On Thursday, November 15th, 2007, Rio & I took a plane to Las Vegas. We spent the morning furiously packing, as we should have done the night before. In fact, when Rio called the cab, I accidentally broke the zipper off the bag I was using for our shower products that I was rushing to close, due to my fears that the cab would actually get to our front steps before we could.
We waited nearly 15 minutes on the front steps anyway.
The cab driver was mildly amusing as he told us multiple stories of why he was no longer allowed in certain casinos, and we still arrived at SFO with over an hour to spare.
The process of checking in at the airport went relatively smoothly, although I did end up getting “randomly selected” for an additional security screening that involved a machine shooting air at me (or so they say — for all I know, it could have been poisonous gas). The plane was on time, and we arrived in Las Vegas on time as well.
Once we arrived at the McCarran Airport, Rio & I realized we had forgotten to print out the vouchers for the ground transportation we had purchased as well as the interactive wax museum. We weren’t quite sure how to deal with it at the airport just then, so we ended up paying the full $12 that it took for us to be shuttled off to ExCalibur, the hotel we had chosen to spend the next 4 nights at.
Despite being 4PM, rush hour had already started in Las Vegas, and it took a while to get there. I was somewhat edgy and overwhelmed by the flashy city and the multitude (or so it felt) of marriage-preparation tasks that extended past the highway we were stuck on.
We smoked our first cigarette in Vegas outside the ExCalibur, and talked about the weather — how it was the same temperature, but so much warmer. As we got up from the bench we were sitting on, Rio let me know about the friendly cockroach on the wall behind me. I wasn’t very appreciative of that, or the cockroach, and we checked in at the hotel.
Almost immediately, we were approached by a lady that wanted to give us free money, and a free dinner at the ExCalibur’s “Tournament of the Kings”. I was relatively wary of this, and wanted to know what the catch was. Apparently, it was taking some sort of trip in which we previewed their latest resort, and as soon as we consented to it, she was trying to take over an entire day of our trip. We told her how we were there to get married, but weren’t yet, and she said that was fine as long as we had some form of documentation that we lived together, such as a phone bill. When we could not provide this evidence for her, she apologized and said that she couldn’t offer the opportunity after all. The “opportunity” turned out to be a timeshare, and as we did not really want to share our time anyway, we weren’t all that disappointed.
We finally got to the room, and fretted over seemingly impossible tasks, like getting our marriage license, finding white shoes for my wedding dress, and renting a tuxedo for Rio. We decided that a lot of our anxiety was related to not eating, and ordered a 16″ pizza from room service for $15.50. The pizza seemed like a good idea during the first few bites, but, as Rio put it, it was “good food if you were drunk”, and left quite a bit to be desired.
We wandered around outside for a while as we tried to figure out how to get a cab — it wasn’t as easy as it seemed, even when they were everywhere. I realized early on as we walked through the Luxor why I had hated Las Vegas in my teenage years — it’s an agoraphobe’s worst nightmare. I have this habit of immediately finding every emergency exit I can whenever I enter a room, and it is hard enough to find any kind of exit at all there.
We finally found a Taxi Stop, where we took a cab to the Marriage Bureau. Our cab driver was extremely friendly and helpful. He congratulated us upon hearing we were getting married, and when Rio mentioned needing a tuxedo rental, the driver called a friend and found 3 possible places for us. Rio has a theory that he liked us because we were getting married for the “right reasons”. He had been driving a cab in Vegas for something like 10 years, and was probably used to impromptu intoxication-induced mistakes.
When we arrived at the Marriage Bureau, he told us to catch a cab by walking “that way” (motioning towards downtown), and not “that way” (motioning towards Who Knows).
“It’s not that it’s dangerous or anything, just go .. ‘that way’”, he said, motioning towards downtown again. I imagined the other way was probably the Las Vegas version of the Tenderloin and agreed.
We stepped out of the cab, and we were immediately approached by two men who wanted to sell us on their wedding chapel. We told them that we had already reserved a wedding chapel, but they were nice and continued to congratulate us on our wedding just the same.
We went inside, and were told to each fill out a form, an application of sorts.
There were two other couples in the room with us, and as we waited, Rio & I made up stories about them. The first one was trying to get a Visa (we overheard them talking about some sort of complication involving Guatemala). The second one was just wearing a wedding dress for the hell of it when her husband-to-be approached her and said, “hey, nice dress — wanna get married?”
We triumphantly left the Marriage Bureau, license in hand, and the same two men who had so eagerly promoted their chapel earlier also immediately hailed us a cab, so we never had to worry about going “that way”.
We got back to the room, relieved and happy with the completion of the “first step”. Although it was only 11PM, room service was closed, and we ended up going to the 24 hour Krispy Kreme in the ExCalibur for 6 donuts. I commented on the “circus horror movie” aspect of Las Vegas as we went through the floor, watching the glowing faces of the zombies that guarded each slot machine.
Around midnight, we resigned to slumberland, anxious with the anticipation of our wedding in 15 hours.