Excalibur: Marriage, Vegas Style

It wasn’t a traditional marriage. We went to Las Vegas and ended up in the wedding chapel in the Excalibur Casino. Now, I’m British, and my idea of a wedding is a white wedding dress, a black suit, confetti, and a short honeymoon. I’d like to follow that with a long marriage and two and a half children.

My wife is from Los Angeles, so we ended up in the chapel in the casino. She looked gorgeous in purple Elizabethan costume, and I looked like Henry VIII, complete with food stains and a wooden sword. To this day, when I get out of line, my wife threatens to publish the wedding photos on the Internet.

Heavy woolen costumes are quite unsuitable for Las Vegas in summertime, and we were both glad to get out of fancy dress, and into the casino. We were told that we should formalize the wedding as soon as possible with a visit to the Town Hall in downtown Las Vegas, and we realized when it was very late that, since we were leaving the city that morning, our schedule was going to be a bit tight.

We were talking about it in the bar, with one of the locals, but he didn’t think we should be concerned.

“Why don’t you go down there now?” he asked.

“It’s 2am,” I protested.

He laughed. “This is Vegas,” was all he said.

So we took a cab, out of the strip and into downtown Las Vegas, past the strip bars and seedy motels, to the Town Hall. Just like the native had said, the place was open and full of bored-looking couples. I figured we’d be there forever, but two clerks were busy tapping computer keyboards and tearing off printouts, and the double column was moving along rapidly. We took the (slightly) shorter left-hand line and waited for a few minutes. My wife started talking to the glum-looking couple in front of us. Suddenly, she turned to me with an indescribable look on her face.

“We’re in the divorce line,” she told me.

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