So we did it, its official. The first Wedding Reception held inside the MGM Grand Hotel. Up to this point, they were all held over at an adjacent country club.
We were given this cool opportunity by our Bride and Groom, Carissa and Steve.
I doctored up the sign image above to make it look like the Casino was actually running it. Carissa thought it was cool.
They pulled out all the stops for this one. The pre and post ceremony pics were held at the Father of the Bride's house. Partially perched on a stone ledge overlooking a lake, he constructed the stone stairways and walls that lead up from a beautifully landscaped lawn area to the main house. No shortage of areas to shoot formals here folks.
We just had to put the Guys on the ledge for this pic.
After the mass we returned to the Bride's father house again for all the formals.
From there, we headed over to the MGM Grand at Foxwoods.
We hit the lobby first and met with Ella the Event Coordinator who graciously allowed us a few moments to use the main lobby for some wedding party pictures (I could have spent an hour here easily). The decor inside was in fact...well...GRAND! The really cool part was the wedding party became the entertainment. Every time we would turn around we had a crowd of people watching.
We walked the entire wedding entourage (and I do mean entourage...9 ladies, 7 men, 5 children and the Bride and Groom) through the casino and up two escalators to the function room for the cocktail hour (funny, I don’t think I have ever worked a wedding with an escalator in it...huh...)
This presented us with a "D-ice" sculpture if you will, with built in Martini luge.
The reception hall was easily the largest we had ever worked with something like 15000-20000 square feet. I needed a fish eye just to get the whole head table in the shot! Remember it needed to accomodate 18 adults!
And yes, they partied it up.
After all the main reception events were covered, Gail sent me out on a "walk about" to find a nice spot to photograph the bride and groom to close out their album. We wanted to put them on the Casino floor, but you can not even point a camera in the general direction of the casino or it might be confiscated--we didn't test this theory.
So instead, and with a little help from one of the security guards, I found the front lawn that has a great view of the tower. Though a little foggy and rainy, I thought it would work. I made the call and Gail brought Carissa and Steve out to me. We snagged a couple of shots...I think it works...
We hired the two best men (yup, twins)to sport a little advertising ink for us and Carissa joined in.
After the last dance, we all headed over to the Shrine night club (which was right off the Casino floor) for the after party. What was really cool was that our wedding party got us the VIP treatment and we were whisked past the huge line to get in. Thanks guys!
After the club, we did get a little frivolous and gambled away about $5 in nickels at the slots machines = ).
I don't think we went to bed until about 4AM. Don't forget, that casino is jumping 24-7 and we had overnight babysitters! = )
We woke up at 8:30am that same morning to meet the Bride and her Bridesmaids over at the pool for our first "Trash the Dress" shoot. I jumped in first and got set-up with a camera while Gail shot long. By the time they were ready to go we had a crowd gathered around the pool (staff included). 1...2...3! SPLASH!
As we found out later, a lot of people were looking down from hotel tower itself! We spent the day checking out the establishment, ran into a few people we knew (one of which was our LandLord at the Studio!) and then headed home.
What an event!
A big thanks to Carissa and Steve for a lot of great
firsts = ).
Bets Wishes!
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