It’s not very often that I write about an event that has been all about me – well, alright, it involved my husband too!
This year we have celebrated our Tenth Wedding anniversary and so, with a family holiday planned to San Francisco and Las Vegas, to also celebrated my mum’s big birthday, we decided we couldn’t not renew our vows whilst we were there – well I decided!
Who: Shelley & Paul
When: September 2024
Where: The Chapel of the Bells, Las Vegas https://www.chapelofthebellslasvegas.com/
1st Contact: I reached out to the Chapel of the Bells and selected a date and time for our ceremony and received a lovely email back about how excited they were to look after us and that we didn’t need to bring any paperwork as we were already legally married and did we need any flowers and so on. We had the price of our service confirmed as $175 so I paid the deposit.
Now, what they don’t tell you is there are a lot of hidden charges in these packages and I mean A LOT. for example, the minister’s fee is included but you are also expected to tip them at $40 dollars minimum. Flowers can be expensive, I had a lovely little bouquet of carnations and gypsophilia and we had carnation button holes for Paul and our three guests but these all came to around $100. The biggest cost were the photos – they take 40 ish staged photos for you with a digital camera and then you can go through them at the end and select any you want but beware 3 images were $195 and if I wanted all of them it would have been $500!! I wouldn’t mind but I look miserable in most of them because the photographer was a bit shorter than us so we had to keep looking down and to be honest I was over being a spectacle by that point!!
Wedding Day: We had a lovely leisurely morning before heading off to the Chapel. It wasn’t the most salubrious establishment but after an introduction to Chaplain Steve who was to conduct our ceremony we were ushered into the chapel and commenced a walk down a short aisle. We stood and faced each other as Steve told us how we had been barren before we met each other and this arid land was watered by Paul who planted a seed (steady!!) and this seed grew as he got to know me and I became the apple of his eye!! Oh my goodness, I knew it was going to be cheesy but really??! We couldn’t stop smirking and giggling at each other, even when Steve called me by my last name instead of Shelley!!
However, we did restate our promises to each other (to have and to hold, love and cherish etc) and promised to love each other for all time and that was the good bit, we meant that, even if it did feel a bit awkward with my parents and aunt literally feet from me, some how I was more nervous than the legal wedding ten years ago – maybe its because I hadn’t had any prosecco this time?!
After the ceremony we went to a tacky gift shop and brought souvenirs to take home before going for a luxury dinner at Steak and Shake in the food court of The Golden Nugget in Freemont Street!! We packed the parents and aunt off into an uber and then we caught the bus back to the Strip to go see The Blue Man Group at The Luxor (this was a dream of mine and it was brilliant!). After some more souvenirs and a bit of a gamble on the slot machines, we Ubered back to our AirBnB for a cuppa and bed!!
Because we had a pool and it was Vegas, Paul took some great photos of my bouquet and our rings, including Duckie who was the chlorine dispenser in our pool 🙂
All in all, it was a great experience, a once in a lifetime moment that we can look back on as a reminder of our anniversary and our love to each other and I think Paul secretly enjoyed it too!! And remember, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!!
