Vegas Shuts Down the Roulette Wheel of Midnight Matrimony

It is no longer quite true that anything goes in Las Vegas. As of next Wednesday it will not be possible to get married in the early hours after a night out on the town. The city is axing its famed 24-hour marriage licence service.

The news comes too late to help Britney Spears and her childhood friend Jason Alexander, who married on a whim after a night's clubbing in 2004 and sheepishly divorced two days later. But it will no doubt save countless others from marrying while drunk.

Charlotte Richards, however, is not pleased. She runs the Little White Wedding Chapel where Spears and other celebrated ex-couples, like Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, entered matrimony under cover of darkness.

"You know, this is Las Vegas; Las Vegas is known as a 24-hour city. And Las Vegas is also known as the marriage capital of the world, and I think that a lot of people choose to come here to be married because of that," Ms Richards told National Public Radio.

The joyless bureaucrats claim that only 4% of marriages took place on the weekend nights when the city registry stayed open around the clock, but cutting the graveyard shifts would save $200,000.

That is little comfort for Ms Richards. "Even if it is 4%, that 4% is what I can live on," she complained, rejecting suggestions that people who wed at quickie ceremonies might be more prone to divorce.

"You know, I don't think about divorce," she said. That was not her department. Her job was "to make sure when they leave here they really know that they're married".