Adjusted Reality

Oooh, you actually wanted to hear about my WEDDING, not just partying in Vegas?  Ok, ok, here we go…

Sunday: A Nice Day for a Tropical Wedding…

Zliten and I both had issues sleeping past about 7 am, but we made a go of it until at least 8, when I got up, looked at my mop of a head, and decided to wash my hair instead of trying to style my ratty 2 day old casino smoke smelling fro.  Oddly enough, given enough time, even my hair plays nice and does the straight thing well.  Then I touched up my nails/toes – so glad I did the polish coat earlier or I would have been in trouble here.  At about 9:30, the first of the girls showed up to get ready and Zliten took off for the reception area to make sure the sound system worked properly and to set up the decorations.  Yes, the BOYS ended up setting up the reception tables.  How cool is that?

We grabbed some breakfast and poured some champagne and my maid of honor started on one of the bridesmaid’s hair while I did my makeup.  It took me longer than I thought it would because I was trying to be SUPER careful that everything was perfect.  Then about an hour before I had to be down there we started on my hair.  Since it was freshly washed it was taking forever to hold a curl, so my poor MOH and one of my bridesmaids spent the whole time curling, spraying, and pinning to get through my entire head.  I ran down there about 10 minutes late with my dress in my arms (we were supposed to be there 30 mins early).

I got to the ready room and the wedding coordinator was NOT happy with me.  Apparently I was supposed to traipse through the entire length of the casino and dirty my dress, and she put her foot down and FORBADE us to wear the silk flower clips we had made for our hair citing that I had signed the contract saying no outside flowers.  What. the. fuck.  No outside real flowers I understand, but HAIR CLIPS?  And who seriously yells at a bride 10 minutes before the wedding starts?  After answering a few questions on how I wanted things to go (Yes, Dad walk me down the aisle.  No, bridesmaids can just stand up there.  Yes, you can say God, why not, it’s a special occasion.  Blah de blah) I got into my dress and waited for things to start.  Finally, at that point, I was starting to be a little nervous.  “Don’t trip” was my mantra.

It was suuuuper windy so my hair probably got a *little* windblown on the short walk from the ready room to the chapel, but then the doors opened and I saw everyone at it was pretty much surreal.  My dad walked me down the short aisle, and then Zliten and I got up to the podium and things started.  Apparently everyone but me was an emotional and nervous wreck (all my girls, half the guys, Zliten, and all the parents besides my dad were tearing/choking up).  I was a little shaky up there but it’s more like the culmination of SO MANY MONTHS of work for just this short moment finally hit me.  I wasn’t so much nervous as *overwhelmed* by everything.  I guess I get it from my dad, I’m just not a crier.

The ceremony was very short and very sweet, especially the speech that T gave – he was supposed to officiate but the casino had rules against it, so we compromised and they let him speak for us.  It felt like almost no time passed and it was over, we walked out and let out a sigh of relief.  Whew – we r married! 🙂  Then, it was picture time.  And more picture time.  And still more picture time.  They took about 130 pictures in all.  Finally, we got to come to the reception and be announced as Mr. and Mrs. Zliten McGnome*!

Things just flew by once we got there.  I remember visiting with family and friends, there was some wine, and I remember being told I had to eat so I ate.  The food was pretty much delicious!  Then, we visited with friends/family that weren’t sitting at our table for a while and then it was time to toast!  My MOH gave a very sweet, short toast, and then the BM got all emotional on us (it was very sweet), and then I got up and thanked and introduced the wedding party and family and the champagne got flowin’.

Then, we cut the cake.  We sorta fumbled it because we hadn’t discussed how to do it, but the maitre’ d stepped in and helped us.  We did *NOT* smear cake all over each other’s faces, but after being egged on, we gave each other a little streak on the cheek.  The cake too was delicious – it was vanilla and buttercream frosting with strawberries.  Very, very nummy.  I’m not a huge cake person, but I got down almost the entire huge slice they gave me.

