a little backstory here: we had announced the wedding initially expecting nobody (except maybe some of our internet friends) would be able to come and make it. i was really enthused when both megan’s mom and dad said they were coming. i was somewhat less enthused when her aunt had decided to come, because that decision was followed by an email to megan’s dad DEMANDING that the date or location for the wedding be changed.

you see, march 1st this year was the date of the big NASCAR race at las vegas speedway. over 1.4 million people come to the NASCAR event in vegas every year. apparently it creates some serious traffic problems.

however, what megan’s aunt failed to realize is the following:

- megan’s dad wasn’t planning or funding the wedding

- i wasn’t about to change the date, and changing the location is ridiculous as valley of fire is one of the most breathtaking locations for a ceremony ever.

- the wedding was being planned and carried out by people who know what the hell they’re doing. these people live in vegas year round, they know about the race and they take steps to avoid sitting in traffic for 8 hours. they are not tourists from california.

more on this later, i just wanted to kind of set the stage here for this because it was part of the whole experience and i got some nice laughs out of it later.

anyway, after packing up thursday night, we said goodbye to nugget and drove to the jacksonville airport. i typically hate security, but they weren’t very busy and being prodded through metal detectors and having my luggage molested was the most pleasant experience i’ve had with airport security in my life. when we got inside the terminal, we stopped at quiznos for some veggie subs.

while we were eating, a guy came up and told us our flight was going to depart early. we packed up our half-eaten dinner and trudged on over to the boarding area, where we sat for 20 minutes. watched some cnn, got inundated with the newest octomom outrage. finally, we started boarding. we were flying to atlanta and connecting to vegas from there.

there weren’t many people on the last flight out from jax to atlanta, so the flight attendant in the back got chatty with us. he asked us if the dress we carried on was her wedding dress, and when we said it was, he congratulated us and gave me a complimentary adult beverage (a very terrible airport wine).

we touched down in atlanta and trucked it over to our gate. sat there for a while. watched cnn some more and got pissed at 1 hr of octomom coverage (north korea is about to launch missiles and we’re talking about THIS?). i went to a bar and got perhaps the worst 2 cups of coffee i have ever tasted. i threw mine out, she kept hers. boarded the plane, and in the process of getting all our baggage settled, i hit her tray table and spilled her coffee all over the wall. fortunately nothing was permanently soaked although i did have to sacrifice a shirt to clean it up.

started the 4 hour flight to vegas. radio one on the flight’s onboard sirius xm tuner was playing 12 hours of dance music, so we listened to chase and status, judge jules, and then tuned in a little later to hear some guy playing hard dance/hardcore (he played the best of pengo records, which was sick). in the middle we watched tv episodes on my laptop; life on mars and sarah connor chronicles.

landed at vegas and started the hike to our hotel. got on the airport tram (i noted that in the happy pictures they have on the wall there of paris, london, etc, there is no detroit). we found a shuttle going to the mgm grand. the driver was monosyllabic and acted high, but we got to the hotel fine, and went to check in. all of that went smoothly and soon we were navigating the hordes of drunk guidos who had come to the nightlife in the casino in order to make it to our room.

we dumped off our stuff and after a little discussion we went to grab a quick bite to eat at a little vending place on the casino floor. i got a salad, she got a tuna salad sandwich. everyone in the casino seemed to be some kind of drunk spiky-haired clubber or one of the skanks in minidresses they were chasing. dunno if that’s normal for a friday night at the grand or if there was something going on in one of the clubs. didn’t really care either; i just wanted to get back to our room and crash out.

did so. woke up the next morning at 8:30. in the next hour and a half i completely arranged our wedding. we had put down reservations for the valley of fire ceremony; after some calling around i determined that shalimar wedding services, the people who were actually handling our wedding, didn’t open until 10. so i started calling around looking for a tux place.

i had the number of a rental place but when i called, i found out that they were only open until 3 on saturday and not at all on sunday. i needed a tux delivered straight to my room, so i decided to spring for the $15.00 internet service (per day!) in my room and search the webs for a better deal. i found a place that did free dropoff at the casinos and i gave them a call. i could barely understand the dude on the other end but he gave me some guy’s cellphone number.

this was quickly becoming irritating. i called the cellphone, though. explained that i was getting married tomorrow and that i needed a suit delivered to my room by tomorrow. the guy wanted to know if i wanted him to just come up and fit me now. i said sure and within 15 minutes he was in my room taking my measurements. paid him, asked if he wanted a tip and he turned it down (!!!). he said that they tip the bellhop and he would be dropping it off in our room by noon, which i took to mean noon tomorrow.

