Chapel of Love--and Broken Hearts

The first phone call of the day to the owner of the Guadalupe Wedding Chapel is from an unhappy customer. “I’ve changed my mind,” cries a bride who had tied the knot at the downtown chapel 24 hours earlier. “How do I get out of this?”

Not a problem, says an upbeat Maria Morchon. “Come back.”

In an era in which most retailers boast liberal exchange policies, the wedding chapels along Broadway have their own unique take on returns.

For almost three decades, the section of downtown L.A.’s most colorful shopping thoroughfare between 2nd and 4th streets has been a sort of Wedding Central, where a trio of chapels accounts for 9% of all of Los Angeles County’s nuptials. But in recent years, chapel owners have also begun processing paperwork for divorces, frequently attracting the same couples who were married there.

“You hear everything,” says Victor Gonzalez of La Catedral Wedding Chapel. “People come in here and they start talking and explaining why it went wrong, even when I don’t ask.”

Day and night, Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” blares from the chapels amid the downtown bustle of cars and pedestrians. Outside, sidewalk signs with scarlet letters advertise both marriages and divorces.

“It’s a roulette,” explains Morchon, whose chapel has been in business 29 years. “They all don’t last.”

Particularly on Tuesdays: the most popular day for divorce Broadway-style. “I think people want to begin the week differently,” says Gonzalez. “We get a lot of inquiries on Monday, and then people come on Tuesdays to begin the process.”

At Guadalupe one recent Tuesday, two men walked in separately, both with cash in their hands. Alejandro Montes, 38, says he’s been separated for four years and is just getting around to making it official.

“In three months, you will be free!” Morchon says, sounding like a cheerleader.

The Los Angeles restaurant cook smiles and admits he doubts he will marry again, even though his girlfriend and three children are waiting for him by the door.

“So many of you say that,” says Morchon, herself on her second marriage. “And then you land right here again.”

Lilian Castro landed back at Guadalupe three years after she got married there on her way to work one day. This time, she is divorcing the father of her two sons. Pretty and bright, the Los Angeles supermarket cashier is all smiles as Morchon grabs her file and tells her it will be over in five months.

“Do you want alimony?” Morchon asks.

“No,” the 22-year-old wife says.

“Do you want money for the boys?”

“Nothing. I want nothing from him.”

“Do you want to go back to your maiden name?”

“Oh, yeah,” she says, snarling. “I don’t want that ugly name.”

“OK, you’ll be free before the end of the year.”

“I’m so happy!” Castro shrieks, before picking up her 3-year-old son, planting a kiss on his cheek, and leaving.

An Option for Simple Cases

The usual divorce-in-a-chapel takes three to six months, costs less than $500 and requires nothing more than a notarized agreement if the couple does not quibble over assets, debts or child support. If the process proves contentious, the chapel’s paralegal or legal document assistant files the paperwork and the case goes before a judge.

Couples undo their vows in modest offices, with photographs of smiling brides and grooms staring at them from the walls. Behind the offices are the pastel-colored chapels, stuffed with silk roses and irises and brimming with hope. The setting may be unusual, but the procedures are the same followed by paralegals in other storefronts that offer similar services.

“There are offices everywhere that help with the filing of divorces,” said Alan Tanenbaum, chairman of the State Bar of California’s Family Law Advisory Commission. “If a couple doesn’t have large issues or a lot of money, or they’re not dealing with custody, and they feel this serves them, I don’t see a problem with it. But, people with large family estates, sizable retirement plans or children, are better served by an attorney.”

When it comes to the next couple, Morchon might agree.

They’ve brought their 8-year-old son and do not want to be identified in the newspaper. In a matter of seconds, their crumbling relationship is exposed.

She accuses him of neglecting his children; he counters that he is not sure their daughter is his.

She says she is willing to take the girl for a blood test and charges that he has already remarried in Mexico. (On their son’s birthday to boot!)

He shoots back that he’s willing to give her money for his son if she allows the boy to spend time with him.

The wife crosses her arms and purses her lips; the husband covers his face with his hands.

“There has been a lack of communication,” Morchon interrupts after they argue for six minutes. “What happened happened. Let’s move forward and put everything in writing so there will be no problems.”

The estranged wife starts again: “We had an agreement. He was going to wait until I get my green card and then we would get divorced and I wouldn’t ask him for a penny.”

Morchon sits back in her chair, arms crossed, staring at her desk.

“I don’t mind paying for the children,” the frustrated father says. “But I don’t know if the girl is mine. And she doesn’t let me see my son.”

A judge will let a father see his son, Morchon says softly. The wife bites her lower lip and says she doesn’t mind letting a judge decide.

“Peace talks! We need peace talks!” urges Morchon. “You two are like divided countries.”