Then, our first dance.  We had prepared a fairly elaborate east coast swing thing, but Zliten kinda lost it.  After everything that day, we barely had it in us to just keep triple step, triple step, rockstep and do the dip at the end.  However, I saw the video, and we still looked pretty cute doing it – so it worked out.  After that, a lot of the family had cleared out and we were left with mostly friends, so we collapsed all the people into one table and worked on polishing off more champagne and wine.  The zune kept playing the SLOW songs so we went ahead and DJ’d ourselves and got down to some Zoot Suit Riot and chatted and the rest of the time just flew by and we had to give up the reception room, so we moved the rest of the people and the booze up to our room.

We spent the next few hours just chillin’ and drinking a little more and piling onto the bed for pictures and I happily shed the dress for some jeans (as wedding dresses go, it was pretty casual and comfy, but it felt goooood to be out of it).  We got hungry and headed out for The Noodle House, which was delicious.  We have a BUNCH of Chinese/Vietnamese food snobs in our collection of friends and they all loved it.  We then meandered to the Luxor to hit the club…which was closed for the night.  We lost a few people on the way who were tired, then lost a few more when we couldn’t get in, so we walked back to the Excalibur and hit up Dick’s Last Resort for some drinks (as some of us weren’t dressed for the club yet), and then after some yummy drinkies, it was just Zliten and I.

So what does one do on their wedding night?  Quarter poker and whiskey until 5am of course… and talking to some crazy lady from Arizona who kept giving us martial advice.  Finally, we hit the room and CRASHED.  It was the first night we slept well all trip.

Monday: Still Recovering

I woke up around 11 and just couldn’t sleep anymore.  I did the read my book in the tub thing and sit at the pool thing again and then FINALLY Zliten got up and we walked around the casino for a bit and then went to our 1:45 appointment to check out the pictures.  We got a few prints for free, but decided to buy them all (since it came with the pictures on DVD, as well as the rights to enlarge/print/distribute them).   I joked that I was just too hungry to pick which ones I wanted, but it was sorta true.

We then meandered looking for food at the MGM and ended up passing Emeril’s restaurant.  If you’ll remember, we missed out on Emeril’s in NOLA, so we figured this was perfect.  To be quite honest, we weren’t that impressed with the food itself, but the atmosphere and pace of service was great.  We realized we hadn’t just sit down and had a leisurely meal with each other in…forever.  We played a bit more slots after lunch very leisurely (I think we started with 20 bucks and ended with 20 bucks and played for 3 hours) and then headed back to the room and changed to go out for the night.

We got free show tickets and a free dinner with the wedding package, so we hit the 7pm showing of Dirk Arthur’s Xtreme Magic.  Sure it was cheesy, and we ended up seated on the very side of the stage so we sorta kinda saw behind some of the illusions, but it had flashy costumes and good music and big kitties (lions and tigers and panthers, oh my).  After that we hit the steakhouse and had yummy bread, gigantical caesar salads, and awesome steak and seafood.  Another nice, leisurely meal with just us two.  We agreed we have to do that more often.  We wanted to try for desert since it was comped but just couldn’t do it.  After that we played roulette.  At first I was down, then I was up and Zliten was WAY up, and then we both came down some, and we finally left a bit up.  We hit the hot tub and then called it a night.

Tuesday: Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Got up at 9am to pack and just barely fit everything into our suitcases (Zliten thought we’d need to buy another bag, but I knew our pack fu was strong).  We then took a cab over to In-N-Out and yep, it was just as good as I remembered.  Mooyah just cannot compare.  Since it was actually pretty close we walked back, tinkered around the casino with some money for a while, I ran over to MGM and turned in our last money voucher (machines don’t give money when you cash out, just vouchers) and then we waited for our airport shuttle.

The flight was totally uneventful EXCEPT getting through security.  So we had repacked quickly and changed which of the 4 bags we were carrying on at the room that morning, and I remembered in line that we had our toiletry bags in our carry on (so one round of repacking right there ensued).  Then, when we went through the x-ray machine, apparently we had forgotten one bottle of wine and some of my hair products in the carry on, so we decided to check it instead (what’s another 15 bucks, right?).  Zliten went to take it down to the terminal and when he tried to get back in, they had given him the wrong boarding pass.  The machines to print them out kept rebooting when he hit print, so he had to stand in line AGAIN for the ticket counter AND for the security check.

