Little Church of the West, Wedding Chapel — Attraction in Paradise

BUYER BEWARE: PLEASE READ

All I ask from a business is to be honest in your dealings with others. When you aren’t, it may lead to short-term financial gains, but there are also other implications to be had...in small part, a google review like mine:

Our wedding was last week, and we chose this church for a reason. It’s truly iconic, the location is beautiful, and the staff was fantastic. I don’t need to convince anyone of that. You can discern that from all the other reviews.

With that said, people also choose this place because it’s an inexpensive alternative to having a large-scale wedding. The price we paid was for the $395 wedding package. Quite the bargain to runaway and elope in a place as magical as Vegas. We were told, as part of the package, there would be a $100 credit towards the purchase of photos of the ceremony. In follow-up phone correspondence, we asked for clarity, and were told we would be able to purchase the photos we wanted and utilize our credit. In retrospect, the conversation was intentionally vague. As most logical people would be led to assume, it would be an a la carte purchase, and that was our mindset going in, that we would only purchase about THAT amount, or a little over for a few of the best photos from the ceremony.

Fast forward to the wedding day. It was absolutely fantastic. Everything went as planned, in fact, in many ways, it was better than expected. The photo shoot at the end was terrific, and the photographer was both professional and humorous. At the conclusion, he led us to a small room, wedding dress and suit on, and we were told there were 108 usable photos and were presented with three packages to choose from. Each one had its own bells and whistles, and I can’t regurgitate the details here, but they ranged from the $500 range to the $300 range, AFTER our, “$100,” credit. Might I add, we were NEVER shown these options in advance...this was the first time seeing them. We were asked to decide immediately in his presence, with the assumption that if we don’t choose one of the three, you get no photos at all. I can’t imagine how many people had to go that route. After a few minutes, naturally, as I’m sure many have also done, we chose to go with the most expensive package, which with tax, came to about $600.

The question I want answered: why aren’t you honest and share the details of this package in advance? Never mind, I know the answer: you know exactly what you are doing, and I’m quite certain you’ve perfected the entire process. I read in another review where the owner responded with, “the packages are found in the FAQ section of their website.” Why is that never mentioned in any correspondence? Price and packages is a pretty big thing to leave out. In my opinion it’s slimy, shady, greedy, manipulative, and in many ways exposes the dark underbelly of Vegas for what it’s capable of being...crooked. I know it’s a one-time purchase, and return customers aren’t your thing, but who you are and how you run your business is a reflection of what you stand for, as well as the people who run the day-to-day operations. It was no big deal for us, sure the wallet was $600 lighter, and we got more photos and even a video that we didn’t expect, but I can’t stop thinking of how many people must have been in that office who didn’t have the extra money. Of all the days in someone’s life to play the role of crook, outside of their funeral, I’d say the wedding day is one to keep your greedy, pilfering hands out of.

From a business perspective, my recommendation would be to immediately change how you present the purchase of photos to paying customers. It may seem paradoxical, but if you tell people what to expect up front, they would be even more than willing to pay a higher price rather than tricking them into getting a little extra cash. To paraphrase, do the right thing.

To top it off, they had the audacity to ask me to write a Google review. I suppose Sinatra said it best when he said, “that’s life,” and in life, what goes around,...

I had my wedding here in 2023. I’m sharing my experience so others know what to expect when having a wedding here. My experience with the team was disappointing, and unfortunately was the only negative part of my wedding day.

My husband and I looked forward to an easy-to-plan, fun Vegas wedding. We paid for the most expensive package offered by Little Church of the West, and we were thrilled about having our ceremony here.

The package included costs for services of the chapel’s staff photographer, as well as a credit toward photo purchases. We had already selected a photographer we loved to take our wedding photos. Like many couples, we wanted photos of our entire day, not just the ceremony. We had a specific style of photography we wanted for our wedding photos, and the style of photography taken by the chapel’s staff was very different.

After booking our package, we began to realize that having an outside photographer would be a huge issue.

When we told the chapel’s staff we would be bringing our own photographer, we were immediately met with resistance. They initially told us that we would not be allowed to bring our own photographer at all. The staff made up some nonsense about how it would be challenging for an outside photographer to take photos in the building. We told them we were comfortable taking the risk — we were confident the professional photographer we had hired could indeed competently take photos.

They then informed us that if we brought our own photographer, we would be required to pay $500 additional dollars, on top of the $1,500 package we had already paid for. We paid the fee.

