Perhaps it is the fact that so many celebrity weddings have taken place in Las Vegas that attracts the ordinary couple to the venue. Or maybe it is the lights and the glitter of the city. But either way Las Vegas has been the venue of choice to thousands of couples and more celebrities than one would picture. Eight times married Mickey Rooney thought this city of sin, as it is sometimes called, was a good enough place to marry seven of his eight wives. None of these weddings provided him with a long term relationship until the last one in 1978. Mickey Rooney remains married to Jan Chamberlain to this day.
He was not the only celebrity to head to the lights of Vegas to tie the knot. In 1990 Axl Rose proposed to Erin Everly in the middle of the night. They were married but three weeks later he wanted a divorce. The couple reconciled, staying together for nine months, until annulling the marriage. Las Vegas was no better for Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. Although in a long term relationship now with Brad Pitt, Angelina then only twenty four, was head over heels in love with forty four year old Thornton. Wearing blue jeans and a vial of each other’s blood, they married in the spring of 2000 only to see the marriage end in divorce three years later.
The celebrity wedding of Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra fared no better when they married in Vegas in 1998. Some claim he was drunk that day while others commented on how much in love they appeared. Whatever the truth to the choice they made it was only nine days after walking down the aisle that the marriage was over. Britney Spears may have set the record for shortest celebrity marriage after the couple married in Las Vegas. She was twenty two when she and her childhood friend went to Vegas in the middle of the night and got married. She wore jeans and a baseball cap and he was dressed equally as casually. She was given away by the bellman at the hotel. Annulment papers were quickly drawn up and the marriage lasted only fifty five hours. She was quoted after the fiasco as saying that she wanted to see what it was like to be married. Other well known couples had their celebrity weddings in Las Vegas with the same eventual results. This includes Elvis Presley and Priscilla Anne Beaulieu, Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow, Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford, as well as Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.
Not all celebrity weddings have such disastrous outcomes. Paul Newman married Joanne Woodward there in 1958. They recently celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Jon Bon Jovi and Dorothea Hurley married there in 1989. Nineteen years and four children later they are still together. Soap actress Kelly Ripa and actor Mark Consuelos were married at a chapel there in 1996 and their marriage, with three children, is still going strong. Ninety two year old actor Kirk Douglas married his second wife Anne Buydens in Las Vegas in 1954. They will celebrate their fifty fourth wedding anniversary in May. Sin City may be nothing more than a draw for many celebrity couples looking to get married quickly but there are some who still want to marry for life!
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