Las Vegas Weekly

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Imagine the entire Strip shutting down for your wedding. No limos, no taxis, no men in neon T-shirts smacking nudie cards against their palms for the tourists passing by. Just you, your betrothed and ... thousands of other runners.

On December 5, the Rock ’n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon and Half Marathon will begin with all the bells and whistles you’d expect of a Vegas-ized road race. There will be running Elvi, costumed competitors and, when the race hits the Venetian, a run-thru wedding ceremony.

The 50 couples getting married or renewing vows won’t actually be moving during the service—unless they jog in place to stay warm—but they will partake in a completely legal, high-speed wedding service with enough meaningful preaching thrown in to make it feel special, even in sweaty spandex. “It’s not just, ‘Do you take? Do you take? I now pronounce you husband and wife.’ I have the stuff in there that they need to hear and that means something about marriage,” says Jamie Firzlaff, the running reverend who escorts the couples from the starting line to the wedding a few miles down. “Being able to accomplish that marathon together, it’s kind of like the first obstacle.” The second obstacle? Getting out of those nasty running clothes at the finish line and finding a damn piece of cake.