Bachelorette Bash!

I’m back from Vegas, alive and in one piece!  This past weekend with the girls was so much fun, I had a blast and I just want to go back every weekend and do it all over again.  Vegas is such a vibrant, wonderful, disgusting place.  YAY!

When you go through the process of planning a wedding, it opens your eyes like never before to the awesome greatness of your closest friends and family.  I honestly thought we were just heading down to Vegas for a girls weekend, naming it my “Bachelorette Party” and calling it a day, because as detailed before, I am not really about the splashy, penis paraphernalia adorned bachelorette party tradition. These girls had a very different idea – I was amazed at the careful planning, thoughtfulness and love that was so evident in putting together this perfect weekend for me.  I am a very lucky girl to have such amazing friends and family who are sharing this journey of getting married with me!  So read on to find out how it all shook out!

We started off our trip by driving to Fargo, listening to an awesome playlist made by Melissa which of course included many a boy band song, and we chatted excitedly the whole way there.  Once we arrived, we promptly dropped our stuff and went to have dinner with Mom and Grams before going out for a bit of shopping.  And of course, we had to kick off the weekend of drinking!  At dinner, I was presented with the weekend’s itinerary, and right off the hop I was blown away. 

 

 

Gorgeous!

 

My MOH Tara is a scrapbooker extraordinaire, and crafted these lovely itineraries herself.  Upon reading it, I was even MORE excited for the Vegas weekend, if that was humanly possible.  The ladies arranged a full schedule of non-stop awesomeness, including a limo tour of the strip and a trip to see the Chippendales!  So we shopped around for a bit, picked up a few last minute essentials for the weekend, had a drink in the hotel bar, and went to bed WAY too excited.  I was seriously like a kid on Christmas Eve. 

 

 

Shopping in Fargo for some serious essentials.

 

We woke up the next day and went for lunch, and then headed to the airport around 1:30 for our 2:45 flight.  The girls had made a reservation that evening at my favorite Las Vegas restaurant, Stack Steakhouse, and my mouth was watering already.  So nothing could have made my heart sink faster than seeing “DELAYED” on the departures board next to our flight.

 

 

Whomp wahhhhh....

 

So with our 2:45 flight now leaving at 4:45, we headed upstairs to the tiny airport bar, parked our butts there, and made a plan to just drink, have fun and make the most of the next three miserable hours that were putting an extreme dent in our Vegas time.  We were doing pretty good, we made friends in the bar as almost everyone was in the same boat (except for the man in a tie sitting next to Tara, who was more than out of place in a room full of Vegas vacationers, and we may or may not have asked him if he left his Filofax in Conference Room B), and we had a generously pouring bartender so all was good.  And just as we are approaching 4 pm and the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to show, our flight was further delayed to 6:20.  At this point, I’m starting to get angry.  WTF?!?!  Don’t these people know that I have a Vegas trip to begin?  Anyway, after lots of waiting, lots of drinks, and lots of pouting, we finnnnnally boarded the flight and got on our way.  And getting up to our gorgeous room and seeing the view of the Strip and the Bellagio Fountains made it all worth it. 

 

 

View from our room.  Bam.

 

The next day after a good night’s sleep (suffice it to say I was NOT feeling well after the flight) we got up fully rested and ready to head down to the pool.  Tara and Melissa told me to go into the bathroom for 10 minutes, and so I knew there was some kind of surprise coming.  I could hear them sniggering and giggling through the door, and when I came out, I definitely had to join in.  They decorated the room with balloons, Bachelorette Party signs, a sash and tiara, and the infamous Bradley Cooper.  They also put together special Survival Kits for the weekend, which included a customized cup, penis straws (natch), sunglasses, sunscreen, Tums and Aleve, bandaids....all the essentials!  Not only was it hilarious and awesome but I was very touched by how much thought had gone into everything.  These girls went all out!!!

 

 

Fun!

 

 

 

How perfect!  SO excited to wear this.

 

 

Such an awesome keepsake!

 

 

 

Bag full of essentials for everyone...

 

 

 

Meet Bradley Cooper.

