Simply Las Vegas

When Fiona Lewis, a primary school teacher from Halifax in Yorkshire married sales manager Graham Pether, they decided against a traditional grand wedding, and instead headed to Las Vegas for a fun, no-frills ceremony in Graceland Wedding Chapel where celebrities, including Jon Bon jovi, Billy Ray Cyrus and Robert Trump have also tied the knot.

FINDING THE ONE

We met online. We talked online for nearly a year before actually meeting in person and so had become really good friends before we met.

Graham proposed in the Lake District. He took me there for the weekend in a beautiful boutique hotel. He used rose petals to spell out “Will you marry me?” – they were on the bed when we arrived in our room! Not a total surprise though as we had talked about marriage and so I kind of expected something special to happen that weekend!

We had decided to get married only a few months before the wedding and we wanted our  wedding day to be about us. We realised that with Graham living in Yorkshire and his family being in Colchester it would be hard to get everyone together. So we decided to keep it simple and have the trip of a lifetime at the sametime. We thought the idea of marrying in Vegas sounded fun and easy!

I contacted a wedding planner who gave us lots of different ideas that would suit what we wanted. The wedding was very easy to plan – we literally chose the colour of our flowers and that was it!

I wore a simple 50’s style short wedding dress by LouLou and my only jewellery was a pearl necklace. I did my own hair and make up.

Graham wore a tailored teal blue suit with brown Ted Baker brogues.  I didn’t have any bridesmaids.

Our wedding ceremony took place at the famous Graceland Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip. It was just a 15 minute ceremony – short and simple, just the way we wanted it! We were married by the local pastor. We didn’t want any frills.

We didn’t have a wedding reception, just a romantic meal for the two of us. We ate at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant at the Paris Hotel overlooking the Bellagio fountains. We enjoyed  gorgeous food and drank champagne and after the meal we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower to watch the Bellagio fountains. It was a  very special moment.

The most wonderful thing about our wedding was just spending the whole day on my own with my new husband with no fuss, just the two of us.