Mark and I FINALLY got the contract for our venue. We will be getting married May 26th, 2012 (ceremony site to be determined) and having our reception at the Vancouver Convention Centre. WE ARE PUMPED!!!
The VCC was the first place that my mom, my maid-of-honour, my wedding planner, myself and Mark agreed on. It has everything we wanted for our wedding: a Vancouver view, a lounge area, a separate room for kids to play in while their moms and dads drink up, a patio for smoking celebratory cigars, walking distance to a ton of hotels/public transit stops, and a West Coast menu. It’s amazing. Here are a few pictures of the outside…
Here is the actual space where we’ll be partying it up…
Needless to say, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I am now fully in bride-mode (sorry Mark). All my planning is no longer hypothetical…I actually have a space where I can envision everything I want! Now that you guys know where the venue is, any new opinion on the colour schemes I mentioned in an older post? I think the room is so beautiful that I don’t want to overdo decorating. The sloping glass, wooden beams, open patio, and of course, the view speak for themselves.
Included with our booking, Mark and I get a room at the Fairmont Hotel for our wedding night. For those of you who don’t know, the Fairmont is a very posh hotel in Vancouver (a lot of celebrities stay there when they’re in town filming movies). Mind you, we don’t necessarily plan on using the room. My goal is to stay up ALL NIGHT and then go for Denny’s breakfast in my wedding dress (for those who don’t know, Denny’s is where Mark and I had breakfast on our first date).
Before heading off to Vegas, Denise and I spent the better part a day moving apartments. We were growing tired of how far from campus we lived, and how sketchy our neighbourhood was. We have now moved much closer, and in a much safer area. Plus, how could we turn down a view like this?
Here is recap of how Mark and I spent the last week of our break…
GETTING MY GRADES…
I pulled it off. I finished my first year of medical school with a 4.0 GPA. All As, all the time. I was VERY pleasantly surprised. I had emotionally prepared myself for the worst, since 2nd semester had been such a mess. When I opened the dreaded email containing my grades, I was so happy that Mark took a video of me. He says that he will show it to me next time I doubt how awesome a student I am.
Another perk of my grades (in addition to pride....and the RayBans I bought myself a reward)..
...is that I get to keep my job as a tutor with my friend Ned.
I know...another red-head...what is wrong with me?
We have the same sense of humor, which should make tutoring gastrointestinal medicine and reproduction this semester very interesting…
GOING TO LAS VEGAS…
This was my 4th trip to Vegas. The first 3 times were with my bestie Vanessa. Going to Vegas with a significant other is SO DIFFERENT! I’m gonna go ahead and say it is frankly, not as exciting. When I go with Vanessa, we spend hours getting glam, eating expensive treats, going to shows and on rides, and getting into clubs for free without having to wait in line. It was definitely a more relaxing trip with Mark, but it was weird being there without Vanessa.
Vanessa, Hugh, and Me...no big deal...
We went to Vegas for the wedding of our good friends Tyler and Amanda.
The Gilchrists....including ANOTHER red-head....it's an epidemic...
They got married at Treasure Island in a small, intimate ceremony. Seeing Mark standing up there as a groomsmen made me realize just how close we are to having our own wedding ceremony (we will hopefully be booking our wedding venue this Friday…then I can blog about where it is without being afraid of jinxing it). Tyler is Mark’s best man. The reception was at an Italian restaurant called Maggianos. Dinner was family style (they bring platters of different things and everybody takes what they want and put it on their own plates) and delicious! After dinner is when things started getting messy…
Oh dear...
