Arizona Contractor & Community Fall 2015 V4 I3 | Page 8

Editor’s Column:
A Blissful Industry: Eloping to Arizona
Douglas Towne
Actually, quite a bit in this issue.
There’s the upcoming ACC nuptials
between designer Laura Harley and
publisher Billy Horner. The charismatic
couple plans to tie the knot this fall in their
Phoenix backyard, all the more convenient
for their four-legged “children” to attend
the ceremony.
There’s also the historically odd fact
that weddings were once a booming
commercial activity in some unlikely places
in Arizona. The most popular wedding site
for impatient lovebirds in the Southwest
was the Colorado River town of Yuma,
Arizona. Only after World War II did Las
Vegas take over as the most famous
wedding capital. Although most couples
today would select Sedona for their
Arizona “destination” wedding, there were
good reasons more than 17,000 marriages

eight

were recorded during one year in Yuma,
back when the town only had 5,000
residents.
Starting in 1928, California required a
three-day waiting period between
receiving a marriage license and getting
hitched. The “gin marriage” law was
intended to delay ill-conceived nuptials,
allowing the sometimes intoxicated
participants time to sober up and think
twice before going through with the
ceremony.
The California law, however,
sometimes funneled the love-struck to
nearby Arizona and Nevada, which had no
such ardor-dampening delays. Arizona
didn’t require a blood test, and pegged the
age of consent at only 15. For border towns
such as Yuma, marriage by eloping
Southern California couples was big
business for almost three decades.
This tradition of marriages transacted
across state boundaries to avoid restrictive

laws originated in 18th century Scotland,
which had lax requirements for marriage.
Gretna Green, the first Scottish town on
the London-to-Edinburgh stage route,

Image courtesy of Ashley LaPrade

W

hat does Cupid have to do with
a construction magazine?

Fall 2015