PHOENIX – As thousands of Valley residents clock out for the day and the Phoenix sun paints the roads ahead, couples begin to arrive at the Downtown Justice Center preparing to take one of the biggest steps of their lives.

Monday through Friday, between 4:30 and 5 p.m., couples enter a courtroom to face a judge. It’s a setting that could provoke a range of emotions, depending on whether the judge is issuing a sentence or legally binding two people in marriage.

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As the spookiest day of the year loomed, Maricopa County Municipal Court staff hinted toward a busy Halloween-eve with the facility being closed on the holiday for the weekend.

“Sometimes there’s a holiday or there’s a special number (that makes people want to get married),” Judge Leonore Driggs said. “(On) February 22, 2022, like 82 couples came to get married in this building alone.”

Though the number of married couples may not come anywhere near the “2/22/2022” total, on Oct. 30 the walls of the Justice Center quickly began to drip sweat as countless brides and grooms stuffed the halls along with their families.

Most couples came dressed in the traditional white dress, black suit attire. A few made sure to take advantage of Halloween, including Trace Hunt and Carmen Diaz who came decked out in bright cherry red Beetlejuice-inspired costumes.

The couple, who met at an EDM festival roughly three-and-a-half years ago, will have a formal wedding in Mexico in November but wanted to make it official in Arizona beforehand.

“It was first come, first serve and everyone had to kind of rush to get to the first spots, but it’s split up between all the judges and this is a busy weekend but they still accommodated (everyone),” Hunt said, surrounded by more than 150 wedding guests for various couples.

They waited eagerly for their turn among the roughly 25 other couples, with the people in the halls cheering sporadically as newlyweds exited their ceremonies.

Joined by a few close family members, Hunt and Diaz smiled cheek-to-cheek as the judge made their marriage official. As they ecstatically trotted out of the courtroom, a different costume-wearing couple made their way into a separate courtroom.

In a much darker, serious tone, Amanda Gardner and Jesus Mayorga entered the courtroom dressed as characters from the fictional gothic franchise The Addams Family. Though a majority of couples seemed to be getting married at the courthouse for financial or legal reasons, Gardner and Mayorga said the desire for children was their main motivation.

“We want to start a family, but we want to be married (first),” Gardner reasoned. “We want to start that family (after we’ve had) time with ourselves and really connect (with one another).”

Just like all of the couples married on this particular day, Gardner and Mayorga were in and out of the court in roughly five minutes as the judges powered through the ceremonies.

As many newlyweds escaped the humid building air, rain poured down on couples who scurried back to their cars, capping off a busy day at the Justice Center.

Crowds form in the Maricopa County Justice Court lobby waiting to get married on Oct. 30, 2026.

Photo by Paige Moore/Cronkite News

A quiet day down the aisle

After a brief, airport-esque security screening, soon-to-be newlyweds check in at the front desk and wait for a judge to call their name. Depending on the day, couples could wait from a few minutes to around an hour. On this particular day, Alysse Madreno and Tyson Trejo were the first of a handful of couples summoned into a courtroom on October 29.

Dressed in matching blue jeans and black tops, the high school sweethearts, who began dating roughly 10 years ago, felt that a courthouse wedding was the “easiest option.”

“You go across the street, get the marriage license and then come over here and get married on the same day,” Madreno said as she and her fiancé headed into the building.

Joined by Trejo’s mom and grandma as witnesses, the couple patiently waited for the judge to enter the courtroom. Plans of getting married on a beach are on the horizon, but today’s ceremony was necessary for “tax purposes” after the pair recently started a business together.

“Somebody want to get married?” Judge Rebecca Rios joked as she invited the couple to sign their marriage certificate and pay their roughly $100 fee.

After the couple put their pens down, stood up and faced one another, the judge started the ceremony by reading a script that seemed all too familiar to Rios.

Rarely looking down at the words on her page, Rios glanced back-and-forth between the couple’s joyous faces as they exchanged rings.

“Now, by the power vested in me by the state of Arizona, I now pronounce you jointly married,” Rios said as the newlyweds shared their first kiss as a married couple.

A bride and her family wait in the Maricopa County Justice Court on Oct. 30, 2026, to get married.

Photo by Paige Moore/Cronkite News

A welcome break from routine

As the bride and groom slowly exited the courtroom, they returned to an empty hallway that was only occupied by a few county employees who were waiting for the couple to leave. 

Within a 30-minute span, all of the newlyweds were on their way from the Justice Center to varying locations. Some couples met with large parties at a favorite local restaurant, while others called it a night and beelined it home.

Though the judges are a bit slower to leave the building, the wedding experience can serve as a much needed stress-reducer to cap off their days.

“I do enjoy (doing weddings) because the rest of the day, it’s generally evictions or giving people fines in court for violating the law,” Judge Leonore Driggs said. “No one’s really happy to see me or they’re nervous or upset with me, but everybody that comes through the doors to get married loves me. So then it’s like, ‘Thank you for coming to help my day end better.’”

Communications Officer Scott Davis described the weddings as “the only time people are happy at court,” while dressed in skeleton-printed dress shoes.

Trace Hunt, Nestor Diaz and Carmen Diaz walk out of the Maricopa County Justice Court courtroom after Trace and Carmen’s marriage on Oct. 30, 2026.

Photo by Paige Moore/Cronkite News

Not every wedding needs a grand reception

Couples were conflicted about how to characterize their wedding day. Some couples described getting married while others said they eloped, with a few couples unclear about the difference between the two. Samantha Rose, a photographer who has shot countless courthouse ceremonies in Phoenix, noted that the definitions change depending on the person.

“Traditionally, an elopement was like going off, getting married, not telling anyone… but the wedding industry… and… COVID changed that a lot,” Rose said. “I call myself an elopement photographer because I feel like if you're going to the courthouse to get married, to me that feels like an elopement.”

One of the couples who described their union as an elopement was Audrey and Maddison Garcia. The pair felt that a courthouse ceremony made the most sense for their relationship because it allowed for a more intimate experience.

“I feel like our photographer is catching more of a love story rather than just a post for Instagram,” Maddison Garcia noted.

Joined by eight of their closest friends and family who came dressed from head to toe in black attire, the Garcias shared a long-lasting kiss as they were legally bound.

Minutes after they exited the courtroom, they headed to a nearby vending machine to pick up a few snacks in celebration of their marriage.

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.