.FLYINGHEAD FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
.TITLE How Elvis entered the building and CES went out the window
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY As always, your esteemed ZATZ editorial staff was on the case, prepared to cover CES in full. Unlike in previous years, uh, something happened on the way to the convention center. You see, Denise Amrich and David Gewirtz — the two co-founders of ZATZ Publishing — got married. And, yep, CES went out the window. To make things even more interesting, Elvis is part of the story.
As many of you know, the Consumer Electronics Show was two weeks ago, in Las Vegas. As always, your esteemed ZATZ editorial staff was on the case, prepared to cover the show in full. Unlike in previous years, uh, something happened on the way to the convention center.
You see, Denise Amrich and I — the two co-founders of ZATZ Publishing — got married, as shown in Figure A. And, yep, CES went out the window. To make things even more interesting, Elvis is part of the story.
.FIGPAIR A ZATZ co-founders David and Denise tie the knot.
To be fair (and before we begin the real story), ZATZ did cover CES. The bulk of the heavy lifting was done by Senior Editor James Booth, who kept things going while Denise and I were getting our groove on. Other editors and authors were on-site at the show and you’ll see their coverage and analysis in the pages of the magazine.
Denise and I have known each other for eleven years. We first met when Denise helped me complete the book Lotus Notes 3 Revealed!, back in 1992. She helped me produce our early newsletters for Ziff-Davis Publishing, and helped manage the old software company I owned, Component Software. In addition to working together, she and I became best friends.
.CALLOUT We were married by an Elvis named Norm.
When it came time to start our own magazine publishing company, Denise and I formed ZATZ together. Like all companies coming out of the dot-com era, we experienced our ups and downs. Shortly after September 11, 2001, Denise felt she needed to get out of the metropolitan New York Area and moved to Hawaii.
.BREAK_EMAIL For the rest of our wonderful story, tap your mouse here.
We missed each other terribly. She was there for 18 months, and during that time we spent an average of four hours a day on the phone. This was in the days before all-you-can-eat phone services and voice-over-IP, so the phone bills were enormous.
We’d also chat with each other over Microsoft’s Instant Messenger, and when we missed each other too much, we’d fire up the video client so we could see each other, albeit at very low resolution and with very choppy transmission.
If you’ve used IM clients at all, you know that there’s an indicator that shows whether your friends are online. That "presence indicator" was, in many ways, my lifeline for those 18 months. When it was all green, I knew Denise was at the other end of the Internet, working on her computer in Hawaii.
What’s funny is that this very indicator used to bug her out. She’d tell me that sometimes she didn’t want me to know whether or not she was at her computer — it felt too much like I was keeping tabs on her. After a while, it became something of a game for us, to be able to tell when the other person was around.
Now, you might think going to Hawaii would enable Denise to avoid winter. But that didn’t happen because she came back here for four of those 18 months and wound up spending two of the coldest winters in history in New Jersey rather than Hawaii.
Denise moved back to New Jersey 18 months, to the day, after she’d moved away. This time, she moved in with me. This was a new thing for me. I’d been a confirmed bachelor all my adult life and rooming with another human — and a woman, yet! — was new. For one thing, things moved around.
For another, mysterious things started to show up. One morning, I discovered a large, plastic blue foot in the shower. I gotta tell you, seeing a large blue foot in the shower before coffee is definitely a trippy experience. It turned out to be something used to clean feet, but it was weird.
Then there were the bottles. All of a sudden, hundreds of little bottles of lotions and potions and such showed up all over the house. Denise is a beautiful woman and she’s got all the preparations beautiful women tend to need. Me, I had a bar of soap and an orange bottle of shampoo the barber had given me. And a six-pack of Diet Coke. Everything else was obtainable by calling the local Chinese restaurant.
Denise and I have loved each other for many of these last eleven years, but we didn’t have a romantic relationship. For a few years, she was married to another guy (who is now a close friend of both of us), and I dated other women, including one crazy stalker chick, and another very neurotic woman with a thousand relatives. Denise and I would spend hours a week whining to each other about how hard it was to find the right guy or girl.
Somehow, things changed this past fall. We began to look at each other in a new light. Among other things, she actually survived living with me for a year and didn’t want to kill me — at least, not too often. We’d each been through some pretty big personal journeys and come out the other side stronger for it.
Those of you who know Denise know her to be a woman full of heart. She’s got extraordinary dynamic range: one day she can be negotiating with an IBM general manager and the next day she can be riding her motorcycle alone through the mountains of upstate New York. Denise is an incredibly talented songwriter, a singer with a wonderful voice, and a person of deep convictions and even deeper compassion.
Denise is an amazing woman and I’m incredibly, incredibly lucky that this time, she said yes. Which brings me back to Elvis.
To be fair, we decided to get married before we left for CES. This gave us time to call the Graceland Chapel, in Las Vegas, perhaps 80 times to make sure all the arrangements were just right.
It also gave us a small amount time to make sure our wedding clothes were just right. We’d decided we wanted to wear "Aloha-wear," a style of wedding clothes common to Hawaii that also had the added benefit of looking good on my large frame. What I didn’t know was that her dress was the exact white complement to my black shirt, and that the bouquet would match our clothing.
