It's taking me a while to finally get to my reviews, so I figured I'd post my first one while I work on the rest!
Little Church of the West: A
This is super long I know, but I rarely see a review for this chapel on here! (@jiimanie this is for you! Lol)
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I had decided right away that I did not want to have my ceremony in a hotel but at a separate chapel, so I really only looked at these when doing my research. I wanted the cheesiness of Vegas with still feeling like a “real” wedding. Little Church of the West was one of the first chapels I came across online and I always came back to it after looking at others. Right away I loved the history behind it and the rustic look to the church. I watched quite a few of the web cam videos on there and I liked that the ceremony length was short, but still really sweet.
In Feb of this year I got to tag along on a work trip to Vegas my husband was going to, so I contacted the chapel to ask if I could come in to take a look and ask some questions. I emailed back and forth with Cheyenne a few times and we came up with a time. As soon as I walked up to the chapel I knew I wanted our ceremony to be here. Cheyenne was super nice and answered all of the questions I had. She let us look around the chapel, the bridal suite and the grounds. A couple of weeks after we got back I booked the ‘Marry Me’ package with her. We also added on the Las Vegas Sign photography. We put down a deposit with the balance owing a month before our ceremony.
That was pretty much all the planning I had to do for awhile. A few months later I was contacted by Lisa to see if I had any questions at all. This was who I contacted from then up until the day of. Lisa was SUPER nice! I know I must have annoyed her with all my little questions etc but she always got back to me really quickly and never made me feel like I was a bother. I was worried to ask for/tweak certain things because most of the ceremonies are just “point and shoot”, but she was very accommodating. She let me use the bridal suite for free (which, because it wasn’t part of my package, would normally cost $50, not a big deal anyways but was nice of her). I ordered a coral bouquet for myself, which wasn’t a typical colour choice they had. She let me split up my MOH bouquet into two smaller ones for my two bridesmaids. The list goes on!
They don’t do rehearsals at all which scared the hell out of me at first but Lisa gave me a pretty good run down of how the day would play out before hand. Looking back now you really don’t need a rehearsal, they walk you through everything.
Our ceremony was at 3pm on Saturday December 7th. At about 2:10 my parents and my sisters/bridemaids arrived at the chapel. When we got there a wedding was just about to start so the parking lot was a bit crowded. I checked in at the office and then went to wait in the bridal suite. All I needed to do was put on my dress so most of time was spent nervously pacing. My FI and his groomsmen were picked up by a limo at 2:30 at our hotel. We coordinated via text so that he wouldn’t see me before hand. I brought my marriage license with me and signed off on the certificate and couple of other forms. One of the girls brought my flowers into me shortly after I got there (they were gorgeous! the colour was perfect!). Lisa came in to see me so I finally got to meet her in person. She said they would wait for all of my guests to arrive and then come and get me. About ten mins after that I was walked over to the chapel. We lined up outside the doors and were told when to go in. The ceremony was so quick (seriously, like 5 mins long) and I couldn’t be happier about that. I was super nervous about messing up on what I was supposed to say. The minister was great at directing us without sounding like he was (if that makes sense). I knew from watching the other ceremonies online that it was the same lines that were said every time, but you would never have known. After the ceremony, we did our family and couple photo sessions at the chapel while our guests made their way to the sign (which was a very short walk). The wedding party took the limo to the sign, where we did couple and wedding party shots and then a few group ones. Our photographer was awesome, she just butt in front of everyone else in line and swooped us all in. After that it was back to the limo which took us back to our hotel. We were back there by 4 pm.
We came back the next morning to pick up our picture CD and DVD. Typically this would be done right after the ceremony but I asked to come back the next day.
The only “con” I came across was the confusion with the photo packages. My ceremony included candid shots taken during my ceremony, and photo sessions afterwards. I originally thought ALL of the pictures would be given to me, but it was clarified to me later on that the only pictures included were the candids, and that I could purchase the ones taken in the sessions afterwards if I liked. I was kind of put off by this at first, it just seemed like a money grab to me. I was originally not going to do the photo sessions at the chapel and just have the sign photos. But I decided to at least do the photo sessions and see how the pictures turned out (though I should have known that there was no way I was going to leave a wedding photo behind). It turned out not to be that bad of a deal. For $495 I got every single one of my photos (all 230 of them, some better than others obviously) on a CD right away. We had Tracey as our photographer and she was really great to work with. She didn’t make us feel uncomfortable at all and she was really easy going. She actually upgraded our photo purchase package for free (which included them storing our photos forever in case anything happened to our copies). I was really happy with the sign photos. We were going to try and take a few shots of our own when we got back to the hotel but we were already sick of taking pictures, we just looked at each other and said let’s just buy the pictures and enjoy our night.
Our guests kept saying how much they loved the chapel! We had 31 people seated so it filled it up nicely without being crowded. It felt very intimate and quaint.Overall I’m really happy that I chose this chapel!
If there's anything I missed feel free to ask!