Are you in Las Vegas? Do you want to get married—well, of course you do; you’re in Las Vegas, where all successful marriages begin in a hastily planned and executed all-night chapel ceremony—but more importantly, do you like marijuana?
Since adult-use cannabis became legal in Nevada on Jan. 1, Las Vegas has wasted no time in transforming itself into America’s most marijuana-friendly tourist destination. Unlike the delay-obsessed time-wasters in Massachusetts and California, who want to put off the first legal adult sale to 2019 or beyond, Las Vegas is pushing to start selling legal cannabis as soon as this summer.
And Sinsemilla City is falling in line.
Behold, The Cannabis Chapel, the world’s first marijuana-friendly wedding chapel. And as of Monday, they still had availability to book a Valentine’s Day ceremony.
So what, exactly, is a Las Vegas “weeding”? Well. It has green lights and reggae music. It has a silk cannabis flower bouquet and a silk cannabis boutonniere. It has an officiant sprinkling your wedding vows with fire marijuana puns, an offense you commit by uttering the final words, “I doobie wed.”
It has all this, and it has it for $104.20.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal was on hand for a recent “jointing” at the chapel, located in the city’s historic “wedding chapel district” (a very real thing), where Mesa, Arizona’s Jon Rothberg and Venus Heard tied the hemp knot.
The Journal painted the scene more beautifully than we ever could:
An artificial marijuana leaf in her hair, Heard, 46, walked down the aisle to a reggae version of “Here Comes the Bride.” Rothberg’s suit, which was provided by the chapel, was decorated with hundreds of pot leaves and topped off with a faux-marijuana boutonnière.
Fake pot plants decorate the room and the wedding arch, and behind the arch is a painting of a cloud in the shape of a long, fluffy joint. And yes, it smoked at the end of the ceremony…
Drew Gennuso, the chapel’s owner, says he’s averaged about one wedding a day since opening on 4/20 last year—with most ceremonies, believe it or not, scheduled for twenty minutes past the hour of 4 p.m. This year, he says, 4/20 is booked solid.
Should you dismiss this as a tawdry example of a passing fad, reconsider: The Cannabis Wedding Expo is also a real thing. The Cannabis Chapel is merely the Las Vegas offshoot.
And should any of this surprise you: There was a reason why Hunter Thompson picked Las Vegas to seek out the American Dream’s terminus. In Trump’s America, a Vegas wedding chapel picking up on the country’s cannabis boom is the most logical thing you’ll see all day.