gave the wedding chapel a call and got our verification and limo all set up. got dressed and started off for the marriage license office. we had decided not to take a cab, but rather to ride the monorail down to the sahara and then take the bus the rest of the way. i’m still not sure what the cheapest solution is. cabs in vegas are definitely the least-hassle solution from point a to point b, but the monorail is good if you only want to go to hotels on the strip and you don’t mind a few walks through casinos.

we got to sahara and walked outside, but since the only bus stop i found was on the other side, i decided to walk further down to the stratosphere and wait for the bus there. got on the bus, went upstairs to have a seat. driver dropped us off one road north of where we wanted to be, but we eventually found clark st when some older guy asked us if we were lost. on the way, some cracked out kandi raver asked megan to trade with him. i told her afterwards she should have done it, but she didn’t have any pieces to give away.

got to the office. filled out forms. stood in line. payed our money. got our license. we decided to walk back to the sahara instead of taking the bus this time. it wasn’t that bad of a hike but my legs were chafing and bothered me for the rest of the trip after that.

rode the monorail back to the grand. while we had been out getting the paperwork, megan’s family had arrived and her internet friends had gotten to the airport. we met her family in the hotel lobby with papers in hand, took some pictures with them. headed up to our room to chill. when we got back to the room, we found that they had already dropped off the tux!! talk about fast work. anyway, i took a bath. she went up to greet her friends in their room.

they came down just as i was putting on my pants (awkward). we all chilled in our room for a little while, then we went off to do some sightseeing. we took the monorail again (the recorded ‘tour guide’ voices make really stupid little jokes about how vegas is growing but everyone is always waiting for a cab, letting you know you made a wise choice by riding the monorail or some such bs). arrived at bally’s and walked to the bellagio.

on the way we walked through bally’s and i saw one of the funnier things on the trip - a japanese restaurant in bally’s had a crane game in it that was full of LIVE LOBSTERS!! for 4.99 you got a try at catching one of them - if you did, they cooked it for you.

the plan was to eat at the buffet there, and after a little standing in line (the carpet had boobs) that’s what we did. this place has pretty much the best buffet i have ever eaten at. they had sushi, aki tuna, mussels, crabs legs, all sorts of great stuff. it’s so easy to be a pescetarian in vegas; the whole town is in love with seafood.

after the buffet, my legs were killing me, but we walked around the bellagio a bit. what a great hotel. i’m definitely staying here the next time i’m in vegas. a truly classy joint. they have the world’s largest chocolate fountain in one of their stores. it’s weird, because it’s really hard to tell the chocolate is moving. it’s pretty amazing. they also have this great asian garden.

after the bellagio we went back through ballys and took the monorail back to mgm. we decided to chill out for a little while then take a cab to fremont st. for those of you who haven’t been to vegas, fremont st. is the old las vegas mainstreet - all of the old vegas icons are there, that huge cowboy and cowgirl, etc. the street is covered with an enormous lcd display and they play lightshows on it.

this is normally one of the more trashy areas of vegas - it’s not in any major casino, so it’s pretty much anything goes down there. since it was nascar weekend, all of the hicks and white trash had congregated down there. they had 2 stages (one on either end of the street) from which cover bands were playing country music and classic rock hits. i liked some of the songs they played, but they played a lot of nu-country, which i despise. it was still a great time, though, because we saw some absolutely ridiculous people:

- a man with the longest mullet i have ever seen. it was, seriously, down to the middle of his back, and stringy.

- a pregnant woman in a short dress, high heels, with beer in hand, wobbling around

- a woman with an extremely bad tan in a tiny dress with black high heels on flipping out about a purse in one of the tacky souvenir stores that was in the shape of a high heel.

- a couple with a baby strapped to their chest who were stumbling around drunk.

- a doomcryer with a cardboard sign telling people to avoid sexual immorality and so on.

the shops themselves were delightfully tasteless. some stuff we found in there:

- ashtrays with “<name>’s butts” on them. among the choices: “slave’s butts” and “bitch’s butts”.

- grotesque furry catgirl statues (these cost $40)

- the more you think about this shirt, the creepier it gets.

