Continuation from Day 3:
http://forums.theknot.com/discussion/1052145/faith4keeps-wedding-review-day-3-of-5-wedding-reception-later-group-tour-of-strip/p1I don't have a lot to talk about regarding the day after our wedding, other than this: I cannot encourage you enough to spend another full day in Las Vegas after your wedding. The entire wedding weekend was a blur until we woke up on Sunday morning, the day after our wedding, without a single thing on our agenda.
Most of our guests were flying out on Sunday, and while we thought we might do a casual brunch with anyone still in town, we decided to just lay low and be by ourselves. It was wonderful.
We woke up around 9am (darn time change still affecting us) and headed to Aria for buffet! We've never encountered a wait here, and their all you can drink deal is amazing - $9.99 for bottomless drinks with a ton of stuff to choose from: beer, wine, mimosas, bloody mary, and even some mixed cocktails. I also love that this buffet has steamed crab legs! Obviously, this place is nothing compared to Wicked Spoon or Bacchanal, but it's solidly in my top 5 Vegas buffets.
We went downstairs and decided to gamble a little in Aria, and we ran into some of our wedding guests! They were waiting on their much later flight. It was nice to be able to spend some time with them.
We really enjoy playing the digital craps games that have become very popular recently, but most of the Strip casinos have high minimums. So we went on a hunt and ended up in Monte Carlo - a casino we had never been in before. We spent about 5 hours... yes, HOURS, sitting at the craps game, playing, enjoying each others company, talking about the whole wedding weekend, chatting up other players at the game, and of course, drinking. Our server was very friendly!
Around 4pm we headed back to our room. We had asked a good foodie friend of ours to please plan a dinner for us for Sunday night, but to make it a surprise-- with no budget constraints. The whole idea was that this was just one less thing to stress about, and we'd go somewhere we probably wouldn't seek out on our own. We received a card on our wedding day that said, "Do Not Open until 2/8/2015" (the day after our wedding!). We finally did open our card, and discovered we'd be heading to Hugo's Cellar for dinner - inside the Four Queens hotel in Downtown Las Vegas.
We hopped in a cab and made our way down there around 6:15pm. We gambled a bit until our reservation time, then headed to the restaurant. Our experience here was absolutely phenomenal. When we arrived I was presented with a long-stemmed rose and we were ushered to our table. I had the best espresso martini, and the absolute best salad (!?!) of my life - the salads are made custom to your tastes and tableside! Awesome! Overall the whole dinner was amazing. This was a really fun thing to have someone do for us.. if you have a trustworthy friend, I'd recommend!
We spent a little bit more time in the Freemont area until we had our fill of alcohol and headed back to our beautiful suite at the Cosmopolitan.
The next morning, we woke up a little late. We had wanted to go to our other favorite buffet, Studio B at the M Resort. But I really really love breakfast and were afraid all the breakfast items would be gone (since it was now a Monday) if we got there too late. So, we went to.... Wicked Spoon. And of course had am amazing experience.
After breakfast we visited the rewards desk to add all of our receipts to our account. Don't forget to do this! I'm going to do a summary post of all the things I wish I knew in advance, but this is a big one. One thing we got was some free players credit, so we tried our luck at some of the fun-looking slot machines (I'm loving the Ellen and Game of Life machines!).
Originally we had planned on going to the airport early and hanging out in the Centurion Lounge (highly recommend) but we were having so much fun in the casino, we ended up running a bit late for our flight and didn't have any time for the lounge at the airport.
For some reason that day, returning the rental car was a HUGE PAIN. We of course didn't use the car for the last few days of our trip so had I known what a pain it was going to be, we would have returned it in advance of our trip to the airport for our actual flight. There was a long wait at Budget to get checked out and then many HUNDRED people waiting for the shuttle bus back to the terminals. I was afraid we would cut it very close, but in the end, it was fine.
We hopped on our flight back home and lived happily ever after... married!!
I am going to do one last post: it will contain some major overarching items like photography, things that we wished we knew when we were planning, and a full breakdown of our budget vs. actual expenditures.