It was 8 years ago today...

...and we slept almost all day.

We were in Las Vegas, baby. Our darling friends Audrey and Ben had flown in the day before, and we had set to drinking with an enthusiasm that even Vegas wasn't ready for. Certainly Vegas wasn't ready 4 days after New Year, on a Monday, in the middle of winter.

The 5th of January was pegged as the day we'd get hitched. At 5pm we were still feeling too poorly to get out of bed, and hadn't done any of the finding-a-chapel sort of activity we had planned. We decided to let our fingers do the walking, and booked from an ad in the Yellow Pages.

If a chapel is good enough for Bon Jovi, it sure as hell is good enough for me.

We crawled to Circus Circus for the famous buffet dinner. It was terrible, in a way that you couldn't even imagine with a buffet. The Cat Circus and the revolving Merry-Go-Round Bar (as seen in Fear and Loathing) made up for it.

Glen and I headed back the hotel to get ready, and Ben and Audrey stayed out.

We're simple folk, so it took about 7 minutes to get ready, and we headed in a taxi to the Nevada County Offices to get our marriage licence - they're very civilised and stay open until midnight during the week - and then grabbed another taxi and hooned to The Silver Bell Wedding Chapel, and waited... Ben and Org had become waylaid by some beer or something. They weren't far away though, and the Rev George L Cotton showed up and things got under way.

It was very surreal. Part of the 'package wedding' was a video and photos, and I still find the video too cringe-worthy to watch.

After the 'ceremony' we took a ride in a limo. We were gradually regaining our drinking mojo at this stage, and after being talked at by the limo driver for an hour, we were relieved to be dropped at our hotel (New York New York - we figured we may as well see another city while in Vegas). We sat at the bar for the rest of the night watching men pick up hookers at the bar. We had some breakfast at 6 and went to bed. Ben and Audrey had to leave on a plane at 9am, and I felt very sorry for them indeed.

We continued onto Europe and Japan.

Eight years later I'm still pretty certain we had the best wedding ever.