- novelty hats

- a giant stuffed bear

anyway, the bands played and they showed shots of them on the screen that was arched above the street. every 30 minutes they showed what amounted to a gigantic music video that was formatted for the enormous screen. apparently these are usually trippy shit like dolphins turning into butterflies. unfortunately it was nascar weekend so it was all redneck-friendly material. i heard one going while we were in the store for queen; the one we saw was one for kiss

we met up with megan’s fam again at the tail end of our fremont st. adventures, by this time all the NASCAR buzz was starting to drive megan’s aunt nuts. she barely even made eye contact with us during our meetup. it wasn’t really a huge deal because after a photo op we split up again.

after watching the show we hopped a cab back to the mgm. i had bought some vodka but we didn’t drink too much that night; we mostly stayed in the room and chilled out. my bb and i tried on our wedding outfits and took some awesome pics out of our window of us superimposed on the lights of Vegas. after several failed attempts we finally succeeded in ordering pizza; the pizza guy was an idiot and it took him forever to find the drop off area for the hotel. the pizza was pretty good though. i was up until 5 am; megan couldn’t sleep and was up until 9am.

that morning, she napped while i messed around on the computer, showered, did my hair and got my suit on. i bought a bunch of stuff from the expensive in-hotel convenience store like batteries, hair gel, etc. got all suited up and waited around for her to wake up and people to start to show up. they started to trickle into our room around 12:45 - she got her makeup done and got into her dress.

i was already pretty nervous by this point too so i jammed a little on the computer to relax. i got a call from the limo guy giving us instructions on where to meet him. she got all ready just in time for his call that he was there. we went downstairs and met up with the family - limo driver showed up and the doorman showed us to our car.we had to wait for megan’s aunt and uncle to get their car so they could follow us to the park - then megan and i and everyone else (her mom, her sister, and her two friends) piled into the limo.

we sat in the back and the driver whisked us out of vegas and into the desert. we were both really tired and felt pretty cracked-out, but the drive was fun. it took about 45 minutes to get to the valley of fire. as we entered the state park, the normal observations about the rocky desert (’isn’t that hill pretty’) turned to oohs and ahhs at the scenery. we wound down a steep and curving road into the valley. it was a beautiful, although sunny day. the site where we got married is called the seven sisters (presumably named for the large red outcroppings there. we all got out of the car.

the cameraman was already there setting up, and a few minutes later, the minister got there. he was a hilarious guy who really made the whole ceremony great. he joked around with us a little, then we all got in position for the ceremony. they tried setting us up on one of the rocks, but there were kids playing and making noise there, so we moved to another area.

you can probably put together the scene there from the pictures; i don’t know how much more i can say about it that hasn’t been said elsewhere. the sun was very bright; i was apparently very serious looking, and megan (who was looking right into the sun when she looked at me during the ceremony) was shaking like a leaf. we said our vows and exchanged the rings. it was a perfect moment for me - the minister read 1 cor 13:4 and 13, which are very important scriptures to me and probably one of the high water marks of the canonical bible. if you’ve never read them they go like this:

love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

but now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

i’ve uploaded the ceremony to youtube if you want to check it out. megan’s dad took this video with his camera, it’s pretty decent quality and it’s already in a format i can work with. the cameraman gave me a DV tape but i need to find someone with a DV camcorder so i can grab it.

anyway, we did the whole picture thing, got biodegradable hearts (rather than rice) thrown at us, and so on. we were probably in the park for 45 minutes, maybe an hour and a half, taking pictures and so on. i thanked the cameraman, and we waved goodbye. due to the nascar shenanigans we took the back way to vegas; it took maybe 15-20 minutes longer but there was zero traffic and we passed through some breathtaking country. the sun set and by the time we got back to vegas it was all lit up.

i stopped back at our room to drop off our paper and then megan’s dad took everyone out to wolfgang puck’s grill in the mgm grand. the food, of course, was extraordiary. i had mussels in garlic sauce which was excellent; megan had the most succulent salmon fillet i’ve ever tasted, and we split a spicy tuna tartare appetizer with green onions and wontons.

stopping to bitch a bit here: at this point we’d spent 5 or 6 hours with her family and her aunt was starting to get on everyone’s nerves. her aunt reminds me a lot of my grandmother on my mom’s side if she lived in california and smoked pot. she is overbearing and irritating. the whole whining about nascar thing had, of course, gone by the wayside when they finally figured out that yes, in fact, the people who live in vegas know exactly how to handle traffic in vegas. what a shocker. now she was shooting cabbit and kittymato (megan’s two internet friends) dirty looks from the other end of the table. they had ordered some drinks and were laughing and being sort of rowdy, but honestly, some people cannot learn that they are not the center of the universe and they cannot demand things to go exactly how they deem proper.

