Luxor

Oct152010

We did it! Got Married, that is

I would like to introduce you to… Mr. and Mrs. Steve and Rebecca Fletcher!

For reals, we had an amazing time.

We gambled a little bit. We won some and lost some (money, that is).

We ate a crapload of cake and cupcakes from the utterly amazing Retro Bakery. We were even featured in their blog! (Scroll to “The CUPCAKES/CAKES O’ the WEEK”)

We saw two Cirque de Soleil shows – KA and Zumanity.

We took over a thousand pictures between our cameras and cell phones.

We walked more then our feet could handle and even got a few blisters.

We had a gorgeous suite at the Luxor for all 5 nights thanks to the amazing upgrade.

We met the lovely Danielle (@d_consiglio) of the @luxorlv twitter feed.

We played dress up – twice.

We spent a ton of money on food and a few souvenirs.

All in all, we had a BLAST!

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Oct072010

Another Amazing “Freebie”!

Tomorrow… tomorrow evening we finally leave for Vegas. We have been planning this for over a year and now our wedding is like 2 seconds away. Seriously, we’re leaving for Vegas tomorrow night and the wedding is on Sunday!

If you read my Twitter and Facebook feeds, then you know something pretty awesome happened to me today. Over the last year, I have been building relationships with hundreds of people online, most of whom are in the wedding industry. Then there are others that, in my world, were all about my wedding. You’ve certainly see all the super cool free things I’ve won if you’ve been following my blog, all of which are directly related to Twitter. The latest of which was the Get Him to the Greek DVD that I won last week.

So today, my friend over at the Luxor, whose name I didn’t even know until about 8 hours ago, sent me a DM (private Twitter message) asking when we were arriving. Super sweet, right? Over a series of DMs back and forth, I told her we were arriving late Friday, gave her our requested confirmation numbers, set up to meet for coffee or lunch on Monday, and was told she was going to upgrade us to the tower suite for our entire stay! I was bowled over. Seriously, I was tearing up. Most of our interaction is in the public feed and she went out of her way to chat me up and gave us a pretty amazing wedding present!

Initially, like 10 months ago, we booked Saturday through Tuesday nights into the Tower Luxury suite at the Luxor. I didn’t see any point in any longer. Little did I know that fate would intervene in the form of the Spirit Airlines tweeter and send me an email with a deal we simply couldn’t pass up. So there we were, booked to fly out Friday and home on Wednesday. I waited until the Luxor had another sale and booked their lowest room, the Pyramid Deluxe, for Friday night. After all, we only needed a place to sleep for a few hours.

Then this happened. And I’m just like… blown away by how genuinely nice some people are for absolutely no reason. OK, well, it is due to our online friendship and that we’re getting married, but I didn’t ask for anything. Sure, I was going to be like “we’re on our honeymoon!” all over the place, but not to her. Maybe at the front desk, but we’ll be one of thousands of couples there for 10.10.10. I doubt we’d have gotten much preferential treatment.

Still blown away!

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Jun082010

June 8 TMW Post

Tweet: i’m shaking just a little bit, but $400 just couldn’t be passed up. incl taxes, fees, and travel insurance.

Tweet: Taking my chances w/@SpiritAirlines. Plenty of time built-in to our agenga for bad stuff to happen. Gotta be like a duck & let it roll off.

This post is all about completing the bookings for our weddingmoon, which is, rightfully so, the largest part of our planning.  After a few back and forth emails with Heather, the heard of customer services and person running the @spirit_helper and @spiritairlines twitter accounts, I booked our flights. As I was checking prices, an email came in with dirt cheap prices during October. Now, I’d been getting these emails for a few months now and they’re never more than a month in advance. After booking, I emailed Heather back and she immediately replied saying she sent that one out for me.

I know Spirit has terrible reviews, but I’m willing to take a chance. I booked nonstop flights both ways. To get the crazy low price of under $400 for EVERYTHING, I joined their $9 Fare Club. My brother’s future sister-in-law just started working for Spirit and will hopefully be able to request to get on our flight, at least one of the legs. We saved over $250 off all other airlines, even previous times I checked Spirit. It seemed to be kinda a no-brainer to me.

Tweet: booked the hotel for the 8th. now our weddingmoon is officially and 100% booked. i feel sooo much better!

After tweeting back and forth with the @luxorlv tweeter, she gave me a promo code to use for the additional night and I booked it last night. Oh yeah, to book the dirt cheap airfare, I had to extend the trip by an extra night. We’ll be arriving into Vegas around 11:30pm their time (ugh… that’s 2:30am our time!) so we basically needed a place to sleep. Seeing as it’s a long holiday weekend with tons of conventions in town, hotels are all roughly $100 for on or near the Strip. Using the Luxor code, I just booked it. The difference is our “formal” reservation is for the Tower Suite – big, lush, super fancy, high floor, huge Jacuzzi – and the single room reservation is for a Pyramid Deluxe room. I could care less what features it has.

