Day 16 - The Wedding

Sarah blogging, Alan commenting in red

 

Sorry for the day delay on yesterday's details but really, we sort of had better things to do. That's right. Sleep was required.

 

The day started pretty much like any other day.  A late rising for me, although Alan had been up for hours.  He said it was to watch the English soccer scores but I think he was actually nervous and couldn't sleep. Rubbish, I didn't even remember what we had planned for the day.

 

We ventured down to the bridal hire store and picked up our gear for the wedding and returned to the room.  Alan then went and had a lie down, which was a good thing as he was a bit grumpy from not having enough sleep.  Finally he woke up and we joined our guests at their hotel for a light lunch. We then retired to the amusement arcade and played a number of games to relieve the tension. 

 

At about 2.20pm we agreed it was time to return to our room to get ready.  Christie, Steve & Cameron were to join us at 3.30pm so we could get some photos taken before the limo driver was to call at 4.30pm.  However, we underestimated the traffic on Las Vegas strip on a weekend and after 40 minutes of driving some 2 miles, I started to get a bit anxious. I took a detour through the backstreets but that didn't help much either due to a turn light which simply would not change to green! Alan dropped me at the door of the hotel (which is still about 5 minutes from our room) and I ran up to get into the shower.  Alan arrived about 10 minutes later. Yes, thanks to the worlds slowest driver whom I got caught behind in our carpark. Try taking your foot off the brake once in a while love. While he was in the shower, the others called at 3.10pm to say they were on their way.  I was to meet them down in the foyer and decided to leave getting dressed until they arrived.  I thought they would be about the same amount of time that we were.  Oh how wrong I was.  They didn't arrive until 4pm.  Now I was pretty panicked.  We quickly returned to the room and Christie pulled out the curling iron and started on my hair.  Finally I stepped into the dress at 4.25pm and waited for the limo driver to call.

 

He called about 4.35pm and told us he would pick us up betwen 5.15 and 5.20pm.  Why couldn't they have told us that WHEN we let the chapel know we had arrived, days earlier?  All that rushing for nothing.  Anyway, it gave us plenty of time to go and have photographs taken in front of the waterfall at our hotel.

 

From there we moved to the entrance where the limo driver said he would pick us up.  We were then rather confused when we saw him drive past.  We quickly tried to run over to where he was, which is hard to do in a long wedding dress with a train, but thankfully 6 foot 1 Christie with her long legs, ran over, jumped in and got him to come around and meet us.  And then we were on our way to the chapel.

 

When we arrived there were brides coming, brides going, drunk guests (not ours), angry grooms (the buffoon in a photo with me) and of course slot machines.  I had noticed that their weddings often run late and I know why.  With the limo not picking us up until 5.20pm we were never going to be the chapel by 5.30.  There was another couple, this would be the angry groom, who was telling anyone who would listen that their limo had been over an hour late picking them up and they had been waiting for them to take them back to their reception for over an hour.  All their guests had already gone. Yeah boohoo, tell your story walking peckerhead.

 

Everything happens very quickly; completion of paperwork, professional photos, meeting Elvis who, by the way, was an absolutely lovely person, and then on with the show. We didn't even meet the minister before the event. 

 

It went so quickly, I'm just glad we have it on DVD to watch, which we've done already.

 

We know that some people, including my sister/brother-in-law where my parents were, had problems with the webcam.  Others didn't ... it is just one of those hit and miss things.  But thanks to Kerrie & Greg for paying for a 24 hour viewing, most of you have now seen me as a giant white marshmallow and Alan misplacing the ring. Ah, men!!!  We toyed with the fact of having Steve & Christie's son, Cameron, being the ring bearer.  We probably should have as I'm sure a 7 year old would have been more competent than Alan.

 

Then, the wedding was all over.  We received our certificate, photos, DVD etc and journeyed back to the hotel and had a lovely dinner at the buffet.  We had booked a much more expensive dinner where basically we were paying for the view, but the food at the hotel buffet, as you will know from an earlier blog this week, was really good.  Also, it was quiet and relaxed and we had a lovely time with our dear friends.

 

So that brings us up to when we returned to the room and that's all you need to know.