omen for our marriage.

I just wanted fun and easy

My wedding planning ethos was fun and easy, just like our relationship. I’d always thought those quickie wedding chapels looked like a blast. What could be more fun than having Elvis officiate your wedding?

I booked The Little White Chapel — the iconic Las Vegas wedding chapels where stars like Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, and Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow got hitched — and sprang for the package where an Elvis impersonator officiated the ceremony and sang three songs. Our Elvis, Michael Conti, did an incredible job.

With 36 guests, we upgraded to their larger chapel and got the basic photo package as backup in case the photographer we hired last minute had an issue. Luckily, there was no issue with the photographer, Keith Kaplan. He was fantastic. I’m glad I listened to my gut on getting the backup — it turns out you can’t have too many pictures of your wedding.

Perhaps the best moment of the day was seeing our family and close friends gathered outside The Little White Chapel, waiting for us when we pulled up. Our photographer was driving, and I was too busy taking it in, so I don’t have a picture of that moment, but it is etched in my brain. It was so touching to see who came to support us and feel their love.

There were accommodations for every budget

The upside of a destination wedding in Las Vegas is that there are lots of cheap flights and a wide variety of accommodations in different price ranges, so we didn’t feel like it was overly burdensome for our guests.

However, we wanted to make sure the out-of-towners were well-fed. We booked a four-course dinner with Joe’s Stone Crab. Despite a booking miscommunication, they accommodated us beautifully, and everyone said the dinner was excellent. I’ll have to take their word for it—I was too excited to eat much.

Later, we congregated back at The Mirage, where much of our group was staying, and had an incredible after-party at their Center Bar. I belted out Live’s “Lightning Crashes” with three of our friends, singing along to a live band with a killer set list from our millennial youth. I was still buzzing when we got back to our hotel room.

“I wasn’t expecting my wedding to be one of the best days of my life,” I told my husband. In full agreement, he quipped, “It was magical.”

While the national average cost of a wedding in 2023 was $35,000, the cherry on top of our magical wedding day was that we managed to keep it affordable without foregoing any of our essentials, including a super cute Anthropologie dress (technically designed to be a reception dress, but it was perfect for me). What a relief to only spend $10,000.

It didn’t feel like a cheap wedding; it felt like a masterpiece, even to our guests. One of Wade’s friends is an art dealer, and his review was: “That was the most fun, laidback wedding I’ve ever been to. It was epic. Effortlessly cool.”

When we first started planning, I wasn’t aware that Las Vegas was “the wedding capital of the world,” but now it’s easy to see why.