Elvis impersonator Michael Conti sings at the Little White Wedding Chapel (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

To have and to hold’em

There were 265 Las Vegas weddings per day in April, a post-Covid record

6/21/24 2:41AM

Can’t help falling in love

Great news for potential elopers and ordained Elvis impersonators alike: more people are saying “I do” to Las Vegas weddings again following a brief pandemic slump, according to marriage data from Clark County, Nevada.

Indeed, the number of marriages filed in Vegas’ home county totalled 7,963 in April — more than 35x the amount seen in the same month 4 years ago when Covid halted the states “quickie wedding” industry. That worked out to an average of 265 marriages per day, a post-pandemic record.

While it’s taken time to bounce back fully, the waking-up-in-Vegas approach could be increasingly attractive as “speedy” and, crucially, “cheap” have become ever-more desirable requisites for those planning ceremonies — with Forbes reporting that the average wedding in the US now costs $33K. That’s $4K higher than the year before. Chapel packages, like those at the famous A Little White Wedding Chapel, start from as little as $80 for a “Drive Thru Tunnel of Love Ceremony”... although they can hit as much as $495 for a full “Elvis Tribute” wedding.

Although inexpensive by wedding standards, all of those ceremonies soon add up: wedding-related tourism in Las Vegas accounted for some $2.5 billion in spending in 2022, supporting 18,000 jobs in Sin City.

As well as saving considerable costs and hassle, many are also drawn to the cultural cliché of the Vegas wedding, made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Britney Spears. In fact, Bumble recently offered 50 free weddings in Las Vegas to US couples who’d met on the app for its 10-year anniversary, and a new Friends experience at the MGM Grand will allow fans to recreate the iconic “The One in Vegas” drunken chapel scene.

Tom Jones

big deal

6/15/26

Lionsgate persists with decade-long effort to make a “Monopoly” movie

America’s favorite board game is proving a tricky subject for a feature film.

Daily Life in New York City Around The One-year Anniversary of The COVID-19 Shut Down

Tom Jones6/9/26

The BBC has become the world’s top news website... by collapsing a little less than its competition

Press Gazette just published its annual look at the biggest news sites in the world across all languages; for the most part, it doesn’t make for particularly pretty reading.

The journalism industry publication’s latest update, which is based on estimates provided by Similarweb for May, found that 37 of the world’s 50 most visited news sites saw their reach shrink. Press Gazette highlighted that American outlets have been hit particularly hard by declining Google traffic compared to European counterparts, owing to the platform’s AI features rolling out earlier in the US.

Even the BBC, having climbed the rankings from last year to top the 2026 chart — reportedly in part thanks to Similarweb’s decision to combine the “.co.uk” and “.com” versions of the URL, given that the sites redirect to each other depending on the user’s location — showed a 1.9% decline from last year.

Millie Giles

PLAY THE BILLS

6/8/26

Last night’s Tony Awards were a curtain call for a record-smashing season on Broadway

This year’s star-studded theater awards wrapped up the highest-grossing season Broadway’s ever seen.

Millie Giles

SOUND FAMILIAR?

6/5/26

Kids these days are listening to more songs from the good old days

Music nostalgia is in full swing, and the younger listeners of today appear to be partying like it’s pre-1999.

Saleah Blancaflor6/4/26

Drake whiffs on an expected No. 1 on Spotify

Drake started at the bottom and he’s here, but not quite at the top... of Spotify, at least.

It’s been nearly three weeks since Drake dropped his three surprise albums — “Iceman,” “Habibti,” and “Maid of Honour.” Heading into the month, prediction markets were rating it a near certainty, a 98% chance, that Drake’s sonic onslaught was enough to snag the No. 1 slot on Spotify at least once in June.

But, while he surpassed the late Michael Jackson and took up three slots on the Billboard album chart at once, his newly released songs haven’t quite cracked the popular music-streaming platform’s top charts, and market seem to think the moment has passed.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Spotify’s “Top Songs - Global” chart currently show that Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” which is more than four decades old, Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat,” which climbed back to the top of Spotify charts following his Coachella set in the spring, Olivia Rodrigo’s new angsty love song “The Cure,” and BTS’s “Swim” are all ahead of Drake’s “STFU Janice” from his “Iceman” album.

While Spotify previously reported last month that Drake’s “Make Them Cry” was the most streamed album in a single day this year, that was later revealed to be a data error.

Prediction markets currently show traders are betting there’s only a 15% chance Drake will have a No. 1 song on Spotify in June.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is in the lead at 98% — a day before the release of her new original song “I Knew It, I Knew You,” which she wrote and performed for Disney and Pixar’s upcoming “Toy Story 5” — followed by Olivia Rodrigo, whose highly anticipated album “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” comes out next Friday.