For better or for worse, a wave of couples saying "I do" in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve could set a record for the city's busiest wedding day ever, the AP reports. That's because 12/31/23 is known in the massive Las Vegas wedding industry as a "specialty date," thanks to the repeating 1-2-3 1-2-3 pattern, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. The icing on the cake? This specialty date falls on a holiday famous for blowout celebrations.
"It's a double whammy," said Melody Willis-Williams, president of Vegas Weddings, which operates multiple venues. "Anytime you get these specialty dates, they're always hugely popular. But tie that in with New Year's Eve and it's a showstopper." The number to beat on New Year's Eve is 4,492—the single-day record for marriages in Las Vegas set on July 7, 2007 (7/7/07). The second-most popular specialty wedding date on record with the county's marriage bureau is Nov. 11, 2011 (11/11/11), when 3,125 couples tied the knot.
Typically, New Year's Eve has drawn somewhere between 450 to 550 couples to wed in Las Vegas since 2018, the Review-Journal reported. This year, Vegas Weddings is fully booked on midnight at its multiple venues, including its brown-brick chapel in downtown Las Vegas with a white steeple and red awning. Willis-Williams said her company alone expects to wed more than 120 couples on New Year's Eve. (More Las Vegas stories.)