![\"\"](\"http:\/\/photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net\/hphotos-ak-snc1\/hs238.snc1\/8530_151949469449_789139449_2456630_8050225_n.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOooh, you actually wanted to hear about my WEDDING, not just partying in Vegas?\u00a0 Ok, ok, here we go…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sunday: A Nice Day for a Tropical Wedding…<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 Oddly enough, given enough time, even my hair plays nice and does the straight thing well.\u00a0 Then I touched up my nails\/toes – so glad I did the polish coat earlier or I would have been in trouble here.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Yes, the BOYS ended up setting up the reception tables.\u00a0 How cool is that?<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 It took me longer than I thought it would because I was trying to be SUPER careful that everything was perfect.\u00a0 Then about an hour before I had to be down there we started on my hair.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I ran down there about 10 minutes late with my dress in my arms (we were supposed to be there 30 mins early).<\/p>\n I got to the ready room and the wedding coordinator was NOT happy with me.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 What. the. fuck.\u00a0 No outside real flowers I understand, but HAIR CLIPS?\u00a0 And who seriously yells at a bride 10 minutes before the wedding starts?\u00a0 After answering a few questions on how I wanted things to go (Yes, Dad walk me down the aisle.\u00a0 No, bridesmaids can just stand up there.\u00a0 Yes, you can say God, why not, it’s a special occasion.\u00a0 Blah de blah) I got into my dress and waited for things to start.\u00a0 Finally, at that point, I was starting to be a little nervous.\u00a0 “Don’t trip” was my mantra.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 My dad walked me down the short aisle, and then Zliten and I got up to the podium and things started.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I wasn’t so much nervous as *overwhelmed* by everything.\u00a0 I guess I get it from my dad, I’m just not a crier.<\/p>\n The ceremony was very short and very sweet, especially the speech that T gave<\/a> – he was supposed to officiate but the casino had rules against it, so we compromised and they let him speak for us.\u00a0 It felt like almost no time passed and it was over, we walked out and let out a sigh of relief.\u00a0 Whew – we r married! \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Then, it was picture time.\u00a0 And more picture time.\u00a0 And still more picture time.\u00a0 They took about 130 pictures in all.\u00a0 Finally, we got to come to the reception and be announced as Mr. and Mrs. Zliten McGnome*!<\/p>\n Things just flew by once we got there.\u00a0 I remember visiting with family and friends, there was some wine, and I remember being told I had to eat so I ate.\u00a0 The food was pretty much delicious!\u00a0 Then, we visited with friends\/family that weren’t sitting at our table for a while and then it was time to toast!\u00a0 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’.<\/p>\n Then, we cut the cake.\u00a0 We sorta fumbled it because we hadn’t discussed how to do it, but the maitre’ d stepped in and helped us.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The cake too was delicious – it was vanilla and buttercream frosting with strawberries.\u00a0 Very, very nummy.\u00a0 I’m not a huge cake person, but I got down almost the entire huge slice they gave me.<\/p>\n Then, our first dance.\u00a0 We had prepared a fairly elaborate east coast swing thing, but Zliten kinda lost it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 However, I saw the video, and we still looked pretty cute doing it – so it worked out.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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).\u00a0 We got hungry and headed out for The Noodle House<\/a>, which was delicious.\u00a0 We have a BUNCH of Chinese\/Vietnamese food snobs in our collection of friends and they all loved it.\u00a0 We then meandered to the Luxor to hit the club…which was closed for the night.\u00a0 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n So what does one do on their wedding night?\u00a0 Quarter poker and whiskey until 5am of course… and talking to some crazy lady from Arizona who kept giving us martial advice.\u00a0 Finally, we hit the room and CRASHED.\u00a0 It was the first night we slept well all trip.<\/p>\n Monday: Still Recovering<\/strong><\/p>\n I woke up around 11 and just couldn’t sleep anymore.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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).\u00a0\u00a0 I joked that I was just too hungry to pick which ones I wanted, but it was sorta true.<\/p>\n We then meandered looking for food at the MGM and ended up passing Emeril’s restaurant<\/a>.\u00a0 If you’ll remember, we missed out on Emeril’s in NOLA<\/a>, so we figured this was perfect.\u00a0 To be quite honest, we weren’t that impressed with the food itself, but the atmosphere and pace of service was great.\u00a0 We realized we hadn’t just sit down and had a leisurely meal with each other in…forever.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 After that we hit the steakhouse<\/a> and had yummy bread, gigantical caesar salads, and awesome steak and seafood.\u00a0 Another nice, leisurely meal with just us two.\u00a0 We agreed we have to do that more often.\u00a0 We wanted to try for desert since it was comped but just couldn’t do it.\u00a0 After that we played roulette.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We hit the hot tub and then called it a night.<\/p>\n Tuesday: Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig<\/strong><\/p>\n 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).\u00a0 We then took a cab over to In-N-Out<\/a> and yep, it was just as good as I remembered.\u00a0 Mooyah just cannot compare.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n The flight was totally uneventful EXCEPT getting through security.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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?).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Whew, I’m exhausted just reliving it in text.\u00a0 If you want to see a few more pics have at it<\/a>.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So what’s the plan moving forward now that I can check a major milestone off my list?\u00a0 Stay tuned to find out…<\/p>\n *Of course they didn’t actually announce us that way, but ya know…<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net\/hphotos-ak-snc1\/hs218.snc1\/8530_151949454449_789139449_2456629_6346761_n.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net\/hphotos-ak-snc1\/hs238.snc1\/8530_151954209449_789139449_2456647_3716637_n.jpg\")
<\/p>\n