Memorial is held for Las Vegas Wedding Queen and founder of world-famous Little White Wedding Chapel Charolette Richards after her death aged 89 – as nearby street is renamed ‘Charolette’s Way’
A memorial has been held for ‘Las Vegas Wedding Queen’ Charolette Richards, who founded the world-famous Little White Wedding Chapel.
Richards, who died last month at the age of 89, was a pioneer in the Las Vegas wedding industry, founding the iconic chapel in 1951, where countless celebrities and lovers have been married.
She died on December 13, but Sin City has vowed to ensure her legacy lives on as hundreds of people gathered to say goodbye.
January 25, the day of her memorial service in her own Little White Wedding Chapel, was declared “Charolette Richards’ Day” by County Commissioner Chairman Tick Segerblom.
Couples who decide to get married in the chapel walk through the famous ‘Tunnel of Love’ after their wedding – and now the street leading to this is being renamed ‘Charolette’s Way’ in memory.
A memorial has been held for ‘Las Vegas Wedding Queen’ Charolette Richards, who founded the world famous Little White Wedding Chapel
Charolette has officiated more than 500,000 weddings, including this unlikely combination of a Great Dane and a Pug
Charolette Richards holds a photo of her with her ex-husband, Merle Richards
The Little White Chapel was once open 24 hours a day. In one day Charolette performed 124 weddings
Melody Willis-Williams, president of Vegas Weddings and Little White Wedding Chapel, said, “Everyone in this industry, in the Las Vegas wedding industry, knows exactly who Miss Charolette Richards is.
“Its business model, many of the other chapels have adapted on their own.
“Her name is known because she was the first of her kind in almost everything she did. She’s the one they (would) look to to see what’s going to happen.”
Richards came up with the drive-thru wedding trend by accident one day, when a couple who wanted to get married in the chapel couldn’t fit in because one of them was in a wheelchair.
The clever Richards then married them outside and came up with the idea of a drive-thru wedding chapel.
Michael Conti, who worked at the chapel in tribute to Elvis for 30 years, said, “She was the pioneer of the wedding industry, and she was also known as the ‘Queen of the West/Universe’ because she really started Vegas with the weddings.
‘It opens doors for many other wedding chapels.’
Charolette Richards, right, and part-time organist Rhoda Jones at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas in 2006
Charolette Richards, center, performs a wedding ceremony for Rafael Afonso and his bride, Anna Dacre
Charolette Richards, left, congratulates Bob Reeve, center, and his bride, Lori, both of Arena, Wisconsin, after performing a drive-thru wedding ceremony at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas in 2006
Richards was most remembered for putting Las Vegas on the wedding map with the Elvis Pink Cadillac Ceremony, in which couples exchange vows while sitting in or next to Richards’ own long pink 1971 Cadillac.
The personalized signs depict 4ELVIS under a canopy decorated with the words THE TUNNEL OF LOVE, flanked by two cartoon Cupids firing their arrows into the hot desert sky.
Mrs. Charolette, as she was known, leaned over the bride and groom waiting in the lobby of her Little White Wedding Chapel. She looked into their eyes and smiled.
“I’ve only done this fifty thousand times,” Richards often said.
Some couples wonder if they can even skip the quickie ceremony and just pay for a marriage license. Others showed up drunk and could barely stagger down the aisle.
But if people are too sloppy or impatient to say vows, Richards would turn them away. To her, the wedding ceremony was sacred, even if it only lasted ten minutes.
Love in Las Vegas, for Charolette Danielson Richards, started out painfully. She was a young bride who ventured west with three young sons at her side.
Wilson Wright, her wandering husband at the time, had sent her a hundred dollars and told her to drive their old Ford—“a jalopy,” as she called it—from Sandy Hook, Kentucky, to Las Vegas, Nevada.
He asked to meet him at the Stardust Hotel and Casino, the newest and largest resort on the Strip.
On June 10, 1959, in the middle of a sweltering heat wave – with a record number of days without rain and a high temperature of one hundred and thirteen degrees – Charolette entered the city.
During that time, The Strip became the main thoroughfare of a city still experiencing growing pains, a place where gangsters rub shoulders with cowboys, and where many of the casinos have a Wild West theme, evoking the frontier spirit of the area .
Charolette Richards applauds from the drive-through window as Sasha Semenoff plays a violin in the background
Richards was most remembered for putting Las Vegas on the wedding map with the Elvis Pink Cadillac Ceremony, in which couples exchange vows while sitting or standing in or next to Richards’ own long pink 1971 Cadillac.
The invention of the drive-through wedding meant that couples didn’t even have to get out of their cars to get hitched
When Elvis reached out and took Charolette’s hand to bring her onto the stage, she got the idea for an Elvis impersonator wedding. It was an instant success and couples flocked to the chapel
She arrived at Stardust, at the time the largest hotel in the world, with more than a thousand rooms and a huge casino.
Wilson “Willy” Wright had swept her off her feet when she was just seventeen years old, serving up sundaes at an ice cream parlor in Eugene, Oregon.
He was said to be what was then called a ‘mechanic’, a gambler who would arrange the odds in his favor while sitting at the table. Wright often came in to play the card games upstairs, always taking the time to order a vanilla shake.
Months of milkshakes led to a proposal, and Charolette became a teenage bride, married by the justice of the peace.
Wright took her to live in a series of small towns until finally, to lighten his burden, he left his wife and children at his parents’ home in Kentucky and left. ‘Mr. Wright,” Charolette Richards later says, “was Mr. Wrong.’
Before long, an envelope arrived at the Sandy Hook Post Office, containing one hundred dollars in cash and instructions for Charolette to take the children, drive across country, and meet her husband at the Stardust.
But when she finally arrived, her husband was nowhere to be seen.
With her last dollars, she rented a cheap motel room and spent the days and nights walking the Strip with her children in tow, scanning the crowds for any sign of Wright.
After a week of searching, her money is all but gone, the children are screaming and there is no trace of her husband.
Then, just as she felt like she was about to collapse on the sidewalk, sobbing and exhausted, a “very handsome man” stopped on the street and smiled at her.
The man introduces himself: Merle Richards, a photographer and the owner of the wedding chapel at the Little Church of the West.
He found a place to stay and a babysitter for her children and gave her a job at his wedding chapel next to the Algiers Hotel on South Las Vegas Boulevard.
He picked her up every morning and took her to work. There, in the small chapel, Charolette made herself indispensable: taking payments, calling the ministers to perform the ceremonies, keeping the books.
A few months after her arrival in Vegas, Wilson Wright reappeared, hoping to reconcile. He had not meant to leave her and the children on the street, he explained. He just couldn’t find them. But Charolette is ready to stop.
She linked her star to Merle Richards and his wedding company. Both eventually formally divorce their respective spouses and marry each other.
Her new husband wasn’t a gambler like Wright, but he has his own demons.
After ten years, her marriage to Merle was over.
Soon after, she was an ordained minister, ready to solemnize her first marriage.
She told the couple: “You are the first people I married, so please excuse me if I make a mistake.
Recalling the first time, she said, “I felt proud once I got through it, and I started catering those weddings like they were candy.”