Weddind Adventure - Day 3 - THE Day!

The alarm went off early and I don’t even think I really woke up as Amy went off to get her hair and makeup done and do the bride thing. Thus I was left to my own devices on the morning of the wedding. I had a lot of things to keep me busy, however, from setting up the candy bar to placing the cake toppers. The grooms cake had a surprise cake topper that we had been keeping secret from everybody. After we got engaged, I somehow convinced Amy that we should have a little Lego bride and groom on top of one of the cakes since Lego was a big part of my childhood and a big reason why I’m a civil engineer. We found a person in England who sells little bride and groom kits on eBay and ordered one from her. She even customized the bride’s hair and other details as requested. Not being one to leave anything Lego alone, I added a few more details from some Lego I happened to have stashed away, and swapped the little groom’s flat plastic hair with some spikey brown hair from a Spider-Man set (Amy thought about giving the bride the Mary-Jane hair but it seemed a bit too orange and a bit too volumous at the time). Then, by pure chance, on a model train site I happened to find a little scale replica of the Las Vegas sign that actually lit up and flashed just like the real one. It was perfectly sized to serve as a base for our little Lego couple, and Amy and I wound up with the, in our opinion, the coolest little Vegas groom’s cake topper ever.

The sign and Lego people were to be placed on the groom’s cake, which was a log-style cake from the Jeanne’s bakery in Winnipeg. I decided to place the topper at one end of the cake such that it looked like the couple was about to walk down an aisle of little icing flowers. To keep the sign, with it’s somewhat heavy base containing a few AAA batteries, from sinking into the cake, I built a pile foundation out of lollipop/cookie baking sticks from Michael’s driven into the cake. Always an engineer you know…

After completing a bunch of these little tasks I got dressed up and walked down to the wedding chapel. A few of my relatives were already waiting outside, so out popped all of the cameras. Amy’s brother had rented an Elvis costume for the wedding, and when he emerged from the chapel dressing room in his get-up, the flashbulbs really started to pop. I wasn’t too sure about this idea at first, but the costume was a really high-quality one with all of the accessories, so it came off with the right tongue-in-cheekiness without looking cheap. It certainly added a little something extra to our Vegas wedding!

As the time for the wedding drew near, Amy’s grandfather was nowhere to be found. Apparently an improperly set hotel room clock had him running a bit behind, but he zipped into the chapel on his scooter right before 11 AM as the pianist was finishing up the last of the five songs we had selected to be played while the guests were being seated: “Going to the Chapel”, “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton, the traditional Hawaiian Wedding Song in honor of our honeymoon destination, and two by The Beatles (of course) “I Will” and “In My Life”. These things are pretty important when an audio engineer is waiting in the bride’s room.

Then it was my turn to walk into the chapel. Since there were no other members in our wedding party, I had to stand up there alone while the pianist went through the Sinatra classic “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. Very Vegas but a rather long song when you are just standing up there with nothing to do. I imagine I looked rather concerned but I was very happy at the time. It was nice to see that some of my friends from the U of I had actually made it to the wedding as I hadn’t seen them yet in Vegas.

Then Amy walked down the aisle, looking fantastic in her Vegas wedding cocktail party dress in white with green trim, complete with pearls and big green heels. The ceremony went quickly and had a few moment of slick Vegas production, like when the minister just happened to hold the rings off to the side so the photographer could snap a picture of them overlapping in his hand. Thanks to my trembling hands, I had a somewhat difficult time getting Amy’s ring on her finger, drawing some chuckles from the crowd. Amazingly, without any tears from either one of us, it was time for that first kiss and the happy walk out of the chapel with the photographer snapping away. Just Married!

Then it was right back into the chapel for pictures with all of the immediate family in all of the various permutations and combinations. Then we took a couple with all of the wedding guests up front with us. We didn’t know if they would work but they wound up turning out great!

The guests were released to the casino as we embarked with the photographer on our hour-long wedding photo safari around the Mandalay Bay grounds. He took some classic poses in the chapel and then some more fun ones around the pool. He also took a bunch near the arches and waterfalls that they have in front of the hotel but most people don’t even know are there. We even had some done where we are playing slots in the casino. Any Amy managed to stay in her heels the whole time without switching to the green Converse. The photographer took over 200 pictures and we look cute in every one of them! Look at me… look into the distance… look at each other… a little kiss now… All those seasons of America’s Next Top Model finally paid off.