 

So after all the snickering subsided, we headed down to the beautiful pool for some much needed relaxation and sun soaking.  The Boulevard Pool at the Cosmopolitan Hotel is awesome, and I highly recommend this hotel to anyone going to Vegas.  The view is awesome, the ($15) drinks flow freely, the pool has lots of different areas to sit and the music is a good time.  We spent about six hours there, drinking and chatting and laughing, and then tore ourselves away to head to our room and get ready for the evening.  By this time, we were slurry and giggly (natch), so we made a couple questionable decisions including purchasing three hot dogs, numerous random drinks from Walgreens, tacos that were so spicy I thought I was going to burn a hole in my stomach, and a bunch of snacks for the room.  Hey, it’s our vacation!  Don’t judge.

 

 

Love this pool.  Cheers!

 

So we went back to the room, blasted the music, and got prettied up for our limo tour and Chippendales evening!  I got to wear my sash and crown (LOVED it) and my new Kardashian Kollection dress I bought in Fargo.  Once we were all dolled up, we headed down for the limo tour with our drinks and began the night o’ fun.  First stop: the Las Vegas sign!  I have been to Vegas five times previously, and I’ve never been to the sign so I was so happy we got to go there.  There was a bit of a line and it was hotter than balls out there, but I managed to escape without a melted face and now I can check that off my bucket list!

 

 

Yay!

 

We returned to the limo, continued drinking and told the limo driver to take us to a cheesy wedding chapel next.  So we drove down the whole strip and got to look at the whole thing, and then ended up at A Little White Wedding Chapel.  As soon as I saw the sign a few bells went off (no pun intended) as I know I’ve seen that name somewhere before.  Sure enough, we had arrived at the wedding chapel where Britney Spears said I do, for her infamous 55 hour marriage.  Ahahaha, yay.  So we took some pictures there and took a look around.  It was very small, and super casual, as they even let us walk in on a wedding taking place!

 

 

Pink Cadillac!

 

 

Checking out some randoms getting married...

 

 

After that we zipped over to Fremont Street and drove through downtown, and then headed back down the Strip and towards the Rio, where the Chippendales were waiting.  I have to say, this show was insane.  The decibel level in there was easily on par with some of the craziest boy band concerts I have ever been to.  And what it is that reduces us self respecting, classy women to screaming pervy crazies, I have no idea.  But man was it a blast!  There were so many other bachelorettes and birthday girls there, and we even made friends with a fabulous gay man in sequined suspenders that was more excited than any of us.  I will say though, that it is very hard for me to enjoy these types of shows because the dancing is AWFUL.  I know they are not hired for their dance talent at all, but come on boys, step it up.  Their choreography could use some cleaning...I know a few dance teachers that would be more than willing to take that job!

 

 

Lots of this....

 

 

...and a lot of these.

 

That night we were walking zombies because we hadn’t had dinner and we were drinking all day and night, so we had a drink in the gorgeous Chandelier Bar in our hotel and then headed out for some late night bad food.  We walked the strip for a bit and caught a fountain show, and then came back and crashed in bed.  An awesome day!

 

 

 

So many sparkles!  My fave.

 

The next day it was back to the pool for more extreme lazing and drinking.  Even though it was overcast, it was still so glorious that we couldn’t even tear ourselves away to go shopping, so I didn’t even set foot in a shoe store.  Sacrilege, I know, but I was having too much fun to be locked away in the stores!  Aaaaand I was probably too tipsy to shop and make logical decisions about footwear, so that wouldn’t have ended well.  After a long day at the pool and many drinks (including a new invention of ours involving passion fruit vodka, water, and muddled fruit) we went for dinner at the Aria Hotel and then headed out for some drinking and gambling and more Bellagio fountains.  Goosebumps!  Love those fountains.  I did pretty well on Blackjack and then lost it all on craps, which is weird because it’s usually the other way around.  We stayed up late and had a ton of fun on the strip, and I didn’t want to go back to my hotel because I knew the next morning we were leaving.  Boooooo. 

 

 

GAHHH LOVE

 

So after a packed weekend we sadly gathered our stuff in the morning and said goodbye to Vegas.  What an incredible time I had, it was so fun!  And we promised to travel with each other every two years at a minimum because it was such an absolute blast that we need to repeat it.  So if you want to party with three old hotties in Vegas in 2033, you’ll find us drinking in the Cosmopolitan pool.  ;)

 

 

 

Happy Wedding Wednesday!!!

 

~M