Wild brides, live!

by Michelle Chihara

At Discovery Online (http://www.discovery.com), any number of real-time digital cameras offer Web users a behind-the-scenes peek at wildlife, from Kika the whale to naked mole rats. One of the cameras, however, presents wildlife of the vida loca variety. The wedding cam -- a quarter-size digital camera mounted inside the Little White Chapel on the Las Vegas strip -- records live weddings, all day, every day.

Okay, so to be truly thrilling one might have to combine the different cams. But remember, this is Vegas, where a wedding cam might catch a glimpse of an Elvis-impersonator groom at the moment he says "I do" to his showgirl bride. A random sampling of shots over the course of a day proves eerie: emptiness. Then, a man and woman in matching beige cocktail outfits are smiling at each other. A man in a gold lamé jacket (the band?) croons into a microphone in front of the couple. Emptiness. Two women with fanny packs stand at the door, looking lost. Emptiness. The chapel hosts weddings every 15 minutes during the week, and every six minutes on the weekends; Discovery Online staff say it gets upward of 30,000 hits a day.

It's all part of our fascination with the exotic, according to the Discovery Channel's Eileen Ratnofsky. "People wanted a behind-the-scenes view of the animals," Ratnofsky says, "and I think it's exactly the same case with the wedding cam, but we're taking it to a whole new level. We're adding a human element."

But what would motivate couples to share something as personal as their nuptials -- even the shotgun variety -- with the general public? "People want to share their experiences with people," says Ratnofsky. "They want something to remember their wedding by. I think people want to express their love of each other. What better way to do that than television, and this?"

The wedding cam is at http://www.discovery.com/cams/wedding/wedding.html.