We had a few minutes to race upstairs to put a few things away before heading to Café Giorgio in Mandalay Place for our wedding luncheon at 1PM. We had one of the small banquet rooms in the rear of the restaurant to ourselves, with four tables of guests (26 guests total) and a little sweetheart table for us to sit at. The menu included:

House Salad
Choice of: Butternut Squash Ravioli with wild mushrooms, garlic, basil and fresh tomatoes or Spaghetti with meat sauce
Choice of: Flattened Chicken in a garlic parsley sauce or Pink Snapper served with a lemon caper sauce
Tiramisu

By all accounts the food was excellent and left our guests stuffed even before the cake party. A funny moment came when my Canadian relatives began to tinkle their glasses with their forks and look in our direction. I had been concerned about this cultural misunderstanding as I had never seen this done at any of Amy’s friend’s wedding we had been to previously and I guess it is just a bigger deal in Canada. Hearing the tinkling, Amy turns to me and asks me if they want me to make a speech. I had to tell her that they wanted us to stand up and kiss! So we rather awkwardly kissed as most of Amy’s family was expecting us to give a speech as well. Everybody caught on for the next round of glass tinkling and we did a much better job.

After lunch everybody did some shopping or found a slot machine while we raced up to the suite to finish preparations. I made five or six trips to the ice machine to fill the drink buckets while Amy got a few more things in place. It was a mad flurry of activity as Amy turned an extra bouquet into a centerpiece. She was going to put some flowers on top of the cake, but with Stephanie’s concern that the white orchids might be toxic, we elected not to. Even without the flowers, the cake looked fantastic with all of the delicate scroll work and beading around each of the three layers to hold the green ribbon in place. We decorated the top with a little silver “A&T” letter set. However, for those who walked behind the cake, the topper read “T&A” with a backwards ampersand. Such is life.

With our guests beating down the door for a few minutes around 4PM, it was finally time to welcome them into our Cake Party in the swanky vista suite. As the guests entered they were greeted by the vision of the bride’s cake in the place of honor with the Vegas strip stretching out behind it, just as we had envisioned almost a year before. It certainly drew many Ooohs and Aaaahs from our family and friends. They set about exploring the suite and hitting the candy bar that included bins of gummi slot machine cherries, red gummi coins, mint truffle Hershey kisses, lego brick sweettart candy, mints in poker suit wrappers, chocolate poker chips, red gummi dice, Laura Secord chocolate cigars from Canada and green and white M&Ms. The M&Ms were customized with “Amy & Tyler”, “November 23 2008”, “Maybe in Legoland”, and “You’re Mine” written on various ones. We also spent a lot of time organzizing a playlist for the party, combining Vegas classics with songs that have personal importance to us or just seemed very wedding appropriate. It was quite the eclectic mix but perfect for us.

After the sun set and with the glittering strip as a backdrop, it was time to cut the cakes. There were actually three types of cake, with one layer of the wedding cake being lime cake with strawberry frosting, the other layer being vanilla with strawberry frosting and the groom’s cake being banana cake with vanilla frosting. All were delicious, tasting just as good as they looked!

The cake party lasted until around 8:30 PM when our parents and my friends from the U of I were the last to leave. This was the first time the old U of I train geek crew had been together in the same room since campus seven years ago, so there was plenty of catching up to do and old stories to tell. Kevin and Tanya had just moved to Edmonton, Alberta from Mississippi, so it was very nice of them to take time out for the trip. Joe and Yolanda don’t fly very well, so they actually drove out to Vegas from Indiana, and Jim and Attalee managed to leave their two young boys with family so they could make the trip from Iowa.

After everybody left we tried to clean up a bit but soon discovered that we had forgot to buy trash bags. So it was off to Von’s while still in our wedding gear. We also stopped at In-N-Out for a late dinner snack of burgers and milkshakes. We got a few compliments at the In-N-Out by UNLV and took a few more cute pictures inside while waiting for our food.

After a day we will never forget, it was time to enjoy the spectacular view from the bedroom portion of the suite...