The Day Before 

Mandalay Bay provided a limo for us to get our marriage license when we arrived in Las Vegas.

 All the goodies we put together once we arrived -- the dice boxes had bottled water, poker chip playing cards, playing card and poker chip chocolates and other snacks

 

Girl's Night Out - my MOH bought me a sash that said "Sexy Little Bride"

 

Our Wedding Day

 

James from Glamsquad came to our hotel room for hair and makeup 

I had airbrush makeup done, it was great -- lasted all day

 The following are our professional pictures by Romeo Gil

The cheap zipper on my dress split, but they wouldn't tell me what was wrong which is why I look irritated and my sister looks nervous, luckily Kathi put some hook and eyes along the seam and they were able to hold it together

Finally in.

The finishing touch

I love my pearl ring, picked it up on ebay

Time to meet my groom

The boys

Jared and his dad

My dad and I -- what is with these guys who can't smile? I don't like my hair from this angle.

Off to get hitched...

Note the classy blue flip flops. I waited until we got to the chapel to put my uncomfortable shoes on.

Final touches at the chapel.

I really like this picture

Ok, I'm ready...let's get this show on the road.

We were not supposed to have an outside photographer (Mandalay Bay provides one for the ceremony), but Romeo snuck in a few chapel pics before the ceremony started.

I was actually quite please with Mandalay Bay's flowers. They cost me a small fortune, but they got them mostly right. They are kind of notorious for screwing them up. My bouquet was red peonies, calla lilies, and roses.

My Girls and I, they carried simple bouquets of 3 large white calla lilies.

My Maid of Honor, Hannah, and I.

My sister, Bethany, and I. She looked so cute...and she was so excited to be a bridesmaid.

The boys.

  Jared and his brother, Tyler.

 

Families.

Time lapse....reception at Maggiano's Little Italy. (We haven't purchased the negatives from Mandalay Bay with our ceremony pictures yet, so I don't have them on the computer, will have to include them later.)

 

  

Out tiny cake. We only had one deign option, it's not terrible, but wouldn't have been my first choice. It tasted good though. 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Hanging out on the balcony, it was really hot. 

  

Have to throw this non-pro pic in here, this was our view from the balcony. Cold beer, dirty girls.

 

 

  

  

  

  

 

 

 

 

Our cool guestbook. 

End of night make out tour of Las Vegas.

We know how to smile too.

 

  

 

Vendor Reviews

 

Glamsquad – A 

James made me feel like I should have been in Hollywood. I love love loved my hair, the makeup felt a little heavy but there’s not a lot he can do about that, it looked great in pictures and held up all day…in fact I was still trying to get the mascara off the next day. He was kind of quiet and seemed a bit rushed, but he’s a busy guy. He did both my MOH and I, hair and makeup, in just over an hour.

 

THEwedding chapel at Mandalay Bay – B+ 

Everything went very smoothly with Mandalay Bay on the day of the wedding. I give them a B+ because communication leading up to the big day was difficult, I often felt like my wedding coordinator wasn’t on the same page as I was. She made some mistakes with my flower order when I had filled out my requests very clearly. They were eventually corrected …though she never emailed to reassure me that she had fixed her errors. I was worried that they would be wrong when I got there. I emailed her about my concerns, and though she never replied, as soon as I got there she brought the flowers in to make sure everything was ok and said that she had received my emails and knew I had some concerns. They were beautiful, only a minor error, I had asked for no greenery, but it wasn’t bad. The flowers were fresh, they played the correct music (as far as I know, I was a little distracted…but it was pretty either way), and the service went perfectly.

 

Cashman Professional Photography – A 

I was actually quite impressed with Cashman. They came with our Mandalay Bay wedding package and I wasn’t expecting too much from them. The photographer put us in some poses I thought would be kind of silly but they turned out quite nice. Though we’ll be getting hundreds of pictures from our other photographer, these were the only pictures of the ceremony itself and we did end up purchasing extra prints. The photographer was very nice, I didn’t even notice him walking around and snapping pictures during the service. There was quite a bit of pressure from the sales girl to purchase the rights and digital negatives right away, but we didn’t have money and chose not to. A word to the wise, don’t buy the negatives right away, they offered them to us later for about $300 less than before. We did eventually decide to purchase them because they were only pictures of the ceremony itself and we didn’t want to regret it later.

