If you got married at this chapel, there could be a hitch

Charles and Elaina Vought's wedding last year at the Las Vegas Garden of Love chapel was a small affair -- the two of them, a minister and a photographer.

The wedding license for the Sept. 16 ceremony, however, lists one other person. Cheryl Luell, who owned the now-defunct wedding chapel, is named as a witness.

"She wasn't in the room," Elaina Vought said. "The only people who were in the room with us were the minister and the photographer.

"I'm not sure if she was even in the building."

That report, and others like it, may mean that four ministers who worked at the Garden of Love will lose their ability to marry people in the state of Nevada.

The Voughts, meanwhile, aren't sure they're actually married. And couples whose weddings were improperly witnessed -- and there's no telling how many of them are out there -- are being told to consider getting married again, just to be sure they're legal.

"We have kind of been inundated with calls," said Clark County Clerk Shirley Parraguirre. "We're cautioning these people: 'You might just want to protect yourself.' "

The Garden of Love chapel lost its business license Oct. 22. The Las Vegas City Council decided the chapel's business practices created a public nuisance.

Chapel owners Craig and Cheryl Luell and their employees reportedly engaged in a campaign of threats and occasional violence in order to control pamphleteering on the corner in front of the Las Vegas Marriage Bureau.

To that list of misdeeds, add one more: faulty paperwork.

Nevada law requires a marriage to be witnessed by at least one person other than the minister. Many couples have families or friends fill in that blank, and those licenses are not under scrutiny.

But if the name of chapel owner Cheryl Luell is on the witness line, and if she wasn't really there when the wedding took place, there might be cause for concern.

Parraguirre first became aware of the potential problem during the Garden of Love's lengthy hearing before the City Council last month.

Testimony and travel records showed that Luell was in Texas on April 7, but her name still appeared as a witness on 17 marriage certificates from that day.

The ministers who performed those weddings, Phillip Williams and Jesus Diaz, have been sent notices of a Nov. 16 hearing on the matter.

They were also summoned to the council proceedings. Both men invoked their Fifth Amendment rights not to testify against themselves.

Elaina Vought said she and her husband will provide a statement that could be used against Wendell Causito, the minister who married them.

None of the three ministers could be reached for comment Thursday afternoon. Parraguirre said her office might also examine the license of a fourth minister.

License to marry

Clark County issues what's known as a "certificate of permission to perform marriages" and also monitors compliance with the rules.

The most common problems are ministers who don't file the certificates within the required 10 days or make mistakes filling out the form, Parraguirre said.

"If it's just a one-time thing, that's one thing," Parraguirre said. "But some of them we revoked because we repeatedly have problems.

"We don't revoke a whole lot -- a couple a year, maybe."

There's no way to tell how many of the Garden of Love marriages were improperly witnessed, but testimony before the City Council showed that the numbers could be very high.

The Las Vegas city attorney's office counted more than 1,300 weddings performed at the Garden of Love in December 2006, and Luell's name appears as a witness more than 900 times.

She was asked about those numbers before the council.

"Were you the witness to over 900 marriages in December 2006?" said City Attorney Brad Jerbic.

"Probably," Luell said.

"You were present for all of them?"

"Yes," Luell said, "I was."

She told council members she was well-known among her clientele because of an ABC Family reality show focused on the chapel and appearances on "COPS."

"A lot of wedding couples see me all over the news and want me in their wedding service," Luell said. "They actually ask me, 'Can I have a picture of you? Could you come inside our wedding service? We came here for you.' "

Legal limbo?

Attorneys for Las Vegas and Clark County have looked at the scenario and said the wrongly witnessed marriages probably would withstand a court challenge. For instance, if an insurance company challenged a surviving spouse's death benefits.

Getting married again to make doubly sure, however, is an easier and cheaper route to follow.

The Voughts obtained a new marriage license Thursday to replace the one that has Luell's name stamped on it.

They came to Las Vegas from New York for their wedding. They moved here in August, and if they hadn't done that, they might never have heard of the Garden of Love's problems.

"We had to pick this stupid Garden of Love wedding chapel, unfortunately," Elaina Vought said. "There could be thousands of people they did this to."

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or (702) 229-6435.