The spouses remain silent.

Morchon advises the wife to investigate her immigration status and return another day. “With peace in your hearts,” she adds as they rise out of their chairs.

Quick but Not Always Painless

For the managers of Guadalupe and the other two chapels on L.A’s marryingest street, a typical workday is as unpredictable as an earthquake. Employees behave both as salespeople and counselors.

The three storefronts handle about 5,000 weddings a year and more than 1,200 divorces. Twenty-minute wedding ceremonies, religious or secular, cost $140 and up, depending on extras such as photographs, videos, rings and packages that include a Las Vegas honeymoon. Divorces begin at $350.

Listening is the key to helping, says La Catedral’s Gonzalez. “A lot of times, I hear both sides because they need to vent,” he said. “I sympathize a lot with the women because they’re the ones left with the kids.”

Morchon and Gonzalez have seen it all: from incompatible couples to those who have grown apart; from women who are robbed and abandoned days after the nuptials to couples who wed for citizenship status. There are also unique situations, such as the one involving a 60-year-old bride whose 25-year-old husband refused to consummate the union, or the young bride whose groom confessed as they walked out of the chapel that he had slept with her best friend.

And then there are couples like Krystina Janowski and James McGarrah, who burst into Guadalupe, interrupting the simple but touching wedding of two other lovebirds, to get married in their jeans and sneakers.

“I’m a very lucky woman,” the 54-year-old Janowski says of her seventh groom, minutes before their wedding. “When I met him, he’d just gotten out of prison, so he was a very hungry man.”

That was three months ago at a sports bar during a Laker game. Since then, they had been inseparable, displaying their love by tattooing their names on each other’s arms.

Three weeks after the wedding, however, Janowski’s tattoos are fresh and intact, but her heart is not. The man she loves is behind bars again, charged with spousal abuse. That charge was later dropped, but McGarrah is still jailed on a parole violation, and his wife is planning to divorce him.

Watching marriages stumble and fail, especially those that begin inside Broadway’s chapels, sometimes takes a toll on employees. Morchon, who bought Guadalupe in 1988, says she’s gotten used to the roller coaster that is her job. The emotional intensity is also still challenging for Gonzalez, who is single.

“At the beginning, it was hard for me,” says Gonzalez, who has managed La Catedral for four years. “I didn’t know how to feel or act. My parents split when I was 12. It’s very hard to see families breaking up, couples with newborns in their arms, signing the papers.”

Even though it’s bad for business, Gonzalez persuades some couples to give their marriages another chance instead of signing the paperwork to end their unions on the first visit.

“There have been times it’s obvious they just need to talk and listen to each other,” says Gonzalez. “I tell them to go across the street and eat a burger and think about it. These days, I don’t think that couples have enough conviction about their commitment. They don’t communicate. They hide things. And when things go wrong, they just want out.”

Sad Stories Behind the Documents

Not all couples turn to wedding chapel row hastily. Maria Wences, married for seven years, filed for divorce at Guadalupe in July after being separated for six years.

“I wasn’t sure, but now I am,” says Wences, whose smile turned into a frown as she signed her papers recently.

For Jesus Rabi, the decision to end his four-year marriage took two years and came after two separations and reconciliations. Rabi, of Costa Mesa, who works two jobs to support his parents and siblings in El Salvador, said Guadalupe’s inexpensive rates prompted him to return to the chapel where he married his wife in a simple ceremony in 1996.

“I feel comfortable here,” he says, even though he still finds it hard to believe his marriage is over.

“In Latin countries, marriages are forever,” says Arnoldo Dehming, owner of the 15-year-old Elvira’s Wedding Chapel. “It seems unusual to do divorces in a chapel, but in this country, marriage and divorce go hand in hand.”

For 30-year-old Celina Borja--married for 11 months--it sure seems that way. On a recent Tuesday, she took care of business at two of Broadway’s chapels.

At Elvira’s Wedding Chapel, where she married her 19-year-old boyfriend on impulse, she finally got around to picking up their wedding certificate.

And at Guadalupe, where she had filed for divorce two months after the wedding, Borja asked that the process be halted and demanded assurances from a chapel worker that she was still a married woman.

“You’re married, you’re a married woman!” Elida Fuentes, a clerk, assures her. “We’ll keep the paperwork on file in case you change your mind.”

All this after stopping at a tattoo parlor around the corner to imprint his-and-her hearts on her right leg. The red love tokens were a surprise present for her husband.

“I was ashamed to go to Elvira’s because it had only been two months,” says the mother of three, who strips for a living. “So I went to Guadalupe to get divorced. But I love him very much. I had a complex about his age and I felt jealous, but he kept crying and begging me to take him back. He won me over.”