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Long Beach Wedding Chapel Offering $14 Marriage Ceremonies On Valentine's Day
Cute Little Wedding Chapel will host $14 Valentine's Day weddings. (Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images)
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This Valentine's Day, a Southern California officiant is offering $14 weddings at his Long Beach chapel for happy couples looking to tie the knot.
Alan Katz is "not that crusty, old guy standing up there," he told LAist. Instead, his weddings are "a fun approach where I make people laugh, and where I make the guests laugh."
To give you a taste of the kind of humor you may be in for: "We do take walk-ins. Not Christopher, though." (Get it? Because Christopher Walken.)
In addition to running the Cute Little Wedding Chapel in Long Beach, Alan Katz runs Great Officiants, an event planning service that specializes in marriage ceremonies. (Courtesy Alan Katz)
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From 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. Valentine's Day, couples may show up to the Cute Little Wedding Chapel in Long Beach to declare their love for each other. And for real, you and your significant other can walk in and have your ceremony on the spot -- or you can call ahead to see if there are scheduled time slots still open.
To qualify for the $14 deal, couples must have their marriage license in hand and limit their guests to four people. Katz can also issue marriage licenses on the day of the wedding, as well as accommodate larger crowds at an extra cost.
ELSEWHERE...
At county offices, officials are anticipating a bigger-than-usual influx of happy couples on Valentine's Day -- after all, the holiday falls on a Friday this year. And it's a three-day weekend for those who have President's Day off on Monday.
"I wouldn't be surprised to see more people turn out than in the previous two years," said Mike Sanchez, public information office for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's office. The county conducted 284 marriage ceremonies on Valentine's Day in 2018 and 233 marriages on Valentine's Day 2019, Sanchez said.
All L.A. County offices are open for marriage ceremonies on Fridays, but the Norwalk office is the only one that will accept same-day ceremonies. Licenses in L.A. County cost $91, and ceremonies cost $35.
In Orange County, Clerk-Recorder Hugh Nguyen told LAist he wants to break the county record for the number of couples married in a day. The current record was set five years ago when 266 couples tied the knot on Feb. 14, 2015.
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To contribute to this year's excitement, Snoopy -- yes, the cartoon beagle and Knott's Berry Farm mascot -- will be at two Orange County office locations to hand out roses. Expect to see him at the North County Branch Office in Anaheim from 10-11:30 a.m., and at the Old County Santa Ana Courthouse from 1-2:30 p.m.
Wild Wing, the Anaheim Ducks mascot, will also be at the North County Branch Office in Anaheim from noon to 1 p.m., Nguyen said.
In Orange County, marriage licenses cost $61, and a civil ceremony costs $28.
And for couples looking for an even more unique wedding date than Valentine's Day, Nguyen and his staff will perform marriage ceremonies on Saturday, Feb. 29 -- Leap Day. More than 150 appointments for marriage ceremonies have already been made for that day.
"I think people are going, 'hey, we don't have to celebrate for four years,'" Nguyen said.
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