Joe JonasandSophie Turner’ssurpriseLas Vegas weddingpaid homage to the late King of Rock in more ways than one.
On May 1, 1967, a 32-year-old Elvis married a 21-year-old Priscilla Ann Beaulieu in a private suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas (which was destroyed in 1998).
At that time, Elvis was the world’s top-earning entertainer, starring in up to three movies a year and singing his way through their soundtracks. The couple first met eight years earlier, when he was stationed in Germany with the army and she lived on a military base with her Air Force Captain father. The two began seeing each other (“It was a very innocent time,”Priscilla later said.“We still had morals, very high standards.”) and Presley proposed with a three-carat diamond in December 1966.
Jon Kopaloff/WireImage; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
Priscilla and Elvis Presley at their 1967 wedding.Hulton Archive/Getty
The couple’s six-tier wedding cake cost a reported $3,200 (equal to about $22,000 today), which was more than the price tag of an average Chevrolet in 1967.
“The cake itself was a yellow sponge cake,” Aladdin Hotel pastry chefDenis Martig recalled. “Each layer was filled twice with apricot marmalade and a kirsch [liqueur] flavored Bavarian cream…glazed with fondant icing and decorated with royal icing and marzipan roses.”
Because the ceremony was held at 9 a.m., the reception also featured a jaw-dropping $10,000 breakfast buffet, complete with roast suckling pig, oysters Rockefeller, lobster, champagne and Southern fried chicken.
Not unsurprisingly, Elvis and Priscilla’s first dance was to his 1956 hit “Love Me Tender.” The marital bliss didn’t last long though as they later divorced in 1973.
During Jonas and Turner’s ceremony, the Elvis impersonator told the couple to hold hands and look into each other’s eyes, before having them recite their vows together.
“I promise you, I will never leave you. I will love and trust you, all the days of my life,” they said. “In sickness and in health… forever and ever.”
The pair officially became husband and wife after exchanging ring pops as wedding bands, and the Elvis impersonator sang, “Viva Las Vegas.”
source: people.com
