Whirlwind romance: Alex Gabrielson and Nicholas Bond together in downtown Minneapolis following their May 13th reunion. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas - or so the saying goes. Except for Nick Bond, the story of what happened in Vegas went around the world.
Which is why I'm holed up in American immigration with the newlywed Mr Bond, who's on his way to meet the in-laws. And he's nervous, nervous as hell - with good reason.
Nick, you see, is the 30-year-old financial adviser from Cheam, Surrey, who a month ago flew to Las Vegas with 'a bunch of mates for some fun and to play some poker'.
He ended up with a wife - blonde TV presenter Alex Gabrielson, whom he'd known for just 17 hours when they married.
And, boy, did he strike gold. Alex, it turns out, is the 23-year-old only daughter of millionaire businessman Richard Gabrielson, who sits on the board of one of America's biggest chain stores.
Their family home is a massive seven-bedroom spread in St Cloud, Minnesota, with a swimming pool and basketball court. Alex is the apple of her father's eye or, in her words, his little princess.
No doubt he's dreamed about throwing a really lavish wedding for her since she was little. But it's all a bit late for that now.
Needless to say, Mr Gabrielson, a Catholic who had intended to give his daughter away in a cathedral wedding with a reception at the country club their family frequent, is, well . . . his wife suggested that he 'go to bed' when he discovered his little darling had met her 'Prince Charming' in a Vegas bar and married him a few hours later.
Worse still, Mr Gabrielson found out about it on the internet. Oh dear.
To make matters worse, when the hugely respected Mr Gabrielson Googled Nick Bond, he discovered this Prince Charming appeared to be something of a frog - with an ex-wife, two young children and a string of ex-girlfriends lining up to kiss and tell about how he'd done them wrong.
It's a bizarre story, to say the least, and the American immigration officials in the Minneapolis airport certainly agree.
After touching down, we find ourselves ushered into a side room along with a colourful 'African prince' seeking asylum and a Filipina woman who insists she's been working on a boat for the past six months.
But it soon transpires that the boat was sold for scrap a year ago.
'Why are you here, sir?' one of the officials asks Nick. 'To see my wife,' he says. 'How long have you been married, sir?' (They're polite these immigration officials.) 'A month.'
'How long did you know your wife before you married, sir?' he asks.
Nick and Alex after their marriage ceremony in Las Vegas- 17 hours after they met'Not very long,' Nick mumbles. 'How long, sir?' 'Umm - briefly,' he prevaricates. 'Sir, I asked you how long. Please answer the question.'
'Seventeen hours,' says Nick, who at least has the decency to blush.
Oh dear. I'm beginning to wish I was travelling with the African prince.
Thankfully, several minutes of grovelling and admissions that 'it was rash', from Nick see us through.
Rash indeed. Try explaining that to pops-in-law, which is what he must do next.
I have, at this point, spent 18 hours with Nick (an hour longer than he'd spent with his wife when they exchanged vows) who is, in fairness, a charming young man and completely besotted with his bride.
'After my divorce I never thought I'd marry again,' he tells me. 'But when I saw Alex it was like a lightning strike, a complete love at first sight thing.'
Love? Surely he means lust? 'No this is love,' he insists. 'People ask me if I regret marrying her and I honestly say I don't.
'I love the fact that she's my wife. My only regret is the way we've done it. I wish we'd got married properly. We've hurt a lot of people,' he concedes sorrowfully.
They have. Not only is Alex's father spitting feathers, but Nick's two young children, Harry, nine and Phoebe, seven, won't speak to him. His own father, who has never so much as raised his voice to him, called him an unprintable four-letter word and his mother, who lives in Australia, was beside herself.
'I wish they'd got to know Alex first before we sprung this on them,' says Nick. 'We got caught up in the moment. When you're in Vegas it's as if you're in a bubble and nothing else exists.
