Going to the Chapel?

by Gwen Cooper — May 9, 2007

The Las Vegas launch party for the book (held at Tao in the Venetian) is huge and wild and everything you would expect Vegas to be. Tao is both a restaurant and a nightclub, and the owners are generous enough to host a dinner for about 15 of us before the party begins. My stylist's uncle is the head of both the gaming commission and the Jewish Federation in Las Vegas, and he joins us for dinner.

Every city seems to have its standard topics of conversation. In New York, social chit-chat centers primarily on fashion, real estate, and (at least in publishing circles) which young hotshot most recently got an undeserved six-figure advance for his or her novel. In Vegas, conversations always come back to weddings. "You guys are a great couple," my friend's uncle tells Robert and me at one point during dinner. "Have you thought about getting married?"

This isn't the first time either Robert or I have been asked this question; when you start dating your best friend, all your other friends will assume that the two of you are thinking about the long term. But this is the first time we've been asked the question together in each other's presence. As we hesitate and look at each other, trying to wordlessly determine our unified response to such a question, my friend's uncle adds, "I can have a rabbi, a chuppah, and a ketubah [the Jewish wedding contract, required for all Jewish weddings] here in fifteen minutes."

I must admit that now I'm hooked. I dearly love almost all things shocking and somewhat over-the-top. Having the head of the gaming commission in Vegas facilitate my spontaneous, and kosher, wedding seems to fit that bill nicely. I can tell by Robert's face that he's actually considering it too, for a moment. But then he leans in and whispers in my ear, "Nah--quickie Vegas weddings are so...common."

"Maybe," I reply. "But quickie Jewish weddings in Vegas aren't." Then I laugh and stroke Robert's arm reassuringly. "Don't worry," I tell him. "Both sets of parents would absolutely kill us, and I'm the one who'd spend the rest of her life being blamed for it. Everybody always blames the bride when wedding plans go awry."

So that's the end of that. Still, there's an unintentional significance when later, at the party, Robert presents me with a gift--a silver-and-pearl cocktail ring I'd been eyeing in one of the jewelry stores earlier in the day. "The first ring I've ever given you," he says as he slides it onto my finger. "But not the last..."

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.