We got home, and our lovely friends had made dinner for us and fed us some drinks and then we went home and enjoyed the hell out of being in our own bed, and didn’t leave the house or our PJs until we had to for work Thursday morning.

Next Vegas trip (which, why lie, will probably be within the next year because it’s way too fun to go), my plan is to come up Thursday, do the nightclub thing that first night, spend Friday doing a straight casino night, take Saturday mellow and do a dinner and show, and then fly out Sunday morning.

Whew, I’m exhausted just reliving it in text.  If you want to see a few more pics have at it.  If you’re actually on FB and want to see more, add me as a friend and check out my tagged pictures, Zliten’s mom uploaded a bunch but I think they are only viewable by friends of friends.  Eventually I’ll have all the disposable cameras and digi pics and videos from everyone and upload that into one massive flickr or something, but I’ll wait to gather all that until everyone is less sick of hearing wedding, wedding, wedding.  So what’s the plan moving forward now that I can check a major milestone off my list?  Stay tuned to find out…

*Of course they didn’t actually announce us that way, but ya know…

Hindsight is 20/20.  On one hand, there are a lot of things I would do over if I could min/max the trip to be perfect, but on the other hand, it was an awesome, magically delicious time so why worry about it, right?

Thursday: Let the Debauchery Begin…

It started well – the parking lot we wanted to park in was full, but a spot opened up just as we got there!  We even made it through security without the white glove search (though we were carrying lots of weird wedding favor stuff).  The flight was very…uneventful.  We flew US Airways and I actually think I’ll refrain from using them again even if they are the cheapest.  I’ve never had a flight that landed on time (and have missed connections with them before), they cost the most to check bags, and their service – meh.

We got our bags without incident (I had major nightmares about this because I was forced to check my wedding dress) and shuttled and got to the hotel and the room.  After checking in, this one was much nicer.  This one was right at the front of the casino, had a comfy bed, DIDN’T have mirrors all over the walls and ceiling, and we didn’t have to walk past the rejected mall kiosks to get to our room, hoorah!

We were starving and parched so we found the best man (who had actually gotten there 9 hours earlier, and spent the day by himself cuz he was the first one there, oops) and after a few libations at the Tropicana and some quarter video poker, we headed out to the strip and settled on Planet Hollywood as our food destination.  After balking at the steakhouse prices, we settled on the Spice Market Buffet (for more detailed food reviews, hit the yelp links).  The one thing I will say – while I doubt it was *all* the food’s fault, I’ve never felt so sick after a night in Vegas.  And I am a pretty accomplished drinker, so…take that how you will.  After that we hit the piano bar for some ridiculously expensive drinks (though we had a 2 for 1 coupon so it wasn’t *too* bad) and enjoyed the piano guy’s humor.  I could sit at a piano bar forever – but this is Vegas so we continued on.

This is where the events of the night gets hazy.  I know that we played a bit more at PH, and then the New York New York (where I won 80 bucks and Z and the best man lost about that much), and I know we made it back to the Tropicana to drop our best man (BM from here on out because I am lazy) off who was exhausted, and ended up meeting some people playing more quarter poker (I think).  We convinced everyone to go swimming (even sleepy BM) – gotta love 24 hour pools.  Then, after completely ruining my hair we went right back out and hit up the Hooters Casino.  I believe there may have been some wings and onion rings ingested, as well as a little lot more whiskey.

Then, we sat down at these machines that have this fishing networked bonus round where if anyone at the machines won, you got to play.  In my drunken state, I was FASCINATED by them and got so excited when they came up.  The quote of the night was – Me, “Winner winner chicken dinner!” Zliten – “No, they’re fishies!” Me – “Oh yeah…winner winner FISHY dinner!”.  Apparently it was adorable.  The cleaning crew (as it was 6am-ish around this time) kept cheering us on every time we hit the bonus.  I even made Zliten pull more money out because I was having too much fun playing (which is VERY uncharacteristic of me).

When we left it was sunrise, but silly us, we decided that that just meant it was time for champagne!  We went to the MGM across the street and sat down for more quarter poker and mimosas.  This is where it gets VERY hazy, as Zliten seems to remember us going through about 4 bottles of champagne (I am *pretty* sure that it wasn’t all us but who knows).  Around 10:30 am Friday, my Thursday ended with a ceremonious pass the hell out on the bed.