'We were so crazy about each other. It seemed so right. I am so happy that Alex is my wife, but we've done things the wrong way round. Although we didn't have sex until we were married.'
So that's all right then. And this is the thing about Nick. There is a moral compass but it seems to, shall we say, point south-west when he's heading north.
MIDNIGHT: Nick Bond meets Alex Gabrielson when he spills a drink over her at a Las Vegas bar Take the speech that he has been rehearsing to win over Alex's father.
'I'm getting really nervous now,' he confessed to me while we were still on the plane. 'Alex says I'll be in for a bit of a grilling. My dad [both of his parents seem to have come round] says just be yourself and be honest.
'If he asks me why my marriage ended, do you think I should tell him it's because I had an affair?' Oh dear. Oh dear. Just what other skeletons are there in the cupboard?
'Oh, Alex knows everything about me. There are no secrets,' he insists.
None? 'Nope.' Swear on the Virgin Mary? Silence.
Nick, you see, is Jewish. Does his wife know? 'I'm not a practising Jew,' he says.
Circumcised? 'Yup,' he says. Didn't she notice? 'It didn't come up,' he answers.
Honestly, you couldn't make it up.
'Do you think her dad will mind?' he asks. I tell him to get some rest. He'll need the negotiating skills of William Hague.
'This isn't a joke,' he says. 'I really do love her. Look, I've had a few one-night stands in the past but I've never asked them to marry me. Doesn't that tell you something?' Make that the negotiating skills of a Liberal Democrat.
Four hours later (one in the air, three in customs) the newly weds are reunited.
Alex hasn't slept a wink the night before. She was 'too excited'.
But you wouldn't know it. She looks absolutely gorgeous and, when Nick sweeps her up in his arms, their happiness is enough to melt the most cynical of hearts.
Thirty minutes later, we're on the freeway heading to the hotel. The newlyweds are pawing each other in the front of the car and, yes, I'm sat in the back.
3.30PM: They choose a £1,600 wedding ring after she accepts his proposal, made at 3.30am in a diner Now I know how the maiden aunt in a Jane Austen novel felt. But before we reach a happy- ever-after, I ask them to start at the beginning. It's a short story.
Alex and Nick met around midnight (she says before, he says after) in a nightclub in Las Vegas. She was on her third vodka tonic. He'd had 'about ten' vodkas and Red Bull.
'I can take my drink,' he says. 'I wasn't drunk, but let's say I wouldn't have been legally able to drive a car.
'When I saw Alex it was like this huge thing inside me. It's impossible to explain it, but I knew I had to speak to her. She was being chatted up by another guy so I quickly despatched him.'
The pair talked for three hours before going with friends to a diner.
Alex says: 'Nick was different to any guy I'd ever spoken to. He was so candid and polite and he spoke to me like I had a brain rather than I was just this blonde.
And Nick? 'She was so fit,' he says. About 5am he went down on one knee.
'I knew I wanted her to be my wife,' he says. 'But I didn't expect her to say yes.'
She did and they married in one of Vegas's many tacky chapels 12 hours later.
'When I told my friends none of them could quite believe it,' says Alex. 'I'm so career-orientated I really didn't think I'd get married until I was in my 30s, but I just knew Nick was the one for me.
'To be completely honest, our friends began to egg us on and everything began to take on a momentum of its own. When we were at the chapel I was shaking like a leaf.
'Nick's best friend walked me up the aisle and I remember thinking: "This should be my dad walking me up the aisle. My wedding day isn't supposed to be like this."
5PM: The couple marry at the Special Memory chapel in Vegas watched by 20 stunned friends 'I knew - and still know - that Nick's my great love and I feel very privileged.
I know lots of people go through life never loving someone like this. But I also knew, deep inside, that the way we were going about it wasn't right.'
The newlyweds spent two days together before Alex returned to Minnesota to complete her degree course.
