Why Vegas? The last of it.

4. We want a celebration!!

I wrote a little about this in a previous post, but here it is again, because it really is that important to us. Pete and I started discussing our someday-wedding about 10 months ago. We had a lot of ideas, but one thing was for certain: we did NOT want a "cookie-cutter" wedding. While we both value tradition, we didn't want the stereotypical one-day event where 200 guests come to eat some food, maybe do some dancing, and then leave after we have talked to them for maybe 3 minutes.

We want our wedding to truly celebrate this wonderful event in our lives...and the more we talked about it, we knew that a wedding weekend in Vegas would do just that. We want the whole thing to be more of a vacation or family reunion - an excuse for everyone to get together and have a lot of fun, with our marriage being the center of it all. We want to spend real time with our family and friends - we love the idea of sharing several meals, hanging out by the pool, enjoying some drinks, sightseeing cool places, maybe seeing an awesome show or two or chilling out in a lounge made of ice (seriously, it exists in Vegas) with the people who come to celebrate with us. And every other option we looked into that may have been a little cheaper or closer to home just didn't provide those kind of options.

(See, I don't lie.)

But we looked anyway. We toured a couple places here in Phoenix, we emailed some other venues, and we tried to see the advantages of not getting married in Vegas. See, here I am scouting out a very pretty venue downtown...

Then one night, we finally just threw it all down and really asked ourselves what kind of wedding we want. We knew that with a limited budget we would have to decide what our priorities were and make sacrifices in other areas. And we realized that our top priority was to have the experience and celebration of a small, fun-filled destination wedding in our favorite city with the people who mean the most to us. So we made some sacrifices in the overall plan (and are still making constant sacrifices) to make it happen. And we couldn't be happier about it.

And that's that.

So Viva Las Vegas, Baby.

In case you missed it:
Why Vegas? Part One
Why Vegas? Part Two and Three