Are Vegas Weddings a Thing Again?

JLo and Ben Affleck are the just the latest celebrity couple to say “I do” in Sin City.

Just before midnight on Saturday, between the Talk of the Town strip club, a Howard Johnson’s and a shuttered Cuban bar and grill, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck pulled up to the historic Little White Chapel to seal the deal.

What then happened in Vegas definitely didn’t stay in Vegas — the singer shared all the details in her newsletter, On The JLo. With her signature blow-out, smokey eye and nude lip, Lopez wed Affleck (who wore a white suit found in his closet) in two gowns: one “from an old movie” and another from Zuhair Murad’s Spring 2023 collection, an off-the-shoulder corseted dress with lace detailing.

And if the photo she shared to Instagram of herself grinning between the sheets isn’t proof enough, it seems the couple finally got their happy-ever-after — and it only took 20 years! A success story for on-again, off-again lovers everywhere.

But the locale got us thinking: what’s so special about tying the knot in Las Vegas?

The Little White Chapel has hosted some of the biggest celebrity nuptials of all time. Since the mid-fifties, its ministers have presided over such weddings as Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow in 1966, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore in 1987, Britney Spears and Jason Alexander in 2004 (a famously short marriage of 55 hours)…The list goes on and on (and on).

More recently, it’s been the chapel of choice for Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas, who were wed by an Elvis impersonator in 2019. And if you somehow managed to escape footage of Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker’s many weddings (lucky you!), the couple had their own intimate ceremony at the One Love Wedding Chapel in Vegas back in March.

Not just for drunken lovebirds anymore, the appeal of eloping to the Marriage Capital of the World isn’t just in the price point. (But it doesn’t hurt — a USD $50 drive-thru wedding…In this economy? Yes, please.) It’s about the thrill! It’s about intimacy! But hopefully, it’s about love, and that you don’t need a lavish wedding to prove you have it.

After they exchanged rings and vows, JLo and Ben had their photos taken in the chapel’s pink Cadillac. “Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” she wrote in her newsletter. Their love may be patient but the wedding was anything but, and it’s that Vegas spontaneity that made the ceremony so special. Here’s to 20 more years of Bennifer!