CARSON CITY — It may be easier for someone who gets hitched in Nevada to get a name change.
Assembly Bill 204 would require that the new name a bride or groom plans to use after marrying be listed on the marriage license and certificate.
The bill allows a newly married person to change middle and or last names. For example, someone could change a middle name to his or her former last name and take on a spouse’s last name.
Couples hoping to marry on Valentine’s Day can streamline their plans by preapplying for marriage licenses.
The days just before and after Valentine’s Day are the busiest days of the year at Clark County’s Marriage License Bureau, and lines are expected to be long, the county clerk’s office said.
With Valentine’s Day on Tuesday, our wedding chapels will shift into overdrive for romantic couples wanting to tie the knot or renew their vows. The economic impact from wedding tourism here is $2 billion. That was the 2015 figure computed for me by county clerk Lynn Goya.
Lynn also told me that of the annual 40 million-plus visitors, 4 percent are here to get married or renew vows. In 2015, 350,000 couples traveled here to get married, and 80 percent of them were younger than 40. “Yes, Millennials are getting married,” said Lynn. “And one-quarter of all the duos from Britain fly here just to get married.”
Jennifer Dickerson’s divorce from her husband of seven years was finalized on Thursday. The next morning, Dickerson’s ex-husband drove her and fiancée Amanda Falzone, 34, to the airport.
The women flew from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas, where they became the 10,000th same-sex couple to obtain a marriage license in Clark County.
“Being in love is awesome,” Dickerson gushed to gathered media on Friday afternoon. “And being able to share it with everybody, and now, all of Las Vegas, is awesome!”
The “wedding capital of the world” is on the cusp of issuing its 10,000th marriage license to a same-sex couple, and local businesses want to make sure the ceremony to come will be a lavish celebration.
The Clark County Clerk’s Marriage License Bureau has received an abundance of gifts for the couple including a two-night stay at Mandalay Bay, free wedding photography from Frick Photo and offers for free ceremonies from a handful of local resorts and wedding chapels.
In all, more than 25 businesses have donated gifts. Most are members of the Las Vegas Wedding Chamber of Commerce.
“We thought it was a great opportunity to say ‘thank you for getting married with us’ and celebrate the ‘same love, same rights’ (movement),” chamber president Kristen LaBuda said. “Marriage equality is just an important value to us here.”
Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 29, 2016 – 8:00 pm
Public access to government documents is vital to the health of any free society. Barring some extraordinary circumstances — national security, for instance — accountability demands that such records be open and available to those who seek to review them.
Unfortunately, too many government agencies and bureaucrats reflexively take the opposite approach, withholding information until specifically ordered to provide it. That’s why Clark County Clerk Lynn Goya deserves a ton of credit for seeking to digitalize all of her office’s records to make it easier for members of the public to find them online.Read More.
Business proposals from reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, candid photographs of alleged mob bosses, paperwork for plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
Those public records and more — the fabric of Clark County’s history — will be at the fingertips of anyone with a computer and internet access as an ongoing initiative by the county clerk’s office comes to fruition.
County Clerk Lynn Goya is on a mission to digitize every public record her office has in order to create an online archive of documents dating back to 1909, when Clark County was created by dividing Lincoln County.
County commissioners on Tuesday authorized money collected from the extra $14 per marriage license fee that began six months ago to be spent but at only a fraction of what the county clerk had sought.
Marriage licenses in the county increased by $14 last August to $77, for a special revenue fund set aside specifically for wedding tourism marketing. The amount collected reached $527,583 in January.
County Clerk Lynn Goya, whose office oversees marriages licenses and who persuaded the state Legislature to approve the special revenue fund, proposed a preliminary budget of $170,000 which included $30,000 for research consulting by a private firm and $40,000 for trade missions and attending trade shows.
The Phoenix businessmen had planned to start the new year with a low-key Las Vegas wedding in one of the city’s small downtown chapels.
Little did they know the new chapter in their history would become a milestone in Las Vegas’ story as well.
Standing in line on New Year’s Eve to get their marriage license, the couple noticed an air of excitement start to hum in the marriage license bureau.
Then came the explanation: “Congratulations!” said a clerk.
A lavish new wedding exhibit greets guests at The International School of Hospitality in southeast Las Vegas, where crystals, roses and silk linens adorn a set of party-ready tables just past the main lobby.
The gleaming display is the latest installment by students and instructors inside TISOH’s new design lab, a space built in March where budding event planners experiment with tools of the trade such as room decor and lighting gear. Instructors last month adopted a luxury wedding theme for the lab in reaction to Clark County’s recent efforts to boost the region’s lucrative but weakening marriage industry.