The Gretna Green Of The Northeast

Or take on Las Vegas, if you think all it takes to compete with good weather and slot machines is an oversize photograph of City Hall to be used as a backdrop for wedding pictures:

[W]ith revenues tight and tourist dollars desperately needed, the Bloomberg administration has created a 24,000-square-foot wedding palace, in the hope of increasing the number of couples who marry at the city clerk’s office.

“We want to be the wedding destination of the world,” said First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris.

And it’s not just the $25 wedding fee the city is selling. Forget the wedding band? No problem. The new bureau offers an elastic faux-diamond band for $9. No flowers?

They are available as well — $4 to $7 for a single stem and $25 to $50 for a bridal bouquet. There is also hairspray ($4), disposable digital cameras ($16.25) and tissues, at $1.75 a pack, for the weepy types.

The $12 million project, overseen by the designer Jamie Drake, who did Madonna’s Los Angeles home and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house, involved the renovation of an old Department of Motor Vehicles office up the street from City Hall.

Mr. Drake created two separate wedding chapels off the building’s central rotunda. In the east chapel, the sofa and walls feature apricot and peach colors; the west chapel is done in purple and lavender. Each chapel has an abstract painting that matches the walls and hangs next to the lectern from where the clerk performs the ceremonies.

Nearby bathrooms were turned into expansive dressing rooms, with full-length mirrors and long vanity counters lit by the soft hue of recessed wall fixtures.

The city has even set up an oversize photograph of City Hall to be used as a backdrop for pictures.

Bloomberg administration officials declined to estimate how much money the weddings would generate. But the city’s marketing agency, NYC & Company, has already struck a partnership with TheKnot.com, a Web-based wedding clearinghouse, to create travel packages that would include a ceremony at the bureau followed by a weekend in a hotel.

“I have a warning for Las Vegas: You better watch out,” said Carley Roney, founder of TheKnot.com. “With these new digs, there might just be a new world wedding capital.”