Vegas Wedding

The Strip from Matt & Jenny's room

My friend Matt and his fiancée Jenny have been planning their wedding in Las Vegas for quite a while now.  Matt is one of my oldest friends... we met in 3rd grade and hung out all of the way through college until I moved to Atlanta.  I usually see them around the holidays, but my visa issues while in Australia kept me from coming home last year.  I can’t complain about spending Christmas on the beach, but it did keep me from hanging out with them.

I’ve been through Vegas twice – once on a family road trip through the southwest when I was in middle school, the other on a cross country road trip with Amanda.  Both times it was just for a night, so I can’t say I had done a proper weekend there.  Matt and Jenny planned their ceremony at the Wynn on a Monday, so I blocked off Friday through Tuesday to spend in the city.  Four nights in Vegas?  People warned me that any more than two is too many…

Matt and Jenny weren’t getting into the city until Saturday afternoon, so I decided to bring along a date to keep me company.  A few friends were busy and it just so happened that Sheila, a friend from Atlanta that I met this spring in San Francisco, could take the time off of work.  I threw her some frequent flyer miles and we met up at the airport on Friday night.

With the wedding at the Wynn and the wedding party staying at Treasure Island, I decided to use Priceline to see what kind of deal I could get on a hotel.  I had never used it before, so I thought I would give it a shot.  It asked for the general area of town that I wanted to stay, number of stars and a price.  The software chooses your hotel for you – you don’t get to see that until you’ve already paid for it.  We got put in the Stratosphere at the very north end of the strip.  It was a good deal, but not worth the taxi fares we ended up paying all weekend to get to everyone else.  Lesson learned.

Sheila and I met up with my friend Jon on Friday night at Treasure Island.  He, Matt and I were good friends in college but I hadn’t seen him in 4 or 5 years.  We walked around the strip for a while and then went to a ‘locals’ casino a few blocks away called Terrible's.  The blackjack tables were only $5 per hand, while you couldn’t find anything under $10 at the strip casinos.  I’m not big into gambling, so that was enough for me

Unfortunately I had to spend most of my day on Saturday working in my hotel room.  I spent about 10 hours loading data for my client – they were pushing some of their customers into their new software system on Monday morning, so I really didn’t have a choice.  I took a mid-afternoon break to go up to the top of Stratosphere.  We got in for free since we were staying at the hotel – that was the only real perk of staying there.

Jimmy on stage with P&T

I was just finishing up when Matt and Jenny along with our high school friend Jimmy and his girlfriend landed and came to hang out. We all went out to dinner and then walked around for a bit before they all went to bed.  Sheila and I stayed out on the strip for another few hours, playing penny slot machines and bouncing around to different bars.

On Sunday morning I had a few follow-up items for work to take care of before we went out to the pool for a little sun.  We spent the rest of the day with the wedding party and then went to Penn and Teller’s magic show that evening.  Penn is really entertaining – you should check out his show on Showtime called Bullshit!.  Jimmy got taken up on stage for the first trick of the night, which was pretty cool.  They took his cell phone and somehow got it inside of a fish underneath a random person’s seat in the audience.

Happy couple

The wedding was on Monday afternoon so we spent most of the morning getting things ready and hanging out with Matt and his parents.  There were only 20 people at the ceremony and the service was short and sweet.  After taking some pictures we headed over to the famous ‘Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas’ sign for Jenny’s usual Thriller dance (check out her YouTube channel - she does it everywhere).  A rainstorm came out of nowhere and drenched us while we were there; I'm sure we were quite a sight for other tourists.

We had the reception dinner at TI that evening.  I had never given a speech at a wedding although I've been to a lot over the past 6 or 7 years - but I knew exactly what I wanted to say at this one.

That evening Matt and Jenny went to a Cirque du Soleil show, so Sheila and I had another night to ourselves.  We ended up going to a show at our hotel called Bite.  It was a rock and roll vampire show – it sounded kind of lame but he had nothing else going on.  We got 2 for 1 tickets and it was really a waste of time. 

Assortment of signs at the Boneyard

We found out that night that Matt’s mom won ~$1200 on penny slots, hitting jackpots 3 different times.  Sheila and I were determined to do the same since it was our last night there.  We failed miserably... I think Sheila was up $1.34 at one point, but quickly lost it.  I was in even worse shape.

We met back up with Jon, his girlfriend, Matt and Jenny to visit The Neon Sign Boneyard.  It’s a place set up by a non-profit where hotels put some of their old signs.  The tour cost $12 and the guide gave a lot of history behind the different hotels through the years.  Definitely check it out if you ever go to Vegas.  It’s not on the typical list of things that people do there, but it’s unique and cheap.

Sheila and I both had flights around the same time, so we said our goodbyes to the group and went to the airport.  It was definitely a long and somewhat tiring weekend, but I’m really happy that I got to be a part of the new Mr. and Mrs. Hosley’s wedding!