The whole thing started in early 2004 when my sister announced that she was going to be getting married to Mr. Dan Carbo near Thanksgiving. The Snook and I duly made plans to fly to the States to attend. Somewhere in the middle of everything, we decided to get married ourselves. On November 20, friends and family around the world watched as we exchanged vows in front of Elvis in Las Vegas. We even managed to squeeze in a short honeymoon in San Francisco after all the festivities. Here we go…

After a long flight from Sydney to L.A. (and a night crashing at my sister’s apartment), we flew to Vegas early Friday morning and checked in at our hotel, the Stardust. The hotel was really great, actually. We picked it because it didn’t have any twee kiddie theme; it was pretty old school Vegas. Here we are in our room before heading off to get the marriage license.

The Snook poses in front of our hotel while waiting for the bus to arrive. We figured that the Marriage Bureau would be less busy in the afternoon than at night.

Another nice one of the Snook.

The Bureau turned out to be busier than we expected but we eventually made it through the queue. Afterwards we walked around the Fremont Street Experience where I finally, after much anticipation, ate my first ever deep-fried Oreo. It was awesome.

We took the bus to the end of the strip and then walked back towards our hotel. Here’s the Luxor, the big pyramid hotel with the laser beam on top.

We liked Excalibur, especially when it got all confused and started mixing its medieval nomenclature. (F’rinstance, there’d be signs pointing to both the “Camelot Cafe” and the “Sherwood Forest Nightclub.”) These little girls just would not abandon the dragon, so we had to include them in the picture.

Here’s a great one of me looking down the Strip with New York New York in the background.

Snookums imitates Marc Antony outside Caesar’s Palace.

That night we went to see “Splash” at the Riviera. It was your basic Vegas revue, complete with topless dancing girls, comedians, jugglers, and even a magician with tigers. The finale involved five motorcyclists racing around inside a 14-foot diameter metal Sphere of Death! It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. And check out the view from our hotel window! We looked down on Circus Circus.

On Saturday we went to the Stratosphere to check out the Strip from the observation deck. No, we didn’t ride the rollercoaster. (Snookums doesn’t do so well on those.)

What better way to get ready for a wedding than by shooting some guns? The Stratosphere had one of those air-gun galleries that we love.

The Snook fires away.

I wasn’t nearly as good as the Snook and I hold the gun like a complete dork.

Bang bang!

Another view down the Strip.

And another.

Why the hell did we take so many?

At long last, it’s Wedding Time! We were booked into The Little White Wedding Chapel, which is where Britney and SMG both got hitched. Here we are waiting before the ceremony with Elvis.

We were backed up for about an hour so we used the time to get our dozen photos taken. Our photographer insisted we refer to him as “Sammy Davis Jr.”

The Snook never smiles in pictures so Sammy had a hell of time coaxing him into these poses. I think I look like a dork in this one.

I feel like our hands look disporportionately large here. Is that just me?

It doesn’t get much cheesier than this.

This is a good one.

More cheese!

Me and Elvis. Yes, ladies, he was pretty darn sweet!

Two hunksa-hunksa-burnin’ love!

Check out the Snook’s collar!

Another cute one.

Here I am practicing my “kick” for the wedding!

For the last picture, I was like, “Sammy, we must have a picture with the big white horse. We can’t not have a picture with the horse!” So here we are.

So, did you watch the wedding online? Afterwards we went to dinner at Excalibur’s Tournament of Kings, where we ate chicken with our hands and toasted knights on horseback with frothy mead (i.e. beer). Back at our hotel, we were surprised to find a gift basket and bottle of champagne courtesy of my PW girls Kel, Crawfy, Eileen, and Liz.

Cheers! Thanks, girls!

Unfortunately this was our weather on our last morning in Vegas: rainy, cold, and miserable. Our flight back to LA got delayed for hours. That sucked.

