“Ladies and gentlemen we are coming to you live from the world-famous Little Vegas Chapel,” Chad Collins drawls into the camera.
Even if he weren’t dressed in a black jumpsuit studded with gold sunbursts, even if his thick black hair wasn’t combed back, a single strand hanging roguishly across his forehead, Collins’ voice would still be instantly recognizable. The Nashville-born Elvis impersonator has been channeling the King since age five.
Elvis Presley left an indelible imprint on the world, and nowhere has the impact of his legacy been more powerful than in Las Vegas, Nevada. In Sin City, Presley is more than a rock legend, he’s a wedding day essential. And, despite an attempt by the company that licenses the musician’s likeness and music to crack down on the tradition in 2022, for now at least, it looks like he’ll stay that way.
The real Elvis had already passed away by the time the first Elvis-themed wedding was performed in Las Vegas in 1977. While the real Presley never actually officiated a wedding, he was responsible for planting the seed around which an entire industry now grows.
It happened one night in 1967, says Rod Musum, general manager of the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. Roused by an unexpected knock at the door, Ollie McKee, the chapel’s first owner, went to greet his visitors. On the stoop stood the King with his entourage.
“I pass by all the time and I always wanted to stop in because it reminds me of home,” Elvis told McKee (according to Musum). Presley was in search of a venue to wed the love of his life, a striking beauty with long dark hair, pale blue eyes, and porcelain skin named Priscilla. Gobstruck, McKee, a big Elvis fan, gave the musician a tour of the quaint home-turned-wedding venue, which was then known as the Gretna Green Wedding Chapel.
The sanctuary was beautiful, Presley admitted, but unfortunately too small for the party he and his fiancé were planning. Disappointed, McKee asked Elvis how he’d feel if they changed the chapel’s name to Graceland. Elvis, probably flashing his million-dollar smile, apparently gave him his blessing.
When Elvis Presley died in 1977, the chapel’s new owner didn’t hesitate to cash in on the legend. Although performers had been impersonating Elvis since the mid-1950s—the first known Elvis lookalike, Carl “Cheesie” Nelson from Texarkana, Arkansas, even performed with the King in 1954—it was the newly minted Graceland Wedding Chapel that introduced the Elvis impersonator to the wedding game.
That same year, they performed the very first Elvis wedding in Las Vegas. Other chapels quickly followed suit, introducing Elvis-themed weddings up and down the Strip. Today, the King appears at ceremonies at dozens of chapels, from the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel and the Elvis Chapel, to the Las Vegas Elvis Wedding Chapel and the Little Chapel of Hearts.
“Every chapel has, at the very least, the option to add an Elvis,” says Musum. “They’re all connected to Elvis impersonators in the city.”
Every Elvis in the Vegas wedding game is a little different. Some dress in high-collared white jumpsuits and perform the musician in his paunchy, middle-aged era. Others, like Collins, who currently officiates at the Las Vegas Elvis Wedding Chapel, do a younger, sleeker, more coiffed version of the sideburned singer. Some are legitimate musicians in their own right, with guitar skills that help to sell the character. Others, not so much.
Charisma is the only thing that’s not negotiable, says Musum. “It’s hard to find an Elvis impersonator that actually looks like him [but] being able to sing and sing well, and knowing a lot of the library of Elvis’ songs” are essential.
For Collins, who won the 2013 Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest, and who performs regularly in tribute shows around the country, it’s a “magnetic personality” that sets the good Elvis’ apart from the bad ones. “There’s a lot of bad ones, and very few good ones,” he says. “Don’t let a bad Elvis impersonator influence your opinion on all Elvis impersonators.”
The types of ceremonies and packages a chapel offers are just as important as the man performing them. Since the 1930s, when Las Vegas got rid of its three-day waiting period for a marriage license and axed requirements like blood tests, the city has been an attractive destination for couples. So many couples had wed there by the 1950s that Las Vegas was declared the Wedding Capital of the World.
Today, around 80,000 couples exchange vows in the city each year, including celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and Elvis himself. Elvis weddings make up a significant portion of those ceremonies but no one is keeping track of exactly how many. Collins typically officiates between 80 and 100 weddings per month as Elvis.
“Occasionally I’ll forget what costume I’m wearing, Chad or Elvis,” he says.
At Graceland Wedding Chapel, the most frequently performed Elvis ceremony has the King belting out three songs from his repertoire for $329, a price which includes round-trip limo service, professional photography, and a copy of Elvis and Priscilla’s marriage certificate.
“Elvis will walk the bride down the aisle with the first song,” says Musum. “He’ll do some vows and then a second song, then he’ll do some fun Elvis-style vows. At the end, he’ll do the third song, usually something upbeat like ‘Viva Las Vegas.’” “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is one of Collins’ favorites to include at his ceremonies at the Las Vegas Elvis Wedding Chapel.
But the standard ceremony is just a starting point. The affianced couple can choose from packages like the Blue Hawaii, where Elvis sings three tropical tunes and gives a gift of silky leis, and the Famous Dueling Elvis Package, simultaneously officiated by both a young Elvis decked out in gold lame fabric and an older Elvis in a flashy 70’s-style jumpsuit.
There are drive-through Elvis weddings, in which the King rides with the couple in a pink Cadillac, and Elvis-helmed ceremonies held in front of the famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. There are “Miss Elvis” weddings officiated by female Elvis impersonators, and Mini-Elvis weddings performed by a little person in full Presley style.
Most of the ceremonies chapels like Graceland perform are not legal weddings. Of the more than 10,000 couples that came through Graceland Wedding Chapel’s doors last year, most were there for vow renewals or commitment ceremonies. “The product we have appeals to more than just people getting married and we’ve embraced that,” says Musum. “It’s a Vegas-born activity and there aren’t many Vegas-born activities. We’ve become a ‘tour,’ if you will.”
That vital relationship between Elvis and the Vegas wedding industry may be why the Authentic Brands Group, the company that licenses Elvis’s estate, backed down from threats to halt the unauthorized use of “Presley’s name, likeness, voice, image, and other elements of Presleys persona in advertisements, merchandise and otherwise.”
They reversed course just months after issuing cease-and-desist letters to some chapels in 2022—although Graceland never received one, a fact Musum chalks up to the fact that they take their ceremonies seriously. “Everyone that walks through our doors knows they’re going to get a good Elvis and it’s not going to be a joke. We want everyone to feel special.”
Although Authentic Brands Group didn’t respond to requests to explain their decision, Musum says that the company agreed to officially license chapels for “a reasonable fee.”
“We were pleased that the estate backed down,” he continues. “Everything that we’re doing in Vegas is actually keeping that brand alive. I think they realized there was a value to that. Someone even said the Elvis estate should be paying these chapels instead of vice versa.”
Indeed, around four percent of all visitors to Vegas come for a wedding, Elvis or otherwise, generating $2.5 billion in revenue each year—and they’re not just from the United States.
Elvis “speaks to a lot of different people in a lot of different places around the world,” says Musum. “Half of the business we do is people from outside the United States. Elvis never performed outside North America so when people from Spain or Brazil, when they come here, it’s just amazing that his brand and his music and his legacy transcends time.”
