Crystal Wedding Chapel

July 9, 2003

The ultimate in wedding convenience

Dave Miller, London This Week

When the bride and groom arrived in a London Transit Commission bus, they didn't even need to climb down the steps to get married.

And a couple sitting in lawn chairs in the back of a pickup truck stayed put while they pledged, "I do" before a minister.

It's London's latest wrinkle in simple and no-frills matrimony -- the drive-through wedding.

It's run by the company that opened last summer with "Vegas style" simplicity that can see a couple married in as little as five minutes in the on-site chapel at 227 Wharncliffe Rd. S.

The Crystal Wedding Chapel has seen it all during its first year of operation, including same-sex weddings and blindfolded grooms who open their eyes to find themselves unexpectedly at the altar.

For those unwilling to jump through the hoops of a conventional church wedding, the ultimate might be the chapel's shotgun wedding, a five-minute quickie, performed by a duly licensed official, where a couple need not even bring witnesses if they don't wish.

With the success of the faster, simpler wedding format, owner Crystal Noble decided to go with the ultimate in convenience -- the drive-through wedding.

While the wedding official leans out a window and performs the service, the couple can respond from the comfort of their vehicle while witnesses in the back seat, or wherever, look on.

Legal documents are signed on the spot and the newly married couple is off and ready to honeymoon once they get their vehicle back in gear.

Crystal Noble of the Crystal Wedding Chapel leans out the drive-through window at the chapel where couples have been married in an LTC bus and in the back of a pickup truck. -- (LONDON THIS WEEK PHOTO/Dave Miller)

"There's a lot more simplicity here. People don't have to worry about a lot of details, flowers, finding a minister. Their attitude is sometimes 'let's just run away and get married,'" says Crystal Noble, daughter of the owner, who has the same name.

Her mother was married in Las Vegas about 10 years ago at a wedding chapel and was impressed by the simplicity and ease.

The chapel offers both civil and religious ceremonies and prices start at $99 for the infamous shotgun wedding, ranging up to about $2,600 for a ceremony with all the frills, including a honeymoon night in a London hotel.

Elvis has even been known to croon a song or two at some of the ceremonies.

For those who don't feel their rusting clunker is quite appropriate for the solemnity of the occasion, the chapel is looking into car rentals, which the happy couple may take for the day or afternoon.

Convertibles and older classic cars are among the possibilities.