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.

Married in Vegas

I was never ambitious about marriage. Sure, I was open to the idea, but it was not something I actively pursued, not like some of the girls around me. They ran after it like a drunk to a bottle. Endless discussions: ‘Will he, won’t he?’, ring, dress (The Dress! Nothing matters more than The Dress!), reception... I’d had my absolute fill of weddings before anyone had a rock.

So it was amazing that I was the first to get married, and incredible the way we did it.

When I was twenty-one I met the plumber of my dreams and two years later we eloped to Las Vegas. A lot of people talk about doing it, but we were cool enough to actually do it. We didn’t tell a soul and it was fabulous. We were fabulous.

Las Vegas may be the easiest place in the world to get married, but only if you’re American. For us Southern Hemispheroids, it is a trip-and-a-half and only the brave see it through. Passports, visas, flights, hotels, car hire and currency; it suspiciously starts to resemble that other list: date, The Dress, venue, menu, bridesmaids and flowers.

When we arrived in the USA, we leisurely took our time arriving in Vegas. It’s not that we were nonchalant; there was just too much great stuff to do before hand. My brilliant beloved drove magnificently while I navigated faultlessly around three states. We survived the spaghetti of the Los Angeles freeway system, the red desert plains of Arizona, Death Valley (superlatives superfluous), Yosemite in bear season, precipitous streets of San Francisco, a cinema in a bad neighbourhood, drunk on the rim of the Grand Canyon, and the whole gosh darn country gone crazy on the fourth of July.

Maybe the best part of all was that no one knew we were there. I’d made up some story for my family about spending the midyear break in Panama (not so unusual for me). I neglected to tell them I’d resigned from my teaching job -I couldn’t wrangle two extra weeks on top of school holidays- and I certainly didn’t share the whole eloping thing. I love my family- my parents are traditional, yet terrific, and we are close. Crucially, I have no sisters and am the only girl born into the family for generations. I hate to use the word ‘selfish’ so I’ll find some better ones instead: brave, daring, plucky...

Finding Vegas in the middle of the Nevada desert is like Lego towers in the middle of the living room floor; looks great but the location is impractical. By this I mean two things- it’s an impractical place for a city in the first place and impractical as a haven for love. Something closer to the coast or the airport with fewer distractions would make much more sense, but I must admit Vegas charmed me in every way. Keeping in mind I was very young, the free drinks, cheap food and nonstop entertainment impressed me.

We found a hotel, a chapel and the Clark County Courthouse where we lined up behind a fellow applying for his fourth marriage licence. Armed with all sorts of documents, we were only asked for our name and address and suddenly, ‘Here you go, Ossies- go get married!’

Back on The Strip I went to a hairdresser and raced back to our room to get dressed. No time to shower- we were running late for our 4.45-5.00pm time slot in the chapel, so I threw on my dress, he dug out his suit and we ran up to the Chapel of the Fountain, Circus Circus Hotel, Las Vegas.

It’s as classy as it sounds. Footage of the previous wedding screening in the foyer, deli fridge full of flowers, show bags for the happy couples (mine had washing powder), bored receptionist and a number system. Inside the chapel it was white, silent and empty; the only time I encountered that in Vegas.

The celebrant began, ‘Marriage is an age-old tradition...’ That’s the only thing I remember about the ceremony until he prompted me when it was time for the vows. ‘Eendra, do you take Michael...Eendra? Eendra?’ I barely remember anything he said, but I’ll never forget the way he pronounced my name. However, I know we were married legally because we have a certificate with the Nevada state seal and the photographer as our witness.

Our wedding package included twelve –twelve!- photos which were rushed through to allow for the next wedding: that groom in tuxedo jacket and board shorts, bride in tight pink. We both look a bit stunned in our shots, but we were enormously pleased at our coup. We still are.

Neither of us have any regrets. We bravely weathered the shocked assails from family and friends back home and I guess in the end, like those silly, inane girls and their eternal babble about wedding frippery, I too had the wedding I wanted. Mine was just way, way better!