Nevada-Las Vegas

How much did you do on your scouting trip?

For those of you who have done a scouting trip, how many viewings, tastings, and bookings did you have organized?

We're currently booked to go in May as a combination scouting trip & vacation (my fiancee's first time to Vegas), and I'm starting to worry that I've booked too much. We get in Sunday night and leave Friday afteroon/evening, and I currently have booked:

  • Chapel tour at The Linq and Flamingo
  • Chapel tour at the Plaza (to be confirmed, waiting for a reply back)
  • Chapel tour at Paris (to be confirmed; can't be booked until a month out)
  • Suite tour (wrap around & wedding suite) at the Cosmo
  • Suite tour at the Mirage (to be confirmed; can't be booked until day of)
  • Suite tour at the MGM Grand (to be confirmed; can't be booked until day of)
  • Suite tour at Mandalay Bay (to be confirmed; can't be booked until a month out)
Add to that the regular tourist things and possibly a show or two and I'm worried that I might have just overloaded our schedule! I'm not scheduling any tastings or the like until we have a venue confirmed (we can do tastings on another trip if need be.)
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Re: How much did you do on your scouting trip?

  • I would personally narrow it down to your top 3. We tried to pack in 5-6 places and it just got to be too much and it all became a blur. On average, each took 15-30 minutes. If this is a vacation for your FI, I would certainly narrow it down so you can enjoy some of the fun things that Vegas offers. 
    Wedding Countdown Ticker
  • If I could choose only three, I probably would, but I have NO idea what we're doing ceremony and reception wise! At the same time, if it's only half an hour per venue, that's not that bad. In theory...
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  • I agree if this is your FI's first time to Vegas, don't forget to have some fun. I would block off Thursday as a "fun" Vegas day. That'll be a good time see a show too. 

    As for tastings, you can do a cake tasting or two without knowing the venue. It might also help you decide on a venue.

    I'm doing my scouting trip later in May after you so I'll be following your progress. We're probably going to tour the MGM Balcony Terrace and maybe one other place. Idk, I really have my heart set on the Terrace. 

    Here's what my schedule looks like so far (all the ?? are things I'm thinking but aren't set on yet):

    Thursday
    Try to tour MGM room
    Food Tasting with B with a twist @ 2
    Cake tasting with freed's bakery (call a couple weeks in advance)
    Meet with DOC?
    Cake tasting at Nothing Bundt Cakes
    Try on dress from local shop if current dress doesn't fit
    Tiki room (fun place to go late night for drinks)
    Friday
    Meet with Rabbi (or Thursday)
    Cake tasting at Cupcakery
    Maybe tasting at Drago's
    Dress store/tux store visit
    Go to albertsons and whole foods and look at platters
    Sephora do makeup trial
    Buffet at m resort?
    Absinthe Show??
    Saturday
    Brunch @ border grill
    Red rock
    Makeup trial w/ Harmony??
    Engagement shoot @ Freemont?
  • It's part of the reason why I'm excited for five full days in the city. I know he's going to get bored of nothing but gambling and pools all day, so breaking it up with an appointment or two, at least every other day, will probably help ease his mind a bit as well.

    We're scheduled Tuesday morning for the Cosmo suite tours and Thursday morning for the Linq/Flamingo (with possible suite tour). I'm still waiting to hear back from the Plaza, which I'm planning on tying in to a night downtown on Fremont Street, which is much more of the fiancee's cup of tea. :)

    Mandalay Bay, apparently you just go to concierge the day-of you want to go and organize it, and they do suite tours at 2. So we'll just mosey on down that way one day.

    Mirage and MGM, we'll just have to call every day and hope we can get in to see it. I'm working with Mari at MGM (wedding coordinator) because concierge did a whole lot of nothing but forward my e-mail along to the girl I was already working with. Well, boo-urns on them. I'm also working with Joselyn (suites concierge) at Mirage, who's been great so far.

    I'm hoping/thinking only scheduling one viewing a day won't be too overwhelming, or possibly two in one day. I'm not booking any service bookings (hair, makeup) this far out, since we don't have any dates organized or anything like that.

    We're going to try to Tix4Tonight for Penn & Teller or something fun one day, and I'm thinking about doing Zumanity another night, too. :)

    @adverb, what are you planning to scope out at Red Rock?
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  • I think you have the right idea to try to pin down the ceremony/reception spaces. We went on a scouting trip for 3 days and we met with: Aria, Cosmo, Wynn, and Bellagio. We didn't meet with Flamingo, but we checked out the wildlife habitat and gazebo. We had engagement pictures taken and I had hair/makeup done by Harmony. We saw a show and ate in restaurants that we were interested in. I think a big part of it is getting a good idea of where everything is, the look/feel of different hotels, etc. A lot of the pricing info and such can be handled through email after the fact.
  • We had five places to visit over three days, but also made a point to walk around to see what else was available at each resort we visited.  Funny thing is we ended up using a venue (Mix) that was not even on our list only because we were at Mandalay to see their chapel and ended up getting a drink at Mix for the first time.  You never know what you'll find that was not on your list, so leave plenty of time to browse.

    Married in Vegas - June 2011


  • @xoeden - Red rock is more for fun since FI has never been. But I want to do some casual pictures after the wedding there so I'll be on the lookout for good picture taking spots :)
  • We had a 5-day scouting trip and planned A LOT of meetings with venues. It did make the trip super busy and feel less like a holiday, but we just didn’t want to leave feeling like we hadn’t explored all our options!

    Tuesday
    Wynn – met with wedding planner and met with restaurant events coordinator (they showed us 4 different restaurants)

    Wednesday
    Planet Hollywood – met with wedding coordinator and she also showed us some suites
    Tropicana – met with wedding coordinator
    Mandalay Bay – tried to view some of the suites but they had none free on that day (no appointment)

    Thursday
    Mandarin Oriental – met with wedding coordinator
    Cosmopolitan – met with wedding coordinator and were shown around a few restaurants

    Friday
    Platinum – we ended up cancelling this one because by then we had decided on Wynn! So we thought we’d rather have the Friday as a “free day” instead :)

    Saturday
    Free day to relax and shop before flying home.

    So I guess my advice would be if there are any you think will be your favourite, view them first. We had a feeling we wanted Wynn so were able to decide quite quickly and then relax for the rest of our trip!
  • I would allocate about an hour for every chapel tour for the tour, pictures, and questions. I felt like we were at Aria forever but I wanted to make sure I knew everything before I made a final decision. Be sure to take lots of photos!! 

    We planned all of our scouts for the afternoon but once we got up and had breakfast, we were so excited to get it over with that we contacted our potential vendors to move up our appointments. This was tricky for us because most of our restaurants didn't open until 11 am Vegas time so I felt we did a lot of waiting around. Each one of our tours took at least 45 minutes. 

    What we didn't think about was the transportation everywhere.... It made for a loooong day of traveling around, and we even booked our events based on the areas of the strip. The casinos are so big that there is just so much walking even in the hotels themselves. Do your gut favorites first just in case you get tired and nix the others! If you fall in love with the first one, there's no need to go to all the others. 
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