Wedding Las Vegas Style

I LOVE LAS VEGAS! I have had work and play bring me to the adult playground called Las Vegas. US Youth Soccer had their Annual Meeting there in 2001. Young American Bowling Alliance (YABA) had their International Workshop there in 1996. And the National Funeral Directors Association had their Annual Convention there in 2003.

In addition to their convention business, Las Vegas is known for their gambling and wedding chapels. Well, what more could we want...we love to gamble so in July 2002 David and I chose to "run off to Vegas" to get married. It was a very nice ceremony, perfect for us given that this was a second marriage for both of us.

If you’re already married and not looking to do that again and you don’t gamble, there is still plenty to do in the city that never sleeps. The shows are first class with major headliners like Celine Dion and Barry Manilow as well as other acts synonymous with Las Vegas like Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil. Heck, maybe even Wayne Newton is still playing Vegas.

There are also lots of free entertainment options including going to the top of Paris Paris, watching the water show at Bellagio or the pirate show along the sidewalk at Treasure Island.

Can you get enough of Las Vegas? I don’t think so!!!

Quick Tips:

Shop for hotel and air packages for your best deals. Often you get your hotel for free or next to nothing if you buy an airline package. We’ve done both FunJet and Northwest Airline deals and been very happy with the value received. You do need to be careful about the low end hotels however, found in those packages. Circus Circus is a dump in our opinion and is overrun with kids...YOUNG KIDS! If you are single or a couple traveling without your children, do yourself a favor and avoid Circus Circus. That being said, if you are traveling with little ones (toddlers to teens) this is probably the best place for your family trip. They cater to kids complete with an inside carnival area that will keep any kid entertained for hours on end.

If you go to Vegas to gamble, it goes without saying that you should sign up for their players’ card program. In doing so, you will earn points that will return in payoffs for free shows, meals and other comps. In Vegas, if you go a lot, it is all about the comps. Today we only go to the casinos with the best comp program. We favor the Las Vegas Hilton, although it is a bit far from the strip and the other places we enjoy going.

Vacationing in Las Vegas in the summer may mean that you want to make use of the swimming pool. As much as we enjoyed our wedding trip and our stay at the Excalibur Casino & Hotel, their pool leaves a lot to be desired. The pool was large and spacious, but was shallow, probably less than four feet deep at its deepest point. The Las Vegas Hilton is our choice for swimming pools too!

Perhaps my favorite casino in Las Vegas is the Stardust as it was there that I had my largest casino win...,000 on a straight flush playing Let It Ride. The view from my 17th floor suite was rather nice too. That was with the YABA International Workshop trip in 1996.

Best Way To Get Around:

Getting to Las Vegas is simple...and getting around IN Las Vegas is equally easy. You can take a shuttle bus or cab from the airport to your hotel. Rental cars are not necessary unless you are planning day trips to Hoover Dam, Death Valley (CA) or even the Grand Canyon. If you don’t want to drive to these places, there are tour operators that make the trek out of Vegas to all of these places. The trip to the Grand Canyon, however, is seasonal as there is a lot of snow on the north rim in the winter.

Speaking of cabs, they are very inexpensive in Vegas. You can get just about anywhere for under by cab. Sometimes the traffic on the strip is bad, though, so the meter will run as you sit in gridlock.

Since our last trip, they have opened the monorail that connects the outlaying areas like the Las Vegas Hilton with the strip. We are looking forward to our next trip out there and giving the monorail a try.

Cheesy as it sounds, a Las Vegas wedding can be romantic and all a woman can hope for on her special day! Given this would be a second marriage for each of us; we didn’t want to go the church route. David and I had been planning a summer wedding, in Las Vegas, but we had to accelerate our date due to other mitigating circumstances (and no, I wasn’t pregnant!). I spent days and days looking at websites of all the Las Vegas chapels checking out the prices, services, and even the live web-cam on one of them. Want to have some fun, just watch live video of people getting married in Vegas. We saw people dressed in everything from formal wear, tuxes, and the like...to shorts and tank tops.

We chose A Hollywood Wedding Chapel (http://www.ahollywoodweddingchapel.com/) on Las Vegas Blvd. The price was right (around $150 including all gratuities) and the package perfect for what we wanted. For the $150, we were picked up at our hotel, the Excalibur Casino & Hotel in a nice limo. For the wedding ceremony itself, we received the services of a wedding celebrant, photographer who took one 24 roll of 35mm photographs, a video of the entire ceremony, my wedding bouquet, boutonniere for David and a bottle of decent champagne. Like I said, for $150 we got everything we wanted and needed.

The wedding chapel was beautifully decorated with yellow and white flowers. There were several rows of chairs for those who have family and friends sharing in their special day. For us, it was just David and me along with the photographer (who also served as our witness).

The photographer not only took photos during the ceremony, she also did the pre and post ceremony shots around the wedding chapel. They also had a nice wedding cake photo op location as well as other traditional wedding photo set-ups. They give you the roll of film and you get it developed at your convenience. Of course, we had ours done the next day at a local drugstore in Vegas. We couldn’t have been happier with our wedding pictures as they were gorgeous!!