 

Maggiano’s Little Italy – A

Aside from a cake miscommunication about a week before the wedding, Maggiano’s was perfect. The food was amazing and our waitress was great. We had enough food to feed an army and everyone stuffed themselves, it was so good. All 12 of our guests (which includes our wedding party of 4) raved about the whole night. I took in my favors (9 inch square dice boxes full of goodies) the day before along with centerpieces and misc. items and they set it all up really nice for us. There were so few of us that we didn’t even need to remove the centerpieces from the table for dinner. The only negative was another wedding in the room next to us who had the DJ on the wall we shared. They got a little loud a couple times, but the waitress asked them to keep it down and it was fine. I’m also a little annoyed in their cake options (none!), but I knew what I was getting into there.

Edited to add: new grade: C

I found out later that our guests were told they could not have leftovers when they asked for them, which I thought ridiculous. We paid for food for 20 and had only 12 guests, my guests should have been allowed to take all they wanted. I also realized that the rest of our cake never came back to the room, there is no way our 12 guests, with two other dessert options and the tiny cake slices, ate that whole thing. I paid a bundle for that tiny cake. I emailed the banquet manager about my dissatisfaction and received a phone call a few days later. He actually said, “Well, what do you want me to do?” He pretty much called me a liar, said that they don’t generally allow guests to take food out unless they ask….which my guests did and told me that once the cake is cut it is ALWAYS returned to the room for guests to take more. That last photo we took at the restaurant included the cake table...no cake. I was appalled at this kind of service, I thought at the very least an apology was in order. We dropped so much money on that night, we upgraded menu items, upgraded to top shelf liquor, we upgraded the cake, and we tipped beyond the included gratuity. I emailed their corporate office through their website to complain and received another call, this time from their general manager. He was very apologetic and offered some gift certificates to us. I told him we didn’t live near a Maggiano’s and he assured me they didn’t expire so I could use them whenever we were able to return to Vegas. Well, when they arrived they did indeed have an expiration date. We probably will never use them as we don’t plan to visit Vegas in the next year. I was very happy with the way things went on the day of the wedding but feel that they definitely dropped the ball on some things afterward. Even when they tried to make it right, they screwed up. This changed their grade from and A to a C.

 

Freed’s Bakery – A 

Our cake was through our package with Maggiano’s. The cake was good, not dry at all. They got the flavors mixed up (bottom layer had the wrong filling…I guess we’ll find out in a year if the top layer was right), but I don’t know if that was them or Maggiano’s, it was good either way. The design would definitely not have been my first choice, but it turned out nice and it’s not their fault as Maggiano’s only allows one design choice.

 

Lucky Limo – A- 

The service with Lucky Limo was awesome. They upgraded us for free from a sedan to an SUV for the ride from the ceremony to reception and then again from a sedan to a limo for our strip photo tour with our photographer. The guests rode in a bus from Mandalay Bay to Maggiano’s and the reason for the A- is that the air conditioning in the bus sucked and I heard it was a very hot ride.

 

MGM Grand Hotel – A 

We had a good stay at MGM. The rooms are very nice and we got what I consider to be a good price for a nice place. I preferred the Grand Tower room, which I stayed in with my MOH the night before the wedding, to the West Wing King that Jared and I stayed in for 5 days after. The West Wing King is very small and the open bathroom was a little uncomfortable but the shower was big, which we liked. We wished we had a tub though. The beds in the Grand Tower rooms were SO comfortable, the West Wing King beds were just ok, though I did enjoy the king size.

 

I also highly recommend KA and Spamalot if you have the time and money for them, both were absolutely fantastic!! The Eiffel Tower restaurant is also great, very very pricey but it was our only fancy dinner out and the food was amazing.