Friday: Not for the Squeamish

Seriously, skip this day if you don’t want to hear about throwing up.

So, we had the limo scheduled for 2pm to pick us up and take us to the courthouse to get our marriage license.  I told Zliten to do whatever it took to get me out of bed for it, but apparently it was NOT happening.  So instead, they took the limo and rode around.  I’m glad SOMEONE got to use it.  I woke up around 6:45 pm and still felt like a mach truck slammed into me, but we had some friends to meet at 8pm at the Centrifuge Bar.  I choked down a little of the leftover room service I had demanded we order that morning, got dressed, and headed back out to hit the bar.

I got through a few hours alright, and the rum almost made me start feeling better (hair of the dog, indeed), until I just all of a sudden felt WORSE.  Like, eject button impending.  Since I’m pretty accustomed to airing a lot of dirty laundry on my blog, I might as well share another secret about me – I am a VIOLENT puker.  I get this crazy rash all over my mug because of the ridiculous face I make at the toilet.  I would make a HORRIBLE bulimic.  Getting this rash is NOT optimal 2 days before my wedding.  First I tried a public restroom that was crowded, and got shy and decided I’m going to tough it out for now and do the deed in private. Yeah – I’ve always had incredible puke control.  It’s one of my super powers.

After the gathering disperses, I said I need to go back to the room and tried to figure out how to make myself feel better without throwing up.  So I tried a nap and some TV.  Worse.  I tried to pray to the porcelain god and my brain wouldn’t let me – though I felt SO SICK.  Finally, after a few hours I get the hang of relaxed face upchucking and get rid of what ails me.  I feel better, but now my throat tastes awful, making me feel sicker.

Finally around 2:30 am I feel like a human again and considered going back out because I kept getting texts about people having fun, but then got up and walked around the room a bit, and realized that it was not a good idea.  If I was at 20% before I was only about 45% now.  And I had to get married in a day and a half.  So my Friday was spent mostly in bed, feeling like poopcakes.  Around 3:30, Zliten tried to drag me out, but with a little twist of the arm he fell right into his pillow and started snoring before I could say please.  It was really cute.

Saturday:  A Little Jittery

I woke up WAY early and all the caffeine I had over the last two days (yes, the diet soda … sometimes my complete lack of caffeine tolerance backfires) hit me.  I felt twitchy and if I got panic attacks, I’d imagine this is what the beginning of one feels like (heart racing, can’t stop your brain, needing to pace, etc).  Also – the fact that it was the day before my wedding I think *finally* kicked in the butterflies.  I got up, read my book in the bathtub, got myself some breakfast, played some poker, sat out at the pool for a while, and then FINALLY Zliten got up and we got out and got moving.

We took a cab to get our marriage license and then met up with a group of friends at Caesars to get some food in us.  Since beyond a few bites of leftover room service I hadn’t eaten since Thursday night, I was SO READY and felt zero guilt getting myself some yummy meatloaf and almost finished the entire gigantic plate of it.  Then we hiked back to the Tropicana with our friends in tow and played around the casino a bit and then headed up to the room where we had accumulated a bunch of alcohol somehow.  I finally decided it was time to have a drink or 2 as I was about to go deal with a HUGE group of my family, and after the day before and the weirdness that morning, I didn’t feel terribly social or hospitable.

After a quick getting ready we left in a cab and headed to the Ruben family dinner my dad had arranged (we just went for the cocktail hour).  The nice thing about losing 115 lbs from the time when they last saw me means there were compliments lavished all around and we had lots to talk about – and things which I am very comfortable talking about (my running, how I eat, etc).  That part went quickly and some wine certainly helped.  Next, we ducked back to the Mandalay Bay for our “rehearsal dinner” (no rehearsing but we needed to eat) and stuffed ourselves full of delicious crab and shrimp and all the other nummy stuff.  After that, Zliten ventured to the room for his early retirement, and I enjoyed another glass of wine with the survivors of dinner and caught up with a friend I hadn’t seen in 10 years!  However, wine + tired = SUPAHTIRED so I went to bed pretty early.

…next installment – the wedding day!  See ya tomorrow!