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Long Island couples looking to tie the knot in a chapel — on short notice and with limited funds — can now turn to the Long Island Wedding Chapel in Amityville for help.
The venue, which relocated from Patchogue and celebrated its grand opening in Amityville earlier this month, offers various wedding ceremony packages, including a bare-bones ceremony for $300.
“I did some research into Vegas-style weddings and bring that same concept to Long Island, so people have an alternative to get married without spending a fortune — because weddings are very expensive on Long Island,” owner Leann Pisano said. “I think people who are struggling financially deserve to have a nice wedding too.”
One middle tier option, “the glamourous,” which includes a bouquet of silk flowers and a matching boutonniere, digital images snapped by a professional photographer, a Swedish massage, a manicure and pedicure, makeup and hairstyling, runs $1,300.
Those seeking a real Vegas experience will eye the upper-tier packages in which an Elvis Presley impersonator will officiate the wedding before performing.
The Long Island Wedding Chapel will also arrange for outdoor weddings in nearby Argyle and Tanner Parks. The venue is LGBTQ-friendly and also offers discounts to veterans and active-duty servicemembers of the armed forces.
While the “Vegas-style” label suggests the chapel service if for folks making spur of the moment decisions, Pisano said this is not always the case, and that people may plan to tie the knot at her chapel in advance.
“I have weddings booked out through the end of the year,” she said. “By law, they have to wait a minimum of 24 hours after they obtain their marriage license. If they decide ‘I’m going to get married in three days,’ and it’s legal for them to do that, we will marry them in three days.”
In sickness and in health
Working as a certified registered nurse during the COVID-19 pandemic, Leann Pisano struggled to marry her fiancé with limited time and money.
After returning from a FEMA deployment to a COVID-19 facility in Texas in September 2020, she and her now husband, Luigi Pisano, settled for being wed by local elected officials in Swan Lake Park in Patchogue before she embarked on her next assignment in New York City.
Why the rush? In addition to her busy schedule, the Pisano’s relationship tested the strength of the vow “in sickness and health” before their marriage, when Leann contracted COVID-19 in April 2020.
“I was extremely sick, we didn’t think I was going to make it,” Leann Pisano said. “My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, helped nurse me back to help, I’m very grateful.”
By this time, the couple had been dating about six months. Once his girlfriend was on the mend, Luigi Pisano, an army veteran and a web developer, cooked her dinner — steak, mashed potatoes and asparagus — and popped the question. Although she said “yes” in that moment, he proposed again a few months later, this time with a ring.
Stepping back from hospital work to focus on her studies, Leann Pisano conjured a new way she could be of service. She became ordained and launched her Vegas-style chapel in Patchogue in March 2021, before ultimately relocating it to Amityville.
While she runs the Long Island Wedding Chapel and continues her nursing education, Pisano continues to work as a CNA per diem in a rehab facility.
“I enjoy it,” she said of her medical field work. “Working in the COVID facility changed me forever. And I love the wedding business, it’s so positive. You help people start new chapters in their lives and have a good time doing it.”
