¡Viva Las Vegas!

Las Vegas: Home to Casinos, Various Forms of Entertainment, and Wedding Chapels.  Lots of wedding chapels.  At these chapels, you can choose a theme, like Star Trek or Hawaiian; a language for the ceremony, like Japanese or French; or even a drive-thru option, so you don't have to get out of the car!  The number of unique and absurd options is endless.


In "Marrying Absurd," Joan Didion describes the process of these weddings, as well as various scenarios from them.  She exposes their trivial nature through her ridiculing diction; phrases like "what happens there has no connection with 'real' life" (Didion 102) and "There are nineteen such wedding chapels...each offering better, faster, and, by implication, more sincere services than the next" (Didion 102-103) contribute to her mocking tone.  In addition, the examples of couples that have participated in these wedding "ceremonies" help add to her point that most of the people who get married this way are "children who do not know how else to find it, how to make the arrangements, how to do it 'right'" (Didion 103).

Vegas weddings, with their extremely short ceremonies, ridiculous options, and inexpensive costs, are hardly weddings at all.  On a couple's wedding day, they are pledging their lives to each other, telling each other that they will stay together "in sickness and in health," and promising their love for eachother "from this day forward until death do us part".  However, Las Vegas weddings take the focus off the true meaning and significance of marriage by emphasizing the unimportant elements of the wedding and rushing through the meaningful ones.