nonetheless dinner was pretty awesome. megan’s dad gave a ‘welcome to the family’ speech that i really appreciated. he is a really great guy and he kept congratulating me on a great choice of ceremony and was all class throughout the day. he gave the toast and we all drank champagne and wine.

we sliced the cake and opened a couple presents. the gift from her aunt was a hand painted bowl. of course she had to snap it up and point out to everyone how she made it and so on and so on. very irritating. megan had gone back up to her room to change out of her dress - we all took some pictures and then told the fam that we wanted to go to the bellagio to see the water show, so we were taking off.

we decided not to however, partly because i didn’t feel like walking anymore. my legs were killing me! so we decided to kill that fifth of absolut pear i had bought the night before. we drank a little and kittymato and i went down to the casino to do some gaming. we played video blackjack; i won $8, she won $11. we bought some chaser and went up to the room. my plan was to have 3 or 4 drinks and then go back down to the casino; they all stayed up in the room.

unfortunately kittymato had a little too much to drink and passed out; then got sick on our couch. this would have been a total disaster, and when megan came down to find me at a video blackjack machine i was pretty livid about it, but casinos are well equipped to handle such circumstances. they called the front desk. i wasn’t there, but i belive the conversation went like this:

“Hi, my friend had too much to drink and barfed on my couch.”

“Oh, it’s body fluid? Ok, we have to follow OSHA standards, so I’m going to send in THE SPECIALIST.”

the specialist turned out to be this guy who came in with rubber gloves and spray who sprayed down the couch and got it all set. I was worried about a charge for my room, but it was free! vegas is a hell of a town. a bottle of gel may be $8, but getting your puke cleaned up is free. kittymato was ultra embarrased but we told her to chill out. we hadn’t planned on sleeping anyway. she tipped THE SPECIALIST $20 anyway.

the whole thing made me wonder what else the specialist might have cleaned off of our couch, but it was definitely a bad idea to ask.

anyway while this whole thing had happened i had won $40 at video blackjack, then proceeded to lose it all. all told, though, i only played $20, and i was only $12 in the hole at the end. i like gambling, but i really can’t see how some people are so compulsive about it. when it comes down to it, it’s about knowing when to get out and setting a limit for yourself. i didn’t gamble near as much as i had budgeted, and i feel like for 3 or 4 hours of play i did ok.

so after kitty sobered up a bit and we chatted for a while about projectile vomit, they retired back to their room. you can put your imagination to work on what goes on in a bride and groom’s hotel room in vegas at 4am. i’m sure if you think hard enough you can come up with some interesting ideas.

i got about 3 hours of sleep and was up again at 9. vegas time is rough. you want to stay up as long as you can. i had been surviving by popping concerta and drinking coffee, but by this time i had had maybe 8 or 10 hours of sleep in 3 days. that’ll make anyone into a walking corpse. after we finished packing, megan’s dad came by with a couple of the SD cards from cameras we’d used in the ceremony. over the rest of the morning, i ganked everyone’s SD card and copied over all their pics. right now i have 1200+ pictues of vegas and of the wedding and i haven’t even gotten the professional photographer’s CD; neither have i gotten megan’s uncle’s CD of pictures he promised to send.

we decided to just get in a cab rather than shuttle bussing it back to the airport. i’m glad we did. the cab turned out to be just as economical for such a short drive, and it was way more convenient.

there were a lot of follies on the flight back. it seems like in recompense for a perfect wedding ceremony, the universe just threw a bunch of crap at us to compensate. our flight was delayed 3 hours, which caused us to miss our connection, etc, etc. i’m sure you’ve heard the stories a million times from a million travelers so i’ll save you the tears. finally got back to jacksonville at 1pm on tuesday

all in all, though, no disaster, drama, or incident could ruin this glowing experience. i would say to anyone who is thinking of going to vegas to get married - GO FOR IT! the people there are friendly and professional. they do this everyday for their living and they are very good at what they do. all told, the wedding including all my expenses cost me around 2k. that’s amazing for the kind of royal treatment we both got on our day.

thanks for your interest in our wedding, from both of us. we love you all and we hope to see you all at the wedding reception we’ve scheduled in michigan on (tentatively) july 25th. if you want an invite or printed copies of our wedding announcement, please reply to this with your address or send me a private message with the same.

love forever,

will and megan