Within a couple days we were back in Indiana to celebrate Thanksgiving with the fam. The Snook was lucky enough to experience his first real snowstorm. Here he is learning the duty of every Indiana husband: cleaning the snow off the car windshield.

Brrr!

Snookums the Red-Nosed Reindeer! Joey thought it was funny, anyway.

In my defense, Joey actually took this picture of me, which is why I look awful.

This one of the Snook and the Macy’s Parade is pretty cool, though.

Snowball fight!

Joey had a great time trying to make a snowman.

Isn’t Joey the cutest thing ever!?

More snowball fight.

Joey quickly realized that his sister made a nice snowball target.

The snow was too powdery to make a good snowman, hence the boys’ attempts to sculpt one with a shovel.

Duck!

Snookums made a darn good sleigh horse.

My gorgeous husband…

Thanksgiving Evening we headed over to my Dad’s for some deep-fried turkey (which the Snook and I had never seen before). Here’s my Dad and my brother setting up the apparatus.

It took, like, three of these giant jugs of canola oil to fill up the pot.

Checking the temperature of the oil…

Dad show off his Harley. (We were doing the turkey in front of the garage, in case you couldn’t tell.)

Antny lowers Mr. Turkey into the pot…

Slowly, slowly…

This deep-frying business really is a two-man job, though my brother is the acknowledged expert at it.

Snookums watches with interest and wonders if the whole thing’ll blow up.

Thirty-nine minutes later, this sucker was done.

It was damn good, too!

The whole Thanksgiving spread. Oh my, we ate ourselves silly.

Dad does the honors…

Now it’s on to the big Howard-Carbo Wedding! Here’s me on the big day in all my bridesmaid finery, along with my Grandma Veva and my cousin Megan (who sometimes comments here). Our dresses give you a good idea of the whole “autumn” color scheme Amy had decided on.

Dad shows off the bride, my sister Amy. He was pretty emotional that day, and more than a few tears were shed. And check out Amy’s dress! Lots of beading and a really beautiful full skirt. I helped her get into it and it was a major undertaking.

A quick shot of me and Snookums. Isn’t my little bouquet cute? His suit jacket is the same one he wore for our wedding, but this time paired with the matching trousers. Everybody liked it a lot.

I’m making a horrible double-chin face in this picture, but my brother Antny looks good. I told you he looks like Andy Roddick!

Me and Snookums again…

The newly-joined Mr. and Mrs. Carbo receive guests after the ceremony. I loved Amy’s bouquet… Very pretty.

My two gorgeous brothers at the reception… Joey was the ring bearer and Ant was an usher.

Check it out! It’s my cousin (and frequent commenter) Jenny. (No, she didn’t catch the bouquet, but not through any lack of cheering on my part!)

Finally we left Indiana and headed for San Francisco. Our hotel was the Metropolis, which we picked on the basis of price and the fact that it “looked kinda funky.” Funky it was, but it was also pretty damn tiny and the neighbourhood (Union Square) was a little dodgy. At any rate, on our first day we headed to Anchor Brewing for a tour, which is where you see Snookums here.

The Anchor tour was really, really good and I highly recommend it. (Book ahead!) It’s a tiny little brewery and our guide, Amy, was great at explaining how they were different from everybody else. And afterwards you get to try all their different beers! My favorite was the Anchor Porter, which was much smoother and less bitter than most other dark brews I’ve tried.

Cable car time! The one good thing about Union Square was all the public transportation available. We bought a 3-day pass and definitely got our money’s worth. Here’s the Snook on our very first cable car ride.

And here’s me! You can’t tell here, but I was absolutely miserable (in terms of health) the whole time we were in San Fran. I caught a cold in Indiana and I was guzzling NyQuil and popping ibuprofen the whole time. We also didn’t take much cold weather gear (thanks to an erroneous weather forecast from the fam) so I’m wearing, like, six layers in all these pictures.