We arrived at the restaurant at 6pm and were scheduled to be there until 10pm, and which point we would relocate to a country bar at the hotel. Dinner was open bar. Mark didn’t realize we had to leave by 10 until they announced last call around 9:30. Mark took this as a personal challenge and proceeded to order 3 doubles of Johnnie Walker Black Label. He had already been drinking before this, and was at that happy-tipsy level. It was all downhill from there. Seeing how drunk Mark was getting, I stopped drinking myself in anticipation of the night ahead of us…
There was laughter and high-fives and hugs and showering of compliments. Mark proceeded to introduce me to all his friends repeatedly (even though I had met them all multiple times before). He even introduced his sister to his best man…they have known each other for a decade, but Mark was convinced this was the first time they were meeting. He would yell “HIGH FIVE!” and instead of putting his hand up for a high five would bear hug you. He would drag me around the bar to his friends, pet my face, and ask “Isn’t she pretty!?!?!? Look at this face! So pretty….”. This happened more than once.
These 4 pictures are in chronological order...
By midnight, Mark and I were back in our room and he was recycling all the alcohol from the night into the hotel water supply (ie, vomiting for an hour and half). I had never seen Mark that drunk. The fun quickly wore off and the “I’m never drinking again” speeches began. He eventually fell asleep/passed out by 1:30am (side note: he woke up to puke again at 2am)…
The next day I got him Gatorade and some food and the TV remote and went to the pool. I felt bad for about 5 minutes that Mark was upstairs alone hungover, but very quickly got over it. He was functional by the time dinner came around.
In other Vegas related events, for those of you who don’t know, I like to gamble. Not a phrase you necessarily want to hear a future physician say, but it’s true. The last time I was in Vegas, I won enough money to pay for my trip. Strangely enough, it was on a slot machine (the Sex and the City slot machine to be exact). That was awesome. What is not awesome is that every time I see a Sex and the City slot machine now I want to throw all my money into it. I have the problem of sometimes viewing gambling the way I view school: if I just work hard enough at it, I’ll get what I want. Obviously, this is completely wrong. Nonetheless, I burned through a good chunk of cash gambling in Vegas.
Money making machine.
Mark’s sister, Jocelyn, and her rad friend Lindsey came down to Vegas while we were there. It was great to see them, not only because they rule, but because Mark and I were slowly getting on each other’s nerves a little, so it was nice for me to have girls to hang out it. They had the Vegas experience that Vanessa and I have when we go. The best part of seeing them was always at hangover breakfast when they would tell us about the shananigans from the night before and I would threaten to make really loud noises. Made me feel like a proud mama bear.
Chicken wings @ Hooters
Other Vegas highlights:
- Seeing Mark’s friend Scott do wheelies on an elderly woman’s wheel-chair on the dance floor at the wedding reception while everybody chanted “Scott! Scott! Scott Scott Scott Scott!” to the tune of “Shots” by LMFAO…
- Going to a Bachelorette party in Vegas and getting bottle service…
- Maxing out my credit card shopping…
- Eating a serious burger at Holsteins (a delicious burger restaurant at the Cosmopolitan hotel)…
- Having Starbucks multiple times a day…
- Room service...
Best waffle of my life...
- Having a Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream parlor in our hotel (if you ever have the chance, try the chocolate milkshake there…they blend their Chocolate Therapy ice-cream with their Chocolate Brownie Fudge ice-cream and some milk….stupidly delicious….and probably pretty low–calorie)…
- Taking Mark to his first Cirque de Soleil show, Ka…
- Sitting at the pool and not feeling guilty about not studying…
- Eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup the size of my face (it actually took 6 of us to eat it)…
Gotta love America. Strangely though, even with the regular sized packages, Americans only get 2 peanut butter cups whereas we get 3 in Canada. Take that, America!
- Double-date with Tyler and Amanda the night we flew out (where Mark ordered steak)…
Vegas Lowlights
- Mark throwing out my Starbucks mug
Here’s the story. Our first day in Vegas, we went to Starbucks (duh). I really wanted a Starbucks Las Vegas mug to bring back to Dominica, so I bought one. It was overpriced, but I really wanted it. After we had coffee, I was heading to the mall to go shopping and Mark was heading back to the room to change into his bathing suit and go to the pool. (which reminds me of another highlight...the shoes I bought for the wedding....)