124 days left!

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Feb252010

Stinkin Budget

21:31 debating pro hair/makeup for the wedding. seems silly to only have for our day after photo shoot. suggestions? besides @ameliacartist 🙂


16:26 is $180 a lot for wedding day hair & make-up? i know i know, the pictures are priceless, but …..


16:31 & the $180 is including coming to our hotel room for me only. no one else. @seblagg @diybride @brideonbudget

So, in discussing Vegas nuptials with another bride on FB using the same company, I started thinking about getting pro work done for the wedding itself. I will be totally pro (for FREE) during our day after shoot (or rather 2 days after) and it seems kinda silly to not be made up similarly for the actual wedding. When I put the question out to my consultants on Twitter, by this I mean all the brides and wedding planners I’m friends with, they said $180 is damn cheap considering they come to your location. I’m still not sold on it.

Which bring me to another reason…

16:44 i wish i could remove our flight/hotel to vegas from our wedding budget. it’s so much prettier w/out them.


18:24 are you including travel & hotel in your wedding budget or is it an extra expense?

Considering our wedding is a destination wedding, I automatically including hotel and airfare in our budget. The hotel is deeply discounted (yay for @LuxorLV and they’re amazing deals), but still about $600. The airfare, when I last did estimates, is between $600-750 for 2 round trip flights. Now granted, that’s from Raleigh; Miami is about $60 less. Without including hotel and airfare, our budget/ actual spending is really low. The wedding is $400, marriage license is $60 and cake/ cupcakes are about $100. With a budget of $1500, that leaves plenty for tours, shows, dinner, rental van and gas out to the Grand Canyon, and so much more. Also, if this damn wedding dress does sell, that’s an extra $400 towards the purchase of the $125 dress I want. So obviously, now I’m reconsidering how to figure our budget.

Now onto a much more fun topic… graduation and bling!

18:57 have been looking at amethyst & citrine for grad rings. (school colors are purple & gold) just realized i can get any stone! #noclassring


19:13 i’m considering this: bit.ly/cFAeEA to wear with this: bit.ly/2SmvHm (already have) whatcha think?


19:19 the ring will be a “hooray i now have an MBA” gift to myself 🙂 @Tryphyna


19:24 oooooh another option: bit.ly/cWC5Jj


20:36 new options, graduation gift: bit.ly/bRYwgw, bit.ly/9Bfpnw, bit.ly/dCIFww, bit.ly/9XqiHm, bit.ly/9UxqRm


20:46 and bit.ly/bh4Kvp – yes, i’m indecisive!

23:00 big surprise, more choices: http://bit.ly/bjyh4Y, http://bit.ly/db4hvj, http://bit.ly/aOcBk8, http://bit.ly/b44uOH in order of pref.

I have been checking out different websites with gorgeous rings for my graduation gift. After graduation from UF, I bought myself an utterly gorgeous diamond and sapphire ring that was stolen a few years later. I loved that damn thing. So yeah, I started looking at other rings for my ECU graduation gift. So far my favorites, in order, are: http://bit.ly/bjyh4Y, http://bit.ly/db4hvj, bit.ly/9UxqRm

Did you buy yourself anything for graduation? It’s such a huge accomplishment and… why not?! Also, making payments is my friend. 😉

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Nov242009

Our Hotel is Booked!

You read that right! This morning I received a DM from the @LuxorLV twitter account telling me to hang tight, that their Twitter Tuesday rates would be published shortly. I’ve been all over twitter the last few weeks asking which hotel we should stay in: the Luxor or Excalibur, the Luxor or Flamingo, the Flamingo or Tahiti… you get the drift.  Well, the Luxor has been on my short list for a while, and actually kept retweeting my questions out the their follower base.

Today, when the twitter-only rates were published, I was floored. I was able to book a Tower Luxury Suite for not much more than the normal price of the Tower Deluxe room.

Yes, we are staying in a huge suite that is larger than my first apartment in North Carolina for 4 nights. We will have plenty of room for the cupcakes and wine reception I’m envisioning. Also, with as big as the room is and as pretty as the pictures are, we can totally have the ceremony and take professional pictures in the room!

This after I emailed the link to this top secret special deals page to all our Vegas invitees and some have checked it out and booked their room already! I actually wonder if I should bother to get a room block. I should email again and see who hasn’t booked yet and if they want to book there and then decide. 

When I was chatting with my younger brother’s girlfriend earlier, she was telling me all these places they (she) want to visit during our Vegas trip. We’re totally doing the Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, Red Rock Canyon and Zappos! Where else should we go?

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