I later found out that a serious team effort was involved to make this look possible. In order to get her dress and my shirt here on time, the clothes had to be sent by Federal Express and the truck had already left the Paradise on a Hanger factory in Crawford, Colorado by the time the order was finalized. Ironically, even though they have the world’s largest collection of "fine Aloha shirts," that’s not enough to keep the snow from falling. Special thanks go to Lisa at http://www.ParadiseOnAHanger.com for braving a snow storm and hand-carrying our wedding clothes to the Federal Express office so we’d have them on time.
We also had time to speak with our parents and to get their blessings. Unfortunately, Denise’s mom had just had major surgery, so it wasn’t safe for her to fly. My folks, though, were able to join us.
The limo picked us up from the elegant Bellagio Hotel and took us to the chapel, for a ceremony that began at 1 p.m. on January 9, 2005. Graceland Chapel is an interesting place with quite a history. This is the chapel you see in many of the movies about Las Vegas weddings. It was founded by a friend of Elvis’ and uses the name "Graceland" with the King’s blessing and permission. It’s the home of the original Elvis wedding that has become a Las Vegas tradition. In an era of exceptional copyright and trademark awareness, I was thrilled to know the Chapel actually has the legal right to use this particular trademark.
When it comes to history, not much survives in Las Vegas. The Sands where Sinatra and the Rat Pack made their magic was demolished years ago. The original Aladdin where Elvis and Priscilla exchanged vows was leveled to make room for a bigger resort in the ’90s. So for a simple wedding chapel to stand in the same spot for over 50 years is nothing short of amazing.
Denise was also really excited because a well-known New Jersey musician, Jon Bon Jovi, was also married here. I’m a bit out of the mainstream when it comes to popular music. I knew Bon Jovi had been in a submarine movie called U-571, but apparently he’s a big singer as well. Who knew? Well, of course, Denise did.
There are some interesting secrets about Las Vegas weddings you don’t know about until you get there and live through them, or unless you do careful research ahead of time. One interesting aspect of the typical Las Vegas wedding is how you get your paperwork in place. In most states, you have to wait a number of days after your application to get married. In Las Vegas, there’s no waiting period. But you do need a marriage license.
To get your marriage license, you have to go to the Marriage Bureau, operated by the Clark County Clerk’s office. This, like all government offices, feels like a government office. Unlike all government offices, this one’s open 24 hours a day on Friday and Saturday nights.
Las Vegas is definitely a city of contrasts. On some street corners, you can see folks soliciting, offering to get you a woman (or a guy) for the night. By contrast, on the corner of Carver and 3rd, there are some very polite folks offering to get you a minister and bring you to an all-night chapel. Fortunately, we’d done our homework and just needed the license!
Another Las Vegas wedding secret is that most Elvii don’t perform the wedding ceremony. Instead, the actual marriage is performed in a "side room" where an real minister administers the vows, and then the Elvis impersonator (more properly known as an "Elvis tribute artist") performs a mock wedding. We didn’t want a mock ceremony. We wanted the real deal. And we got it.
We were married by an Elvis named Norm.
Norm, shown in Figure B, is the only ordained minister in Las Vegas who’s also an Elvis tribute artist. So the entire actual ceremony was performed by this gentleman. Norm’s a very special guy in his own right, and the experience and ceremony he gave us was really special.
.FIGPAIR B We were married by an Elvis named Norm.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I honestly expected the ceremony to be cheesy. It was anything but. Norm wore his Elvis role like a mantle of honor. You could feel the warmth and spirit of Elvis coming through all parts of the ceremony, and Norm brought his own sense of grace to the ceremony himself.
In addition to the vows, Norm performed three songs: The Hawaiian Wedding Song, Can’t Help Falling in Love, and Viva Las Vegas. Getting married to the wonderful Denise Amrich was the highlight of the event, but a close second was seeing my mom and dad kick-dance with Elvis to the rollicking beat of Viva Las Vegas!
Now, of course, we’re back in New Jersey and Elvis has left the building. We’ll always be grateful to Norm and to CES for giving us a wonderful opportunity for a fantabulous wedding. And, we’ll also always be grateful to you, dear readers, for supporting us, reading our magazines, and helping us create a lifestyle where two people in love can live, work, and play together.
Viva, viva Las Vegas!
.H1 Denise adds her own thoughts
Hi everybody,
David asked me to do a quick edit pass on this article (as he is often wont to do) and my eyes were tearing up a little at his outpouring of love and enthusiasm about marrying me. I feel so lucky to have the most wonderful man in the world as my husband.
I had just about given up on love when I had the amazing grace to fall in love with my best friend. I marvel at the beauty of the fact that that’s possible. He has mentored me, put up with me on my bad days and shared my happiness on the good ones, been the absolute truest and most loyal partner a person could want, and (last but not least) taught me the difference between infatuation and true love.
.BEGIN_KEEP
I hope you don’t mind that, just this once, we’re talking about something non-technical in our publications. After all, we did get to CES (Complete Ecstasy and Surprise) in our own way! I am thrilled to be able to share this news with you folks, because as our friends and readers, you’ve been on this amazing journey with us all along.
— Denise
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on the Graceland Chapel, visit http://www.gracelandchapel.com.
For more information on Paradise on a Hanger, visit http://www.paradiseonahanger.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.END_KEEP
