NYC is revamping its Marriage Bureau to attract more wedding-minded couples to get hitched in New York. The bureau is getting a $13 million makeover from Mayor Mike Bloomberg's personal interior designer.
Apparently the bureau isn't so attractive right now:
The Marriage Bureau, now on the second floor of the Municipal Building, has sterile marble, and the door to the wedding chapel is painted deep red.
Couples sit on plastic chairs lining the walls in the hallway until their names are called; there is graffiti scratched into the walls; and, worst of all, there are no bathrooms nearby....
"I feel like I'm at the DMV," said one man, who was at the clerk's office to witness a friend's wedding.
The bride-to-be agreed, saying, "It's so institutionalized - not really what you picture your wedding day" to be.
New York, the country's second-biggest issuer of marriage licenses, wants to eclipse Las Vegas as the go-to for vows. But the Big Apple has its work cut out for it: Vegas' Clark County issued more than 112,000 marriage licenses last year -- almost double the number in NYC.
