Taking a break from repairing his Tahoe home, the Rev. Raymond Love on Tuesday looked more like a country preacher – the kind that builds the pulpit as well as stands behind it – than the founder of one of the first and largest wedding chapels on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe.

Later, for photos, he looked more like the minister who performed upwards of 100,000 weddings during the 27 years he owned and operated Love’s Lake Tahoe Wedding Chapel at the base of Kingsbury Grade.

The Rev. Love, his real name, has his roots in country ministry. As the minister for a small church in Oregon, he supplemented his income with carpentry work until a back injury closed that door. He moved to Reno to be the chaplain of the rescue mission. In Reno, he began to perform chapel weddings.

In the winter of 1971, the Rev. Love and his wife Louise opened a small chapel of their own in one space of an office building at the base of Kingsbury Grade. At that time, only one other chapel operated in the area. Most people were married in Carson City or Reno, he said.

“We didn’t do too well the first year,” Love said. “By the time we outfitted the (chapel) room, we had $5 left” and nothing for advertising.

Love’s Chapel slowly grew into the rest of the office spaces and, in 1973, he purchased the building. With that plus national and international advertising, Love’s Lake Tahoe Wedding Chapel became a South Shore landmark and busy chapel.

“When we got it going good, everyone else wanted in,” he said. The number of chapels on the South Shore multiplied and a significant industry was born.

Many of the new chapels operated with the fast and flashy style of Las Vegas, an atmosphere that Love avoided.

“To me, each wedding is individual,” he said.

Despite the volume of weddings performed, Love strived to make each one personal.

Embedded in each of his wedding services was a mini-counseling session on how to stay in love, he said. Because most couples take home a video tape of the service they can review the lesson which is often based on I Corinthians 13, known as the love chapter, or Ephesians 5.

“It’s a ministry of the Lord,” he said.

Love, who does not like performing funerals and has only done four, considers weddings the best part of ministry because “most everybody’s happy.”

Performing weddings, “has given me a much more enjoyable life.”

There have been light moments like when the couple can’t figure out which is their right hand. He has seen couples switch places trying to figure it out, he said.

And light-headed moments when someone faints. One time the best man and maid of honor fainted a minute apart.

There have been tense moments when someone in the audience opposed the wedding being performed.

“It irritates me when people interrupt” such a happy occasion, he said.

The Rev. Love has performed weddings for celebrities who, despite performing before crowds of thousands, were just as nervous as everyone else. He declined to mention who those might be.

Since selling the chapel to Ron Darby, the Rev. and Mrs. Love now live in Lake Havascu, Ariz. He said he’s not retired, “I just work for free now.”

Tahoe Daily Tribune E-mail: tribune@tahoe.com

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