We were amused by how the cable cars never stop for traffic lights and always stop to let people on/off in the middle of intersections. (Later, a helpful operator explained that they trip all the green lights in advance as they go.) It makes for some pretty shots down side streets.

Newlyweds on the cable car at night…

After wandering around Chinatown we hiked up towards Coit Tower. The views of the city were fantastic and Snookums got to play around with his night photography skills.

Our first real view of the Golden Gate…

Here we are the next morning, heading to Pier 39 to get some breakfast before our trip to Alcatraz.

We ate our brekkie while watching the famous sea lions.

Snookums enjoys a little warmth from the sun. At least it didn’t rain while we were there!

Here we are posing in front of the sea lions. It was almost time to go to the Rock!

And there it is! The ferry ride was short but I figured I was safer staying inside away from the wind.

A closer view… We’d been warned by everybody to book our tour tickets way in advance (which we did), but the first week of December must’ve been the off-season because there were still day-of tickets available while we were there.

Snookums on the boat. Man, we were glad we brought our mitten/gloves!

When we got off the boat, a tour was starting so we joined it. A ranger walked us up the back side of the island while talking about what life was like for the guards and their families who lived there. Very informative and fun. Then we collected our Audio Tours and headed into the prison…

I think you really have to do the Audio Tour if you visit. There’s not a lot of signage in there and – while some of it was a little cheesy – it was cool hearing the voices of some of the prisoners. And people without the headsets just kinda wandered around aimlessly wondering what we were all staring at.

Ahh, the hardened-yet-repentent criminal mastermind, Rodd N. Snook.

You can hardly make me out in there, but I’m trying to look bored and surly.

Snookums gets all artistic with this shot of me on the prison grounds. We kept cracking ourselves up by saying “Alcamatraz…” the same way Homer Simpson says “Saxomaphone…”

Man, I miss those sunglasses. I bought ’em right before the trip and they broke in half somewhere on the journey home.

Me with the Golden Gate. You know, I’d heard San Francisco compared to Sydney many times, so I was interested to see the similarities. I have to say, I still think Sydney Harbour is prettier. San Francisco Bay is beautiful but it’s almost too big, too grand to be appreciated. Everything is too far away. Sydney’s got all the same attractions – awesome bridge, water views, cool skyline – but it’s all much closer and more accessible. It’s hard to describe unless you’ve seen both places.

Snookums has his turn with the bridge…

See what I mean? You need a telescope to see the city from here!

We were walking down by the waterfront when we passed this exhibit in front of the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum. Good grief. Steve bloody Irwin. I insisted Snookums pose for this pisstake.

This statue outside a shop stopped the Snook dead in his tracks. He turned to me and announced, “Nothing suss!” He immediately decided that we needed a picture to send in for Rove’s “What the?” segment. (He’s an Aussie talk show host who does a bit similar to Leno’s “Headlines.”)

We dropped, like, ten bucks in quarters at the Musee Mechanique, which houses all those cool old nickelodeon machines. Here’s the Snook having his “tired aching feet” relieved “without the use of electricity!”

Funhouse mirrors rock!

Hee hee.

The Golden Gate at sunset…

And again… (Why didn’t I edit this one out? Eh, I’m too lazy to do it now.)

At long last… I’d been waiting for this. Me with my very own famous Ghirardelli Chocolate Fudge Sundae.

Less than five minutes later… Damn, that was good!

On our last morning we decided to walk across the Golden Gate. Unfortunately we didn’t realize that once you got over there, there was pretty much nothing to do other than walk the whole way back. But still, it was a gorgeous day.

It’s easy to take a postcard shot with this beautiful bridge…

We’re posing together before our very, very long walk…

Alcamatraz as seen from the bridge.

Snookums says farewell to the city…

…while I wonder, “Hmm. I haven’t seen any buses. Are we going to have to walk all the way back across?”

Goodbye, San Francisco!

All in all a fun trip, but I was sooo glad to be home. Doesn’t it always work out that way?