A Vintage Las Vegas Wedding Day!

Louise told me, “We wanted to take our guests back in time, to when Vegas hotels, shows and the stars they boasted were cool and exclu­sive. The Angel Hotel fit­ted the bill with its quirky and indi­vid­ual style, large func­tion rooms and stage. I wanted to use props to pro­vide an accent of Vegas and hoped it wouldn’t appear gaudy or tacky. I am a huge Elvis fan and both my hus­band and I enjoy jazz music. I wanted to incor­po­rate the ‘Rat Pack’ era and ‘Elvis’ as to me they both epit­o­mised Vegas in its most glam­orous time.”

This is an inspir­ing and hugely enter­tain­ing wed­ding, and I really hope you love it. Thanks to the very lovely Wendy Bell (WBD Designer Wed­ding Sta­tionery) for ini­tially get­ting in touch, and to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Simon Gough for kindly shar­ing the images with us. Both get glow­ing reviews from beau­ti­ful bride Louise, whose wed­ding report you can read about halfway down the blog fea­ture. Enjoy! Claire xxx

Louise and Ben: A vin­tage Vegas wed­ding blog!

Wed­ding venue: The Angel Hotel Cardiff

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Simon Gough (Simon Gough Pho­tog­ra­phy).

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Loud & showy with, I hope, some sophis­ti­ca­tion and pizzazz.

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

We were renew­ing our wed­ding vows after 10 years of mar­riage. We eloped to Las Vegas the first time. We both wanted some­thing sim­ple and tra­di­tional in the cer­e­mony. We chose vows that we felt incor­po­rated our chil­dren and life together so far. It was really impor­tant to me that every­one felt included and val­ued as none of our guests had been part of the orig­i­nal day.

Which read­ings did you choose?

‘From Heart To Heart’, ‘On Mar­riage’ & ‘The Art Of Marriage’.

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

The next point of call seemed obvi­ous… play­ing card invi­ta­tions. This led me to Wendy Bell (WBD Designer Wed­ding Sta­tionery). This lady read my mind or we were sep­a­rated at birth!

Atten­tion to detail is my thing and I pride myself on how utterly use­less & wasted this is most of the time, but not with my wed­ding, and not with Wendy Bell. I built the rest of our wed­ding around the stun­ning designs Wendy Bell sup­plied us with invi­ta­tions, RSVP’s, Table names, Name places & seat­ing plan, all of which com­pli­mented, co-ordinated per­fectly and still man­aged to be indi­vid­ual from each other. http://www.wendybelldesigns.com/

Wed­dings are like recipes, you really need the right ingre­di­ents or it doesn’t work and it will leave a nasty taste in your mouth!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

We wanted to keep all that was to unfold with the evening’s enter­tain­ment as much of a secret as pos­si­ble. We hired a harpist for before and after the cer­e­mony. I’m not sure how many peo­ple got it but she actu­ally played jazz and Elvis songs through­out her set.

Through a com­pany called Prima Artists we hired Paul Roberts to per­form Frank Sina­tra songs [Paul Roberts spent 16 years as lead singer of clas­sic punk band The Stran­glers! Claire], four Vegas show girls and Ben Portsmouth and his band TCE (Tak­ing care of Elvis) as our Elvis act. We started with a jazz band through din­ner and after din­ner Paul Roberts per­formed a set and then my hus­band gave his speech. After the speech Elvis (Ben Portsmouth) per­formed his set. We fol­lowed that with a fan­tas­tic disco by a DJ called DJ Shabz. I wouldn’t change a thing about any of the enter­tain­ment. It was cap­ti­vat­ing, if I do say so myself. Guests told me they didn’t want to leave the room just in case they missed some­thing. I do have one regret actu­ally, that being that we didn’t video the entertainment.

What did you wear?

Bride: I wore an ivory fish­tail bespoke wed­ding dress, veil and tiara all from Pink But­ter­fly Brides. Beau­ti­ful sil­ver (Dorothy) glit­tery Kurt Geiger shoes.

Groom: Black tie.

We had a dress code of black tie for men and evening or cock­tail dress for ladies.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

Walk­ing down the aisle. It blew me away, see­ing all the gor­geous smi­ley faces of our fam­ily and friends. Totally choked!

Sec­ondly, the enter­tain­ment. After spend­ing so much time, money and energy on this it was such a mas­sive relief that it worked, every­one showed up and our guests seemed to really enjoy it. Thirdly my husband’s speech, I know he was really ner­vous about it and he did every­one so proud. He men­tioned all the right peo­ple, made us all laugh and me cry. Perfect!!

Wed­ding day advice:

Loads and loads, but prob­a­bly only that which use­ful to other loons like myself.

• Hire Geof­frey Har­ris, Class in a Coat (Mas­ter of cer­e­monies). The man walks on water. What he doesn’t know about any­thing to do with wed­dings, cer­e­monies and func­tions is not worth know­ing. Geoff co-ordinated the whole day, me, Ben, all the guests, all the enter­tain­ers and with such charisma and calm it was ACE!
• Choose your sup­pli­ers wisely. I naively ini­tially thought as wed­dings are roman­tic and fluffy and dreamy that all the sup­pli­ers involved would be too! Err no. As I said my thoughts are not for every­one, I seemed to come across quite a lot of cold, money grab­bing and unre­li­able wed­ding folk. It’s a cruel wed­ding world out there and I rec­om­mend you always have a very clear idea of what you want.
• Learn to be firm and con­fi­dent with your own opin­ions and wed­ding desires. Make lists, lots and lots of lists. I had a wed­ding folder and took a wed­ding note­book every­where with me for the year lead­ing up to our wed­ding. You will get tips and ideas from the most ran­dom places.
• I asked for advice from a lot of my friends who had already had a ‘white wed­ding’ type ‘do’ . What they would do again or change about their day? 100% of them said their dress!! That is a fash­ion thing, I sup­pose. I am sure they all loved them at the time.
• They also said not to drink too much as the day will fly by and if you get too tipsy you will miss bits. That was good advice and it’s a night­mare con­stantly look­ing for some­one to help you go to the loo! So I am going to give that bit of drink­ing advice as dou­ble strength, though don’t dehydrate!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Wendy Bell Designs – We could not fault the ser­vice Wendy sup­plied us with and could not rec­om­mend her more highly.
• ‘Class in a Coat’ Geof­frey Har­ris Mas­ter of cer­e­monies (As already men­tioned above).
• Simon Gough Pho­tog­ra­phy — This gen­tle­man took over 500 (not of just me I might add) fan­tas­tic pic­tures I don’t really remem­ber see­ing him. The man must be a chameleon! I am not com­fort­able with hav­ing my pho­to­graph taken and it was really good to not know when this was happening.
• Emma Hall Designs — Gor­geous table cen­tres and venue dressing
• Prima Artists — Enter­tainer providers
• 1st Class Wed­ding Ser­vices (fan­tas­tic sparkly dance floors and cur­tains). They do other things too though.
• Drag­ons & Daf­fodils Cakes – Good value for money and sup­plied what we had asked for.