So, we got married last night at Vegas Weddings (702wedding.com), and it was AWESOME.
pics to come shortly.
Allegiant Air - B- : Meh. Not the worst airline I've ever flown, but my flight was 2 hours late leaving Illinois. And they charge for everything ($2 for a soda on the flight). We'll see how the trip home goes Monday.
GlamSquad - A : James and his assistant were right on time and got right to work. They even let us add hair for MIL at the last minute. I got nothing but compliments all night on my makeup and the hair was beautiful. James could have been a bit more personable, but no big deal there. I think he was probably just focused.
Fit for a Bride - A+ : Absolutely fantastic. I had reconsidered having my dress steamed because it was taffeta, and so it never really "looks" wrinkled. I'm so glad I did it though. She made my dress look incredible.
--- Side note: while I was looking at my dress before wrapping it up, H was sitting in the front room since he couldn't see it, and the other woman in the shop made some comment to him about how she doesn't understand all this and that weddings are so unfair to grooms. And since H was already in a slight mood, he agreed and repeated it to me afterwards, causing a rather large fight. I found her comments to be completely unprofessional considering I was in the next room and preparing to get married the following day.
Tropicana - B+ : Overall the hotel is pretty nice. They upgraded us to a nicer room when we checked in, since we were getting married, and the lady only charged us for 3 nights resort fee rather than 7, which was great. The rooms aren't fantastic. Nice, but nothing beyond that. The Paradise Tower is much nicer than the Club Tower. It appears those are newer...taller ceilings, slightly more spacious, and not a mile away from the front desk. The casino floor, however, is very nice. Not very big, but lots of machines and a decent number of tables. There is a small food court around the corner from the casino that is very good. It's a bit pricey, but the food is tasty and good sized portions. A meal for two should be less than $30, with tip. Haven't tried the other restaurants or been to the pool yet.
Vegas Weddings(702wedding.com) - B+ : This is kind of a loaded review here. Some things were A or better some things were not.
* The limo picked us up on time Wednesday to go get our license, the driver was friendly and talkative, got us there and showed us how to get to the chapel afterwards, which was a block away. The lady in the chapel on Wednesday was great, helped us get all the stuff signed in there and made sure we were good to go. Thursday was a different story. I called in the morning to give the chapel my cell phone number and my mom's hotel room number since I would be getting ready there and would need the limo driver to call there to let us know when to be downstairs. They never gave this to the limo driver. He was supposed to call at 4:30pm (90 minutes before ceremony time) to give us an ETA for pickup and the location for pickup. I called the chapel at 4:50 saying I hadn't heard from my limo driver and was worried, the guy told me I should here from him soon. Okay, 15 minutes later I call back again and the lady was pretty rude with me telling me how my driver was waiting for downstairs and had been there more than 20 minutes and my cell phone went to voicemail and no one answered in the room *blah blah blah* and when I asked what room they called, she said our room number, not my mom's. It was just annoying, but fine, limo was there but we were a bit frantic to get downstairs and ended up almost forgetting the music. The driver, Gus, was great and got me to the chapel safely before the ceremony was supposed to start.
* The flowers that I paid way evtra for turned out beautifully. I was really impressed with the florist; I had sent in a photo of an elaborate bouquet I found online.
* The minister left much to be desired. I had communicated very clearly on some of the things that I did NOT want in the ceremony, and I pretty much got the cookie cutter wedding ceremony. I had told them several times that we did not want the "traditional vows" that are repeated after the minister because we had written our own, and I absolutely did NOT want to be "given away." We got in there, and I swear to god the first thing out of her mouth was "Who gives this woman?" I almost said "no one" but I let my parents speak up. I didn't want that because I'm a grown woman that is choosing to enter marriage out of love and commitment, not because I'm in a property exchange. So there was that, and then she still had us say the traditional vows that we both hated so much. It wasn't until the end that she let us say our own vows to each other.
* The photgrapher, Brandon, was great. He came into the bridal suite and got some really good pictures, and just overall did a great job. Like, well enough that we paid their outrageous fee to get their pics on disk and cancelled Todd at Bentley & Wilson. We knew there was no way we were going to recreate the look and the emotion that he had captured.
* The chapel was lovely though, and even for such a small crowd was great.
They are affordable, and I would absolutely recommend them to anyone in the future.
Texas de Brazil - A+ : Wow, absolutely perfect. We were a bit annoyed at first, because my dad and brother got their well before H & I, and they wouldn't seat them. But when we got there, we found out it was because they had set aside a private room for us (that had never been discussed), but they did know it was a wedding dinner. The food was superb as usual, the meat men made sure to not ignore us in the private room at all, which was my concern. Their red sangria was delicious. And they brought out my cake and cupcakes on the little tower and everything for us. They even waived my cake cutting fee.
Retro Bakery - A+ : Brian was super helpful through all my questions and emails and got everything delivered without any problems as far as I know. We did a 6" cake and 24 mini cupcakes for 9 people. We brought about 6 cupcakes back and never even touched the cake. But everything tasted fantastic. We had milk & cookies, cherry cheesecake, and chocolate loves vanilla cupcakes. The cake is pucker up, but we haven't gotten into it yet.