Wedding Part I
I woke up cucumber cool and dead keen to get down the aisle. Gareth, on the other hand, wandered around the hotel room singing, “Whacking Day, O Whacking Day!”. It’s one of my favourite songs from The Simpsons, but it troubled me that this was Gareth’s tune du jour. Was it because “Whacking Day” has the same number of syllables as “Wedding Day”, or something more disturbing? Was he comparing his impending nuptials to being clubbed over the head with a big stick?
I was too busy being vain and obnoxious to be nervous. Ladies, consider a few things if you’ve ever thought of eloping. Are you capable of dressing yourself? Can you apply mascara without smearing the wand across your nose? Can you remember to break in your shoes before the day of the wedding? Can you do up your own frock, or do you need five people to hold down your guts while a sixth hauls up the zipper?
If not, you should go the traditional route, i.e. with bridesmaids and mothers and make-up artists and hairdressers. This entourage will remind you to unpick that wedgie or powder your shiny nose before the photos. They will give you Something Blue so you don’t have to write those two words on your foot with a pen. They provide the brains on the big day, so you don’t have to climb onto a hotel room sink and batter your head against the mirror like a moth as you try to apply eye shadow under a fluorescent strip while shrieking, “My eyes! My eyes! I can’t see my DAMN EYES in this DAMN LIGHT!”.
They would also ensure you didn’t get married with just one earring. I lost one of mine on the journey from our room to the Inclinator (the Luxor elevators that run on a diagonal down the side of the pyramid). It was only £4 worth of earring, but they were long and dangly and foxy, dammit! I made Gareth crawl around on the pharaoh-patterned carpet for ten minutes to no avail.
Cue Bridal Hissyfit.
“Great! ONE DAY of my life I need to be classy. Why not just ONE DAY?”
“Just wear one earring!” said Gareth, ever-tolerant. “You’ll be totally punk, like Cyndi Lauper or something.”
I finally stopped grumbling when we got into a taxi and headed down the Strip. We zoomed past our fake Pyramid, the fake Statue of Liberty, the fake Eiffel Tower, the fake Venice. With every tacky landmark my grin got bigger. I was about to marry the love of my life in the most ridiculous town on earth. Rawk!
The chapel was in downtown Vegas, conveniently located between a seedy motel and an establishment that promised HOTT NAKED CHICKS!
