So, for example, one night at 9 p.m., an extremely happy couple came in looking like they'd dressed as a Texas wedding for Halloween. The groom wore a cowboy hat, Boise suit, and bolo tie, the bride a dress with leather tassels. After making sure that these people weren't cartoon characters, it was discovered they had overlooked the minor technicality of getting a license (not the first to assume that they didn't need one here). We directed them to the bureau and got the sense we'd never see them again (maybe they'd get distracted by a Western-themed casino and blow their license money learning how to know when to fold 'em).

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But barely a half-hour later, the couple barged in with their license. This was a summer evening, which meant heavy traffic and long lines -- they must have raced back and forth, weaving through traffic like a car chase in a Jason Bourne movie. They're still married, by the way. They send us a Christmas card all the way from Rotterdam every year. I like to imagine them walking around various Dutch landmarks, still in their rodeo formalwear.

He was far from our only repeat customer. One couple got married early in the year, either divorced or annulled, and then each married separate people in two weddings later in the year, all at our chapel. We had one couple who got married the first night of their vacation, annulled the next day, and then got married again within the week.

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I remember them well, because we had an issue with their souvenir T-shirts. We had run out the first time and told them to stop by a few days later to pick them up, but when they got married again, they ordered different shirts with their new wedding photo. Our salesman asked them which ones they wanted, and they decided to get both. Why wouldn't you want to occasionally pull out the shirts to remind you of the time you decided your first wedding was a grave mistake? For all we know, they've gotten married and unmarried 20 or 30 times since then. Piles and piles of shirts.

We've even had bridesmaids and groomsmen show up for their best friends' weddings and decide to pick one up for themselves as well. It's entirely possible that these marriages were the result of long-considered deliberation, and were not spontaneous decisions made by people who can't think five minutes into the future, but either way, we can expect several of these "copycat" weddings every year.

So no, this isn't an "anything goes" situation, despite what the movies and tourism ads would have you believe. As in most places, it's illegal to marry your cousin here, but a striking number of people don't realize that before they take the trip. An officiator from a chapel nearby once told us that a brother and sister tried to get married (on a dare), but were stopped at the bureau because it seemed kind of suspicious that they already shared the same last name.

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Underage marriages can be trickier, because it's not unheard of for young couples to lie about their age or forge their parents' signatures. The bureau usually stops them, but a few slip through the cracks. These marriages are void ... until both parties turn 18, at which point the marriage becomes legit, regardless of what's happened in the intervening years (unless the parents have it annulled). Thankfully, teenagers are known for their rock-solid long-term decision-making, or this could be a very unpleasant situation.

We've also caught already-married people trying to get married to other people. Sometimes they simply didn't care about the law, but sometimes they were surprised to find they weren't already divorced. To be fair, who among us has never spaced out on such trivialities? And again, they're not even drunk. Not everyone requires chemical assistance to let their life spin totally out of control.

Every day, we had elopers come in, and the ensuing drama could be Shakespearean. One couple showed up the minute the bride turned 18, so that's one red flag. Right before they went up to the pastor, there was another in the form of a phone call from her parents. It turned out she had run out on her last few months of high school to marry her Romeo. She stood there for a while, arguing with her parents in the lobby, giving the other waiting couples a little pre-wedding entertainment and possibly second thoughts.

I brought her into one of the pastor's offices in the back so we could be alone, and so she could stop scaring away customers, and she gave me the rundown: They met last year, her parents had forbidden it, you already know the story from high-school English. They got the idea to elope to Vegas from a movie (of course). She cried while I talked about my marriage and what it meant to me, and eventually she called her parents to sheepishly request a plane ticket home -- a single one.

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The boy she almost married had left by that point without even trying to convince her to stay. She was devastated, of course, but marrying some dick who wouldn't even argue with a Vegas wedding chapel employee for the "love of his life" probably would have devastated her more.