Las Vegas Could Break Wedding Record on NYE Thanks to ‘123-123’

No U.S. city’s economy relies more on magical thinking about numbers than Las Vegas. And the magic number Sin City is banking on now is 12/31/23. Its repeating “1-2-3-1-2-3” pattern made the town’s wedding industry declare it a “specialty” wedding date.

An Elvis impersonator officiates a 2019 wedding at Las Vegas’s Little White Chapel. (Image: Getty)

Its last one, 7/7/07, or “Lucky 7’s Day,” set the record for most Las Vegas marriages in a single day at 4,492. And Las Vegas wedding chapels hope this New Year’s Eve will top even that.

The icing on the cake? This specialty date falls on a holiday already known for higher-than-average knot-tying. Las Vegas has had about 500 ceremonies every New Year’s Eve Vegas since 2018, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, about twice the wedding business it does on an average night.

It’s a double whammy,” Melody Willis-Williams, president of venue operator Vegas Weddings, told the R-J. “Anytime you get these specialty dates, they’re always hugely popular. But tie that in with New Year’s Eve and it’s a showstopper.”

Willis-Williams said her company alone expects to wed more than 120 couples this coming Sunday night at its dozen area venues, most as close to midnight as possible without slipping into 1/01/24.

Only five couples snagged one of Vegas Weddings’ $2K packages guaranteeing a ceremony during the actual countdown.

Even if this New Year’s Eve doesn’t top 7/7/07 — after all, 1-2-3-1-2-3 doesn’t really occur to anyone unless they think about it for a second — it’s expected to land somewhere on the charts. According to the Clark County Marriage Bureau, No. 2 was 11/11/11, with 3,125 ceremonies, and No. 3 was 10/10/10 with 2,700.

To handle overflow from last-minute deciders who aren’t dreaming of a glamorous affair, Clark County has created a pop-up marriage license bureau at Harry Reid Airport, from now through December 31.

It’s open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. — sorry, not midnight! — near the glamorous baggage claim at Terminal 1.

Oh, and shhh! Nobody tell any of these couples that New Year’s Eve really falls on 1-2-3-1-2-0-2-3.

Corey Levitan joined Casino.org in 2022 after a long career covering Las Vegas. He currently covers entertainment, dining and gaming news in Las Vegas.

Corey spent six years covering the Vegas Strip for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he also wrote the most popular humor column in the city’s history. (For “Fear and Loafing,” he tried out 176 Vegas jobs, including poker player, blackjack dealer and Follie Bergere dancer.)

Corey has won more than 100 local, state and national awards for his journalism, which has also appeared in Rolling Stone, New York Magazine and the New York Post.

Corey is a New York native whose hobbies include playing guitar, trying to be a better husband, and arguing with strangers on Facebook.

Contact Corey at corey@casino.org.

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