"It's slow," said White when I approached to chat, a novel description for a drive-through wedding.

Williams laughed. Oh, she laughed. Maybe it was the idea of being interviewed at a four-wheeled altar that set her off on paroxysms of laughter. Maybe she was tickled by the contents of her flask, or the absurdity of sitting in a car waiting for a stranger to come and marry them through the side window, like a roller-skating waitress bringing not root beer but vows, instead. Yes, maybe that, because, when Charlotte Richards -- the marrying maven of Vegas -- finally did approach, White turned to her and said, "Double cheeseburger, fries."

Like she's never heard that one before.

Whatever it was, when Richards, bent down to see into the front seat, urged them to clasp hands and look into each other's eyes, Williams was laughing so hard that Richards stopped her marriage patter and said, "Are you serious about what you're doing, ma'am? I want to feel in my heart that you're both committed. I don't want to make mistakes."

As Williams groped for control, I looked across the street at a sign that read "NUDE STRIPPERS -- Home of the $5 lap dance," and wanted to laugh out loud with her.

A moment later, after the bride had been admonished again, after she choked back her guffaws long enough to get through her vows, the happy couple was pronounced husband and wife and pulled from the Drive-Thru Tunnel of Love onto Las Vegas Blvd. And another couple pulled up from the on-deck spot.

"I saw you on TV," groom Godfrey Cunningham told Richards. "We thought it looked pretty neat, so we thought we'd try it out."

-- -- --

To be sure, marriage in Las Vegas is not a laughing matter for everyone.

Inside the Little White Chapel, where such luminaries as Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Michey Rooney, Wayne Newton, Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow, Elvis, Mickey Rooney (again) and Michael Jordan have been married, Madison's Jay Sugden, just a bit nervous, waited for his bride, Coreenia Collicott.

Sugden, a police officer for the village of Maple Bluff, and Collicott were marrying in the traditional manner, at least by Las Vegas standards. He was in black tuxedo and Collicott wore a floor- length bridal gown, each selected the day before in a visit to the chapel's fitting rooms. On their wedding day, they had been picked up at their hotel by limo, whisked to the Clark County marriage license bureau for the necessary legalities and then to the Little White Chapel for their 2 p.m. service.

Sugden said they had elected to marry quietly and put the cost of a formal wedding on a nice reception instead. No family members were with them, but many friends and family members were at home waiting to watch their union on the Internet, another chapel option.

"A couple of them got the big screen TVs and stuff," Sugden said, smiling. "Puts more pressure on me."

But he did just fine. When Collicott marched into the chapel, to recorded music they had selected together, he took her hand and a few minutes later they were husband and wife. When the minister, David Bowers, said "God bless you and kiss your bride," and organist Rhoda Jones played a hymn, I imagined that back in Wisconsin family and friends were smiling. The newlyweds surely were.

-- -- --

Marriage being something of a gamble itself, maybe it is not surprising that weddings are as common in Las Vegas as blackjack. The simpler explanation is that Nevada's marriage laws are as minimal as any in America, calling for no blood test, waiting period or other impediment to instant "I do's." In Las Vegas, you can fall in love, or whatever, at 11 p.m. and be on your honeymoon by midnight.

Last year, 123,143 couples were married in Clark County, a new record by 241 but below expectations. The number of weddings had been growing by about 3,000 a year, and marriage license administrator Cheryl Vernon had expected to hit 126,000 in 2001.

Blame it on Sept. 11. The last four months of the year were all below last year's levels. Even now on weekends, when the marriage license bureau opens at 8 a.m. Friday and doesn't close until Sunday night, only 450 to 460 licenses are being issued each day, compared with 700 a day last year.

Valentine's Day, not surprisingly, is the biggest single day for weddings in Las Vegas. But this year, expectations were that just as many couples would marry on Feb. 2 -- or 2-02-02. And many of them had requested a 2 p.m. wedding.

"Numerology plays a big deal for people who come from other countries," Vernon said.

As the number of weddings has soared, so has the variety. While many couples come to Las Vegas for a serious and mostly conventional wedding -- it is possible, at some of the fancy hotels' ritzy chapels, to spend thousands on dress, flowers, pictures and reception -- many others come for decidedly unconventional, often wacky, sometimes tacky joinings that leave even veteran license clerks shaking their heads.

Some don't realize the marriage will be binding when the weekend is over, as if there is a three-day right of recision on til-death- do-us-part. Others come back after a few months, wondering if their marriage can be canceled. Often, getting hitched in Sin City seems like just the fun thing to do, no bigger decision than catching Siegfried and Roy's white tiger show.

"Most of them have already been married once," Vernon said. "You see a lot who are (young) and who are working on their second or third (marriage). They enter at a totally different mind-set as to how they think of marriage."

(White, when I asked about marrying in his car, had said, "It's a third marriage and we just thought it'd be novel to do this. We've done the normal weddings. Obviously that didn't work.")

"It's kind of hard to keep a straight face sometimes, but we have to do the best we can," Vernon said. "We see a lot where the girl is (dressed as) Elvis and the guy is the bride, or Marilyn Monroe," she said. "Normally that's somebody German, English or French. Not too many American men want to come in dressed like Marilyn Monroe."

Many of the "Marrying Sams," as those licensed to perform Clark County weddings are known, will perform Elvis weddings on request. Some Elvises walk the bride up the aisle if her father is unavailable; others simply perform the service and croon to the happy couple after.

Hot tub weddings are also available, in a limousine or otherwise. Some Marrying Sams will come to your hotel room to save you the trouble of going out. (Or getting dressed.) Richards offers weddings in her hot air balloon. And a woman at Divine Madness Fantasy Wedding Chapel said she could do Renaissance-era, space or futuristic or '20s and '30s gangster-themed weddings, depending upon the couple's interest.

Or kink.

"I do S&M, too," she said, and when I expressed some surprise, added, "That's a large group in this world. They don't come to me unless they're into that."

"I used to be romantic," said Vernon, of the license bureau. "But now I'm not."

-- -- --

Richards said she couldn't begin to guess how many she has personally performed, but some accounts put the figure at several hundred thousand weddings at Little White Chapel in her almost 44 years in the business. And it is a business, a big one. The chapel has a fleet of limos, dress and tuxedo rentals, three separate chapels (including one conveniently located around the corner from the license bureau), photo studio and full-service ring and gift shop.

A minister of the Grace Calvary Church of Faith, she insists that her mission is joining people in holy marriage, which is why she had doubts about the laughing bride.

"Yeah, I did. She was just too giggly, you know. Some people will giggle when they're nervous, but she was just too smart about it. There's been times I've refused to do weddings. This is a commitment before God, and I don't want to answer for what I'm doing."

Maybe -- just guessing here -- that's why, while Mickey Rooney was married twice at Little White Chapel, he chose Little Church of the West for his other seven. And while Richards is proud of her celebrity weddings, the photo showing the newly wed Michael and Juanita Jordan had come down from the wall covered with photos of star unions. After their split, and before last week's announced effort to get back together, too many tabloid photographers were coming to copy the photo.