'My last memory of Vegas is sitting on the plane seeing Nick as we took off. I couldn't stop crying. Leaving him was the most painful thing.'
Well, almost. Alex still had to break the news to her father.
'I thought Nick would come out, meet my parents and once they'd got to know him, we'd tell them,' she says.
Unfortunately, husband and wife weren't reading from the same script. Nick, anxious to raise funds to fly out to see his bride and in-laws, acted upon a friend's rather dubious advice and sold his story to a Sunday newspaper.
Alex says: 'My dad found out over the internet before I was able to tell him. I just heard this yell from the other end of the house saying: "Alex, get in here."
'He was not happy to be labelled as a gun-toting dad, because he's not. He was very upset and angry, mostly because he thought this would damage my credibility.
'His face was one of sheer disappointment.
'I said: "We love each other and can't go back on it." He worried that the rash decision we'd made would impact on my career as a broadcasting journalist. I said if we could go back and do it again we'd do it the right way.
'Nick would come and speak to you first to ask for my hand, but it was so in the moment.
HAPPY EVER AFTER? They spent a few days together, then returned to their homes, an ocean apart 'We had the thought in our heads we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and still do. We weren't thinking of anyone else but ourselves, which was selfish.
'Dad spoke about the fact that the way I'd behaved was on the record for ever. But I said it wasn't quite how the newspapers had portrayed it - and it wasn't.
'Nick had finished with his girlfriend four weeks before we met and we weren't drunk. They won't marry you if you're intoxicated.
'My father said he would wait to be convinced. We were both getting quite heated so my mum told him to go to bed to calm down.
'I sat with my mum and cried over it because the worst feeling in the world is knowing your parents are disappointed.
'I said I understand this is not what you wanted. She said: "OK. What's his name?"
'In the Catholic church the only way you can annul or divorce is infidelity or domestic dispute, so my mum's attitude was: "You've made this decision, you deal with the consequences.'' '
Alex concedes that relations between her and her father were, shall we say, frosty for the next few days, but they are a hugely close family and, thankfully, the atmosphere soon thawed sufficiently for her to introduce him to her husband.
So here we are with ten minutes to go before Nick and his father-in-law meet. Poor bloke. He's changed his shirt twice. Ironed it. And is now dithering over what shoes to wear.
'I so want to get this right and make a good impression,' he says.
Alex tries to buoy him. 'Just be yourself,' she says. 'He'll love you.'
Two-and-a-half hours later they return. Nick looks relieved, to say the least.
'It was nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be,' he says. 'He's a really charming man.'
So come on - spill the beans. 'We didn't really go into too much detail,' says Alex. 'He just asked Nick about himself and was really impressed that he ran the New York marathon for charity.
'My dad had to take a conference call for work at 8.30pm so we only had a couple of hours. To be honest that upset me a bit.
This is the first boyfriend of mine I've ever asked them to meet for dinner, so they should understand it is a big thing for me.' Boyfriend? Alex, dear, Nick is now your husband.
So what did Nick make of the evening? 'They were already there. I was nervous. I just introduced myself and shook her dad's, her mum's and her brother's hand. We ordered a drink and just started talking.'
So no harsh words? Alex says: 'I strategically placed myself between Nick and my dad to release any tension there might have been.
'But the conference call was really unfortunate. I was rather cross about that. My mum wanted to talk to him a lot more than she did.'
Alex now intends to move to England at the end of next month to start her married life with Nick. She is anxious to meet his children and try to make amends.
They'll have a blessing service in Minnesota later in the year.
Oh, at the Catholic cathedral? 'Yes,' says a very smiley Alex. Nick? You have told her that you're Jewish, haven't you? He blushes. 'Jewish?' she shrieks. 'You didn't told me you were Jewish.'
'I'm not religious. Does it matter?' he asks her.
To an evidently besotted Alex, it doesn't seem to. As for Pops ... well, it's something new to talk about at the next family dinner.
source :dailymail
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