Other negative things that happened:

1 - After asking how much time we would have inside the chapel several times, less than 10 days before our wedding date, we were informed we would only have 30 minutes total inside the chapel. The day of the wedding, we were rushed by staff and reminded of how much time we had left in the chapel. In the days leading up to the wedding, the team told us the date we had chosen was “exceptionally busy.” We had booked our package around 6 months in advance, and we didn’t think that the amount of weddings they had chosen to book the same day was in any way our problem.

2 - We paid extra money to choose our own processional and recessional songs, instead of their generic “wedding music”. My chosen songs were unceremoniously cut off during the ceremony. The song I walked down the aisle to was played for less than one minute. Our recessional song was also immediately turned off when we reached the chapel doors.

3 - The package we booked had no guest limit. We had 30 guests at our wedding. The amount of guests we had was framed by the staff as a concern.

We looked forward to capturing special memories here and the charm of the church. I chose this chapel because I thought it would look beautiful in my photos. We were rushed and treated as an inconvenience, instead of treated with respect. On the whole, it was clear the staff here had little appreciation for how special this day was for me and my husband. Because of this, I have a total of 2 group photos inside the chapel with my family, and I do not have ANY photos of my husband’s side of the family inside the chapel.

We obviously planned to have a less traditional wedding by doing it at a Vegas chapel — we wanted our wedding to be fun and easy, but also expected to receive respectful customer service from the chapel’s staff.

This chapel will probably work fine if you want a “standard” Vegas wedding — if you have limited expectations for your experience, don’t want specific things during your ceremony, and are fine with a very fast ceremony. However, if you want a personal ceremony, I would choose a chapel provides customers who choose to spend such a special day at their chapel with a...

Disappointed indeed - It's business and NOT PERSONAL with this place! We were married on Monday April 10, 2023. When we reserved and made our request for our officiant to be a male, it was made clear to us that it was his day off, and I made a point to remember this inconvenience on his part. I also made mention that we would only be interested in the video and no need for a photographer. The above mentioned details are what I want you to keep in mind as I make my point: officiant's time disruption for his day off, and initial decision to have little need for anything else but a video. I will begin with the video. First of all - it was NOT a live stream. Second - it was filmed using only ONE camera angle. I was expecting the video to be multi-angle, as seen in other videos. When it became obvious after the ceremony that our virtual guests were not able to share the moment with us, my witness as well as others tried to notify your staff. My witness tried to discuss this with your staff, as they insisted that it was streaming and the video was uploaded, but my witness had to explain over and over that it was NOT! Meanwhile as this argument on my behalf was taking place, my husband and I reviewed the photography. We then found ourselves deciding to get the FULL photographic package, in addition to the video which was our INITAIL PRIMARY INSISTANCE. At this point, I would like to convey our happiness with the photographer. He went above and beyond at our request, obliging with a few additional pictures that were not able to be taken during our ceremony. Which leads me to my second point of dissatisfaction with the officiant and ceremony to include the exchange of rings. I am not sure how/why there was a disruption in our request and communication to have an exchange of rings performed. I will assume this became confusing to your staff as they heard our wedding party discuss the groom's neglect to remember the bride's ring. I assume the staff made a decision based upon overhearing, but NOT by any means for us to ELIMINATE that part of the ceremony! I assume this upon your staff as unbeknownst to them, WE THE WEDDING PARTY had already made our own plans to make sure that we would still EXCHANGE RINGS! The bride still had the grooms wedding ring to give, and the groom was going to use another ring as a replacement. That was our plan, as well as sending one of our guests back to the hotel to retrieve the ring, and perhaps arrive back in time. The guest and bride's ring did arrive back in short time, in fact ---- in time for the photographer to take lovely pictures or our "fake exchange" after the fact. I realize that the officiant was inconvenienced for a short period of time on his day off, but there was absolutely no concession made for us. There was NO DISCUSSION about this revocation of exchange of rings! There was no conversation or concession to be considered for a slight delay, or to make him aware of "our back up plans". Somehow this decision to eliminate the exchange of rings was made - BUT NOT BY US! I am TERRIBLY disappointed with the ceremony and the video. It did NOT capture at all what I was expecting my special ceremony day to be. I will be adding this bad review to other media platforms. We paid a great deal for elevated services, to be sure we got exactly what we wanted, and even provided gratuity as we were made to feel it was required. However, that gratuity was undeserved and the customer service was appalling. I am the type of person who will not allow myself to be upset about these unfortunate circumstances on the day of our vow exchange. Afterall, the vows are the most important as well as the years that follow. However, I will not recommend this chapel as a place to capture the...