Planning a wedding is no easy task to begin with. Try doing it two thousand miles away!! I am lucky that I know Las Vegas like the back of my hand and have incredible contacts all over the country and the world for that matter. Let me start by saying, that there is no other place in the world that I have had as much fun as in Las Vegas. It is the perfect place to entertain your guests and there are virtually unlimited possibilities when it comes to hosting a five star event in the city. I do have my favorites and of course the magnificent Bellagio hotel is at the top of the list.

It was Chinese New Year when I visited Las Vegas last week to meet with the Ling Family to plan their daughters wedding to be held on the grand terrace this April. Good fortune and lots of red and gold flowers filled the hotel to the brim making a sublime setting for our meetings. We had a day filled with incredible tastings, displays of flowers, meetings with vendors and walking through each and every detail of the wedding.....or so we thought. At the end of the whirlwind day my bride and I looked at each other and realized that there was and is still a lot of work to do to make the once in a lifetime event that we all hope it will be. We enjoyed the happy moment and made our way through the hotel for a most beautiful engagement portrait session in the stunning gardens of the Bellagio.

I have no doubt with a world class hotel like the Bellagio on our team that we are in store for superb cuisine, unmatched service and impeccable attention to detail. All of this has me excited to come back to the strip for what will be an amazing wedding.......and beleive you me I would not mind sipping on the signature cockatils and watching celebrities in the foyer either. FUN!

A very special thanks first to my bride and friend Lily and her family for having me and my company be part of this incredible celebration. And of course to my friends Tori who heads up special events at The Bellagio, her staff and to Trish within the floral department. You made our destination wedding planning, literally a piece of cake. I look forward to seeing you both again soon, sixty days to be exact.

It is hard to imagine or describe what it feels like to walk into the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. To work there took my breath away, inspired me and left a feeling in my heart that there would be many times that I would return to the city of lights. I have and I continue to crave the heat of the desert and the heat of the strip 24 7. I could literally go on with my Vegas stories for three or four blog entries, but I won't I will stick to the Bellagio experience.

I stay at Caesars Palace when I am in town on business. It all started with our honeymoon, so it is like home for me. I know the layout like the back of my hand and can wander through it with out a problem up to 12 beers. I have literally danced with the stars, sat at the same bar as an Olympic pot head swimmer, sat pool side and watched America's Top Model (have watched every season) being filmed in a Grecian style complete with the models wearing crowns of gold leaves, attended a wedding as a guest, swam with six topless women (dream for most of you guys, just a perk of being gay)and had the time of my life at Caesars.

Of course it is over the TOP in every detail, but in a true Vegas sense UP upscale style. I love to stay in the one of the suites there......hmmm Pratesi sheets, Hermes amenities, his and his bathrooms, mirrors and have been luck enough to do so. But most of the time to be honest I take advantage of a 99 a night classic room deal that I have through one of the hotels in house programs. Sleek cool room, pared down, view of roofs where I hope to at least see a mattress or a sun burned, hung over bachelor, but often only see the massive workings of the machines that keep in cool and try to suck out the cigar and cigarette smoke that looms EVERY where in Las Vegas.

After taking in my favorite buffet breakfast and donning one of my favorite pairs of Ray Ban Sunglasses, I head out of Caesars into the glaring light and heat that is the desert. Weird, because most of the time in Las Vegas you are inside or pool side......drifting to thoughts of the Venus pool......what a freakin place, if you get the chance and have the balls do it, you will not regret it. Ok the heat hits me and I make my way along the most elegant over pass to the the Bellagio Hotel. It was Steve Wynn's first of the strip and it is magnificent to say the very least. Through French style revolving doors you enter a world that few if ever will see. Take it in, I do.

There is a galley of shopping that over looks the famed water display at the hotel. I say shops like you see these labels every day. This is like Rodeo Drive meets Las Vegas. So cool. Chanel, Valentino, Bally, Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton (drooling), a fashionista's dream. I am a fashionista, but as a guy, and I am all guy (94%), I prefer classic clothing in luxe materials. I prefer to have one good than three so, so. The models and the uber cool mannequins peer out to you from the windows and them WHOMP!

You realize that the details go on and on. The theme of the hotels flowers is carried out to the luxe shopping gallery giving you every idea of what time of year it is. The photos that you see through this gallery where taken on a site visit while planning a destination wedding there and the theme was Chinese New Years. Side note, totally coincidental, Bride and her family Chinese. Good luck. Yes. From the ceiling of the shopping gallery, massive umbrellas, clustered and falling like rain over the space. HUGE display, stunning. Planters filled (stuffed) with massive displays of plants and flowers dot the gallery. The smell of world class food (Todd English, Go Boston), fills the air. AND you have not even entered the holy realm of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino itself.

Through the casino iteself you realize that you are in someones passionate fantasy, realized. The tables, the uniforms(costumes), the finishes, the fabrics, the details.....the details. I simply can not describe this setting. If you get a chance, Watch Ocean's Twelve, Terry Benedict's casino IS the Bellagio. Such a cool movie, such a gorgeous hotel! Then, finally, you get the lobby. Now mind you, if you came in through the front of the hotel this next experience would hit you dead on.

Fantasy meets orgasm. World class artists take massive liberties in expression and do it with exuberance and GOBS of money. Dave Chuliuly, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate, dominates the lobby space with a ceiling installation of glass plates and petals in the boldest of orange and red. Blown glass, MASSIVE and then hung in scale. The final look is organic, artistic and brilliant. The front desk greets you in a huge form too. This is after all THE Bellagio where thousands of Vegas's best rooms await the HIGH rollers. Flowers? Just the twenty, eight foot tall flowers of the front desk area give me chills and then, oh yes, you enter floral Mecca. HOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM.

The floral gallery at the hotel is in a class of it's own. The meticulas attention to detail can only be described as true couturier level of work. The theme, changes several times a year. The first thing that I do when I get to Vegas is to visit and to see what the artisans at this hotel have done. The photography I took tells the story of floral Chinese New Year at the Bellagio better than I can write it. I look back over these photos and love most of all that I got to see this with my sister Rebecca. She came with me and helped with the huge amount of actual work that we did while I was out there. It was nice to have a family member with me and pricless to have memories of this trip that include my sweet sister Rebecca. AND how cool that this is my job?