Married In Vegas: The Cynical View

Andra Lewis lops in, sits down and immediately launches in to her story of marrying in Las Vegas. She smiles broadly, even smugly as the details roll out. She finally stops to order coffee and is only quiet when it arrives.

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ She says. ‘One to tell my grandkids!’

‘Why not your children?’ I ask, able to get a word in at last.

‘They know their mother is unusual. It won’t shock them at all when I tell them. But hearing it from a granny, well that’s a different matter!’

Right from the first cappuccino it’s clear Lewis thinks she’s done something quite special. She thinks her wedding was something of a coup d’état, a Great Thing, something much better than the rest of us could achieve. Thirteen years later, she remains very pleased with herself.

These are the facts. At twenty-three years old, Andra Wedding married Michael Lewis on the 9th of July in Las Vegas. The trip was planned six months earlier, although neither told anyone beforehand. They called family and friends from the States and were met with a range of emotions from hurt to anger, bewilderment to congratulation. They spent four weeks travelling in America and Panama before returning home.

‘Brave,’ Lewis offers for the umpteenth time.

When I ask why she did it, the answers sound more like excuses. At the time of their trip, Lewis was working in Wagga Wagga while Michael lived five hours north in Gilgandra. The families of both were scattered across two other states, so in her own words, organising a wedding was a ‘logistical nightmare.’

Really? Weddings involving many more complicated circumstances frequently go ahead trouble-free. There appears to be little conflict regarding religion or race, either of which can be huge causes of grief for couples. Did she do it just to be able to tell people about it?

“No,” she vehemently defends herself. ‘My wedding was about the marriage,’ she emphasises. ‘I didn’t want to become distracted by the wedding, and I wasn’t. All those silly, unimportant details! Our focus was marriage.’

She presents her own contradiction. If marriage was the one and only focus, why run all the way to Las Vegas? Why not find a celebrant in West Wyalong (half way between Gilgandra and Wagga Wagga)? The theatre of an elopement was clearly important: it cannot play second fiddle to a conventional wedding.

I am not suggesting Lewis is not entitled to the wedding she wants or deserves, but I put forward that she regards her wedding as somehow better, or more important. True, a traditional or lavish and wedding does not guarantee a happy marriage, but neither does marrying in Vegas for the sake of a ‘great story.’

In our conversation, Lewis frequently returns to her distaste of ‘silly, unimportant details’, yet she goes to great lengths in describing these in regard to her own wedding. The chapel was small, white, empty of people but full of pews. She tells about procuring a marriage licence and getting ready for the ceremony, but none of this is unique to her experience; these particulars need to be taken care of for any wedding. They married one week into their trip, so the remaining three weeks would be called ‘honeymoon’ by anyone else, but that word never leaves her lips. It’s too conventional.

Her attitude is really not all that different to other brides. Every bride thinks she’s pulled off the wedding of the decade. Lewis had the wedding she wanted, as do thousands of brides every weekend. By her own admission she went to the same amount of trouble (travel arrangements etc) and she’s achieved the same outcome, so apart from a slightly whimsical story, she has really achieved nothing out of the ordinary.

While I don’t necessarily admire Lewis for eloping to Las Vegas, I do admire the courage it took. Her family by all accounts is close and it must have taken some gumption to preclude them. With no sisters or even female cousins, a lot was obviously expected of her, so she does have bravery… but also some selfishness and buckets of audacity.

‘I have no regrets.’ Lewis says it a few times, but quietly admits to sadness when sitting alone at the hairdresser before the wedding. ‘I was getting ready to be married, and I was all alone and no one knew what I was doing.’ The close-ups among the twelve wedding photos show suspect red eyes. They didn’t buy the optional video.

A wedding is like childbirth- most people are pleased to see the end result, but no one wants to hear all the details. I wish Andra Lewis the very best for her married life. She seems very happy. Now we’d all be a bit happier too if she just stopped going on about it.