Tera Patrick - Sinner Takes All

“Nope. Not yet. We’re engaged,” I said.

“Oh my God. You should get married here in Vegas!” she said.

Evan and I just looked at each other, smiled, and didn’t think much of it.

Later that night, we went back to our hotel room at the Venetian Hotel, where the AVNs were held, and Evan had this cute, mischievous look in his eye. He pulled me close to him and said, “Well…”

“Well what?”

“Well, will you marry me?”

“Of course. I already told you I’d marry you. See this ring on my finger?”

“Maybe that chick had a good idea at dinner. Let’s get married here in Vegas,” he said.

I honestly hadn’t thought of it, but I was on board. “OK, but on one condition,” I told him.

“There’s a condition?” He looked concerned.

“Yes. The one condition is that I want an Elvis wedding.”

“Done!” And with that, Evan opened up the Yellow Pages and started calling around to wedding chapels. We settled on the Little White Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip because that’s the most famous one. It’s hosted such celebrity weddings as those of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, and more recently Britney Spears and that childhood friend of hers. We had our choice of the $100 Elvis, $75 Elvis, or the cheesy $50 Elvis. We chose the $100 Elvis, who wore a black suit with a gold lame jacket and black-and-white wing-tipped shoes, and were on our way to get our marriage license that night.

I was not exactly prepared for a wedding that night. I had nothing to wear and no time to go shopping. Luckily, I had packed this sexy black minidress that Evan loved me in. I never thought I’d be married in a $20 cheap dress from a no-name store in Chicago, but that’s exactly what I did. Evan put on his black leather pants, leather jacket, and his vintage “gangsta” hat that belonged to his Grandpa Sam, and he looked so handsome.

We started calling our friends to tell them the big news and to invite them to the wedding. My best friend Anneli Adolfsson, the Swedish photographer who had tried to hook Evan and me up years before, lived in Las Vegas so I called her up, got her ass out of bed, and had her come down to be my maid of honor. We also called Alexis Amore and Mercedes, two porn girls in the industry whom I was good friends with, to be in my wedding party as well.

Being a good ol’ Brooklyn boy, finding a best man to stand up for him was very important to Evan. He wanted someone special, someone he respected, so he called up his longtime friend Brendan Manning of the Hells Angels. He lived in New York but always came to Vegas for AVN, so he was already in town. Perfect, we thought. Brendan was like a big brother to Evan and he always looked up to him. And Brendan was like the Hells Angels’ Hells Angel. When Brendan said yes, Evan said, “That is a seal of approval on our marriage. I feel like our marriage is blessed now.”

As Evan and I made our way from our hotel room to our white stretch limo, we ran into tons of fans and friends. Porn people are everywhere during AVN week—in the elevators, in the hallways, in every bar, on the casino floor. You can’t blink without seeing someone you know or someone who knows you. As we made our way past the droves of fans and porn peeps, Evan would shout out, “We’re getting married!” We were so excited to spread the word that we were telling people to show up at the chapel to see us get married. We must have had about fifty people there, including some strippers, hookers, porn stars, and other random peeps. But we didn’t care. We wanted to share our love with anyone who was happy for us.

Our first order of business was to get a marriage license. The chapel told us that we had until midnight to get our license, and we’d need a witness to go with us. Evan ran into Alexis Amore in the lobby of the Venetian, so he asked her to come with us. She was thrilled to help out. On the limo ride over, Alexis joked, “You know, I can be your bachelor party and bachelorette party all in one in the limo.” We had a laugh about it. No pre-wedding threesomes for us, though!

Our second order of business was to get a wedding ring for Evan. I had taken off my engagement ring and gave it to him so he would have a ring to put on my finger. But I didn’t have a ring to put on his finger. All he had were some rock-and-roll skull rings, but I didn’t want to doom our marriage to death by using one of those. So, Evan borrowed a ring from his friend Jonathan Silverstein, who goes by J. Styles in the porn world. He had recently gotten married, so he loaned Evan his ring for the night.

We pulled up in our limo to the Little White Wedding Chapel, and it looked exactly as cheesy as we’d thought it would; we loved it. There was a middle-aged heavyset woman standing in front of two unity candles looking with wide eyes at the motley crew that just walked in. Some of our friends had already arrived and others were trickling in a little past midnight. Along with Brendan, Anneli, Mercedes, and Alexis, our guests included Hells Angels’ Pee Wee; our old friend Jason Reyes, who designs our movie box covers and event flyers; Jason’s wife, Raffelina; Keith Gordon, who runs Bizarre Video; Perry Margouleff, an old Brooklyn buddy of Evan’s who runs a recording studio in Brooklyn; and a bunch of other porn stars, strippers, and two really friendly hookers. One of them said to us, “We don’t know you, but you seem so in love so we’re so happy for you! You go girl!” She gave me a big sloppy kiss and hug, and it was one of the sweetest moments of the night.

And of course, our special guest was the Elvis Presley impersonator who sang “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Love Me Tender,” and “Viva Las Vegas.”

My impromptu bridal party

We said our “I Do’s” with tears rolling down our faces. Our vows talked about how we would accept each other for who we are as we are, and not for who we hoped the other could be. He accepted me as the porn star that I am, and I accepted him as the perverted rock star that he is. Everything from the past year flashed before my eyes in that moment: my time on tour with him with Biohazard, my time in the mental ward, and my meltdowns over Digital. I just kept thinking what a mess I had been and in spite of all that, this man still vowed to love me. I had this newfound sense of calm. I felt overjoyed and overwhelmed by this love. A lot of people view marriage as two halves coming together as a whole. But for me it felt like me plus Evan was like one plus one equals three.

After the ceremony, we hopped in the limo and hit a chocolate shop on the way back to the Venetian to get some chocolate-covered strawberries. Evan was always so romantic like that. We arrived back at our hotel suite and he had candles lit around the room and we were finally alone. He looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s finally just you and me. From the day I met you, I knew it would always be you and me forever. I want to marry you over and over.”

Our wedding might have been a far cry from the huge New York wedding that Evan wanted, but it couldn’t have been more romantic or perfect for us. And it only cost us $357!

As my manager, Evan quickly figured out that there was a huge porn market internationally. He used his knowledge of touring the world with his band, which made more money overseas than Stateside, and set out to make Teravision and Tera Patrick global brands. Before we knew it, I was appearing at porn conventions and doing my feature dancing show all over the world.

One of the biggest conventions I ever did was the Sexpo in Sydney, Australia, in 2004. I appeared at the convention for a whopping fee of $20,000 (and first-class airfare and accommodations, no less!), but where we really made bank was when they booked me to dance at a venue that normally hosts big rock bands and seats eight thousand people. I had eight nearly sold-out shows in four days there.