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Legend and sitcoms are filled with tales of casual Las Vegas weddings that lead to regret, if not always hilarity. But Glen Burcham, only hours after meeting Nicole Nelson, was on one knee on the floor of the Monte Carlo casino asking her to marry him.

It was a gag, of course, prompted by friends. Just another laugh during a weekend getaway. “We both left Vegas later that day,” Nicole says, “me with Glen’s e-mail address to send him pictures of our crazy proposal.”

Nicole was six months shy of graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and being commissioned as an officer in the Marines. Glen was about to graduate a continent away at Cal Poly Pomona and continue his education. A funny guy, a cute girl, a college weekend and a quick follow-up. A moment come and gone. But you never know how the dice will roll.

“What started with an e-mail turned into a long-distance relationship that withstood a year and a half of plane flights, military training and, for Glen, a second degree,” Nicole says. Her military training included a four-month tour of Camp Fallujah in Iraq, followed by a fortuitous assignment to Camp Pendleton in California in October 2008. A week later the couple spent a casual day seeing Catalina Island. “We had a nice day,” Glen says. “Walked around, shopped, ate, drank and just hung out. She was very confused ... when I told her I just wanted to go back to the apartment and we might go out to dinner later.

“My parents had set up an Italian dinner in the apartment for the two of us, and my little sister Alicia and I had made a poster that said ‘Nicole, will you marry me?’ ... I got down on my knee and told her how grateful I was to meet someone I was so in love with, even though we were long-distance for about two years. Told her how blessed I was that we were in the same state living together and (asked) her to marry me.”

Nicole, who knew a proposal was imminent, says she was thrown by heading home from Catalina so early and was “actually very surprised and excited” by Glen’s proposal. With a March 2009 deployment scheduled (she communicated with Carolina Bride via e-mail from Iraq), Nicole and Glen planned a February wedding. “He wanted a North Carolina wedding with a Southern country club feel to it, and I actually wanted a California wedding in Orange County overlooking the beach.

“We ended up going with N.C. because I have a much larger family and because I fell in love with Prestonwood Country Club,” Nicole says. “I honestly would not have changed a thing.”

Nicole and Glen held their ceremony and reception at Prestonwood, which provided event planning help and catering, including a wedding cake styled as dice. Personalized napkins and decks of playing cards distributed as favors read, “What happens in Vegas.”

“I loved planning the entire wedding, to be honest,” says Nicole, who did almost all of the planning in about two months while living in California. “I think my favorite thing to do was search ... for favors and bridal party gifts and just added touches for the whole weekend. ... We got to do a cake and a food tasting there (at Prestonwood) over Thanksgiving. Picking out flowers (calla lily and roses) was also fun! I loved, love, my bouquet!”

Glen says he would have been more involved with the planning, but Nicole took charge.

“Nicole is like no other woman you will ever meet,” he says. “She has the personality and organization of an officer in the Marines, but has a fun side to her like a firecracker. She always knows exactly what she wants, and always goes out of her way for others. ...

“The Marines have (instilled) core values and traits that no other organization can put in one person. It is where she gets her organization, courage, strength, leadership and loyalty traits from. She knows exactly when to have a good time and when to get stuff done. I am very proud of her every day for serving. While everyone her age is out partying, complaining about their everyday life, not knowing how great they have it in the USA, or doing nothing in life, she is sacrificing her time for the country and has always done it with a smile on her beautiful face.”