New Yorkers Now Have a Place to Elope, Vegas Style

New Yorkers Now Have a Place to Elope, Vegas Style The ceiling is mirrored, the organ is pink, and the officiants include a goth Elvis and John Waters. By , an Emmy Award–winning Curbed writer who has reported on New York City for four years Photo: Adriane Quinlan On Sunday, the filmmaker John Waters walked into a Lower East Side storefront that looked like a set for one of his films. The 400-square-foot space, squeezed between a graffiti-covered apartment door and a menswear boutique, had a flamingo-pink façade, a poured pink-and-red floor, pink fiberglass chairs, wallpaper of scudding clouds, and red velvet drapery. Chips of light spun around the space, reflections from a whirling, mirrored mobile of canoodling pigeons. Waters wasn’t there to shoot a movie; a couple had invited him to preside over their wedding at the first New York location in a chain of quickie Las Vegas–style chapels called Sure Thing. From left: Photo: Robert Barrett/Robert BarrettPhoto: Adriane Quinlan From top: Photo: Robert Barrett/Robert BarrettPhoto: Adriane Quinlan Sure Thing, its owners say, was founded as an ode to an earlier generation of over-the-top, cherub-filled chapels built around World War II, and its design was explicitly pitched away from anything that seemed conservative or religious on the one hand and upscale-tasteful on the other. “I want everything to feel gaudy and over-the-top,” said Victoria Hogan, one of the business’s two co-founders. “Anything not millennial gray.” She got into the business of designing florals and shooting weddings after graduating from art school and then officiated ceremonies from a teardrop trailer in the desert. One of those couples had a bride named Amy Lee, a burlesque dancer who got into photography and started shooting ceremonies for Hogan. They partnered to start a chapel in Vegas in 2019 with a pink velvet curtain backdrop. An Elvis-impersonator officiant was a must for some couples, but some could be “borderline creepy,” said Hogan, who decided to dress as the King herself, creating a character she named “Lady Elvis.” Business took off, they opened a second space in Las Vegas in 2024, and last year they hosted 2,500 weddings. Their clients, like the classic Vegas-chapel clientele, didn’t want the fuss of a giant ceremony or just didn’t have the guests. “I can’t tell you the amount of times we had queer couples tell me their parents didn’t approve of their wedding and they wanted to go somewhere that felt special to them,” said Hogan. Now they’ve come east. The chapel opened at the end of August at 122 Allen Street. Neon over the door reads “Just Married.” Photo: Adriane Quinlan The Las Vegas Strip became a wedding hot spot in the 1940s, after the town was reconceived as a resort and Reno had become America’s divorce capital. Most couples willing to travel to Nevada and pay for a legal split, rather than endure a casual separation, had the same incentive: a new partner who wanted to marry. Vegas weddings got more popular after Elvis himself married there in 1967. The little chapels emulated (on the cheap) the look of churches, but they worked like factories — churning out couples and playing into the American divorcée’s new sense that a wedding was simply a signed piece of paper. Chapels soon started staying open 24/7, added drive-thrus that appealed to celebs seeking privacy, and eventually leaned in to the irony of it all. Taco Bell ran one, and Madame Tussauds built a re-creation of the chapel from The Hangover where couples could marry next to a wax Zach Galifianakis. The back door of Sure Thing leads to Autophoto, a gallery of working vintage photobooths that’s run by a friend, Couples that wed at Sure Thing get to cut the line. Photo: Adriane Quinlan New York is Sure Thing’s only venue outside of Vegas, and its smallest, designed with digital life in mind. The cloud wallpaper makes a good photo backdrop, and so does the baroque foil wallpaper along a hallway behind the curtain. Likewise the neon-pink Wurlitzer organ, topped by a backlit stained-glass panel of two pigeons. The bathroom is an ode to Amelie’s distinctive color scheme, with a mint-green toilet and sink against burgundy penny tile. Lee obsessively tweaked the lighting in the main space to land on a tone that’s photo-shoot friendly. “It’s lit well, but doesn’t look like a morgue,” she said. No doorknob or outlet cover is just there, a Home Depot basic that could pop the fantasy bubble. Inspirations included I Dream of Jeannie (the 1960s baroque wallpaper), David Lynch (the red velvet), Studio 54 (the mirrored pigeon disco ball), and John Waters himself. Local officiants have included Hellvis, a goth-edged comedic Elvis character, and Tillie, a “genderless” clown who wears fashionable vintage. A camera in the ceiling is at the ideal spot to stream a ceremony on Zoom or otherwise. For $666, a couple can book Sure Thing for 30 minutes and invite 18 people, or they can pay double to use the space twice as long for a few more guests and book an organist. That poured floor makes it easy to sweep the glitter out between bookings. A view from Allen Street of the first wedding in the space this year. Photo: Robert Barrett Before the space had even been photographed, 20 couples had signed up, including Josh Bodley and Tegan Barr, Londoners who took the very first slot in late August. They had gotten engaged at the Empire State Building last December and returned home to find that the cheapest venue around — a pub — was asking £9,000. “It didn’t feel very us,” said Barr. Neither did a church. “We thought, ‘Let’s skip those traditions and do the fun bits.’” They paid around $4,000 for outfits, hotel rooms, flights, and a honeymoon in Nashville. A small group of friends and family flew in to be with them and bought rounds of drinks at a bar on the Bowery after. “Strangers were buying us tequila shots,” said Barr. “I’d love to do it again.” Tegan Barr, now Tegan Barr-Bodley, and Josh Bodley. Photo: Robert Barrett/Robert Barrett New Yorkers Now Have a Place to Elope, Vegas Style Your product is saved! You’ll receive emails when your saved products go on sale. Manage preferences.