I should say that if you are planning a trip to Las Vegas to get married, you will need to go to the Clark County Courthouse for your marriage certificate. It will cost around $50. After your ceremony, the wedding chapel will file the completed license with the courthouse.

Our wedding night celebration included dinner after the ceremony at the Steakhouse at Camelot in the Excalibur Casino & Hotel. As their fine dining establishment in the Excalibur Casino & Hotel, expect it to be pricey. There were no prices in the menu, but we were not dining based on costs. It was our wedding night and we were looking forward to a great meal.

With everything a la carte, we chose to start with a Caesars salad prepared tableside. This would be a theme throughout our meal. After salad, they rolled a cart of meats to our table when my now husband (smile) selected our steaks. The chef then came out to the table and asked how we wished to have our selection prepared. With a full cart of vegetables, mushrooms, and spices he suggested Steak Diane. Having never had that before, we thought "why not?"

The chef fired up his gas flame burner on the top of the rolling cart. Right there at our table, he prepared our meal. Starting with what looked like a full stick of butter, he browned the filet medallions on all sides. In another skillet he combined Worchester sauce, mushrooms, and garlic and brought that mixture to a slight bubble. He then put the beef into the larger skillet mixing lightly. Lastly he put some sort of booze, probably brandy, into the skillet...and FLASHED it with a matchstick bringing the ooohhs and awwwws from tables all around us. And with that, our meal was ready to eat.

Well OH MY GOD! The flavor was simply heavenly. With this most divine sauce lightly drizzled over the beef medallions; it just melted in my mouth. Accompanying our steak were garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus spears with garlic butter.

We weren’t going to have dessert, but they practically insisted, especially when we told them that we had just gotten married earlier that evening. So...Bananas Foster was the desert of choice. Again, prepared tableside like the earlier courses, this flamed delight was the perfect end to a perfect meal.

This wasn’t just dinner...it was genuinely a dining experience! Two hours later, we felt as though we had really had a once in a lifetime meal, as it should be on your wedding night. Our only disappointment was that we didn’t think to take a camera to dinner.

For our wedding trip to Las Vegas we stayed at the Excalibur Casino & Hotel. All of the services that we wanted were available including a hair salon for my special day. While much more pricey than I’m used to paying in Milwaukee, I was very pleased with how my hair was styled.

One of the things the Excalibur is known for is their Tournament of Kings dinner show. Priced at around $40 to $45 per person, it is a fun night of dining and entertainment. The meal is served in medieval style with no silverware and large stein type mugs for your beverage. So you may wonder how you eat without utensils. The first course is soup served in a pewter type bowl with a handle. So no problem there! The main course consisted of a half chicken and half of a baked potato. Finger food! I thought the chicken was a bit greasy to expect folks to eat with their fingers, but with our fingers we ate. Desert was a slice of cake which was no problem.

The show is a rather typical medieval knights on horses, saving damsels in distress. We were entertained and enjoyed the storyline. We did think that it was a bit short for the price paid and given what we’re accustomed to in Florida at other similar dinner theatre venues. On a scale of 10 (10 being the highest) we would give this one about a 7.

New York, New York Hotel & Casino. This is absolutely our least favorite casino to play in. Hands down, we have lost more money here than any other casino in Nevada! With that being said, it is a "must go" stop on our trips to Las Vegas for one reason and one reason only...the ROLLER COASTER!!!

For thrill seekers, this indoor-outdoor coaster is a great ride. Coming from the dark of inside to the bright sunlight outside can be blinding which only adds to the rush. There are spiral barrel rolls and drops that make you feel weightless in your seat. Thankfully you are strapped in tight enough to not go anywhere. At totaled, this coaster is just over 200 feet tall and makes drops of nearly 150 feet! The cars accelerate to speeds approaching 70 mph.

Stratosphere. This casino is a bit off the beaten path. We have made the trek down there each of our last two trips to Las Vegas just for the two rides high atop the casino’s tower structure. The first ride of note is the Big Drop. Seated in a circular row of harnessed tightly, you are thrust upwards at a force of nearly 4 G’s. I was scared to death! Then you drop down free falling, I literally came up out of my seat!! The other ride of note there is a roller coaster that circles around the tower. As a roller coaster, it is rather lame. What makes this the thrill ride that it is, is the fact that you are over 1,000 feet above the ground, circling and essentially seeing just sky except for those drops and dips that send you downwards. (NOTE: We were last there in July 2002. We know that there are now two new rides up on the Stratosphere Tower.)

After doing our rides, we did stop in to play the table games. With dinner reservations fast approaching, we headed out. I still had a small handful of dollar coins so I stopped to slug them into a machine. Well guess what? I hit a $300 win on a 5X's machine. YEAH ME!! And thank you Stratosphere. That was an especially fun thrill.