Charolette Richards

Charolette Richards (died December 13, 2023) was a woman who was known as the "Wedding Queen of the West".^[1]

She arrived in Vegas on June 10, 1959, from Kentucky, thinking she was following her then husband, but he was not at their intended meeting place. Needing to earn a living to support their children, Richards ended up in the wedding industry and opened the first drive-through wedding chapel and officiated the first helicopter wedding in Las Vegas.^[2][3][4] On "Blackjack Day", July 7, 2007, Richards performed 547 weddings.^[5][6]

When the chapel went to auction she bid, putting down $50,000, loaned from a friend and to pay off the rest, lived there and operated 24 hours a day until the Las Vegas marriage bureau changed its hours.^[7][2] She subsequently owned A Little White Wedding Chapel for more than sixty years and outside of her chapel, served as wedding coordinator for Elvis and Priscilla Presley's 1967 ceremony.^[1]