Chapel of Love--and Broken Hearts

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."