J'adore
Anyway...before Mark and I parted way, I asked him,
“Can you take this (the mug) up to the room for me? I don’t want to carry it around while I’m shopping.”
I made sure to make eye-contact while asking. I made sure to get a verbal response. Mark said
“Sure, no problem”
and I physically handed him the bag into his hand. The next day, I ask Mark
“Where’s my Starbucks mug?”
“What Starbuck’s mug?”
“The one I paid $18 for yesterday and asked you to bring upstairs.”
“I don’t know.”
Fantastic. So we spend 5 minutes searching the room for it (it was a small room) and can’t find it. Mark’s reply?
“I must have thrown it out.”…
Damn it McLean. I eventually bought myself another mug, though not the Starbucks mug. I bought a Hooters mug from the Hooters restaurant…and didn’t let Mark hold the bag.
Back to the Vegas low-lights list...
- Paying $23 for a 2 minute phone call to Vancouver from our hotel room. We actually had a second $13 fee for another phone call, but they waived that one once we complained about how stupidly expensive it was…
- Being denied service by a cab driver (highlight: almost breaking his car door as we stormed off, second highlight: calling his boss to complain about what a douche he was)…
- Discovering that living in Dominica has made me somewhat lactose-intolerant (this really gets in the way of me drinking macchiatos)…
- Leaving Las Vegas (at least this was a low-light for me…Mark might have put this on the highlight list…)
So…now we’re back. I think it’s fair to say that Las Vegas is the opposite of Dominica…and Las Vegas is my favourite city in the world…so you can figure out what that means. This semester I will be doing a lot more clinical stuff and hopefully not be stressing out to the degree I was last semester, but who really knows. Stay tuned for our next post about our Sangria in the Sink party!
Welcome Ashley! Does this mean that your husband will be coming out of the woodwork, and stop creeping on us? Love your blog, by the way.
We've returned from Las Vegas. Overall a rad experience, and I was proud to watch Tyler marry Amanda. Congrats guys. I'm pretty sure that Denise wants to do a lengthier Vegas post, and since that city courses through her veins, she'll certainly do it better justice than I ever could.
No, this post is about the eerie power that I and the TSA possess.
First off, for part of the bachelor party, we men headed for the gun range. Never shot a gun before. Never held one. There were several options, so they gave me the "Coalition Package", a pretty tame collection of guns designed for the dumbass who doesn't know what he's doing (me!). They're pretty new weapons that are easy to shoot. Along with the guns, I got to pick three targets from about a dozen choices. So I chose a creepy looking dude holding a pretty blond hostage (this came first so that it would rouse a sense of justice in my heart), a zombie clown wielding an axe (this came second so that I would feel the urge to shit my pants, like in the movies where the hero faces adversity), and my third one...oh hell, why not shoot up Osama bin Laden (this came last so that I could feel better about fearing the clown. Plus how could you come to America and pass up the opportunity to shoot Osama? To not do it is downright unpatriotic.)? And so I shot him with a pistol.
Note: Shot him in the balls.
We went to dinner immediately afterwards, and that's when word trickled in: Osama bin Laden was shot and killed.
Yeah he was.
You're welcome, planet Earth.
I expect compensation any day now.
Ok, second. When we got back to our apartment, we began unpacking. I took off the lock that kept the zipper on my luggage closed, and started rummaging through my stuff. On top of everything, was a little pamphlet from the Department of Homeland Security. It was the TSA, telling me that regrettably, they had to search through my bag, and they hope nothing was damaged.
So in one hand I have the pamphlet, and in the other...my lock. Which I had just unlocked. There is no physical way for that pamphlet to have gotten in there. What the hell? I knew the US government was powerful, but damn! There is only one explanation. The Department of Homeland Security has developed a teleportation device, which they used to plant this pamphlet within my luggage. I am in awe.
I still use my lock for the gym. I will never, ever again doubt the power of our neighbours to the south. Er, I guess to the north now.
