As promised, here are our Luxe Life photos of the gorgeous 52 contestants in the Miss America Pageant as they relaxed last night on the canals of the Venetian Hotel's Grand Canal Shops. Lynn Weidner, chairman of the Miss America host committee is the wife of Venetian chairman Bill Wiedner and she told me: "The girls are having a grand time in Vegas. They love it here. Tomorrow though its time to get serious and then Wednesday the preliminaries will commence. This is when the nerve-wracking kicks in."The girls went in groups of four in each gondola, some even getting their handsome gondoliers to sing romantic Italian love songs! Everybody from Miss America chieftain Art McMasters agreed they have turned themselves out to look like TV and movie stars. He told me: "We never know from year to year what state finalists will show up for the big pageant, but we've been spectacularly blessed this year with younger more glamorous girls than ever before. It's a spectacular group, but we're about scholarships and education so our emphasis is unlike a beauty pageant. However, this time they are truly dazzling and their brains are matched by their beauty and radiance."
Miss Nevada, Cady Cole told Luxe Life: "All the girls are loving Vegas. They can't believe some of the attractions we have here. They were speechless thinking we could have canal waterways with gondolas in the middle of a shopping center in the middle of a resort hotel. They all say they have never seen anything like it and they never stop asking questions about my home-town! It took us just about a day to all become friends and now everybody is rooting for each other to win." This year for the first time viewers will be able to vote on the Ms. Congeniality portion of the contest from the three girls that all the other competitors have already picked between themselves. We'll meet those arm-charms on Friday when CMT broadcasts a reality show on the making of a Miss America contestant.
Rehearsals get underway today for next Monday's live cable telecast on CMT-TV with 'Dancing with the Stars' dazzler Mario Lopez as host. Tonight he'll meet the judges for the very first time when Mrs. Weidner hosts the star-studded panel. Actresses Debbie Allen and Delta Burke, TV's 'Hardball' host Chris Matthews, singer-composer Michael Feinstein, 'America's Next Top Model' judge Nigel Barker and former Miss America 1981 Susan Powell, who hosts Discovery's 'Home Matters' will be welcomed to a private reception and dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Postrio restaurant in St. Mark's Square at the Venetian.
Luxe Life will meet up with the contestants each day this week as the rehearsals give way to the preliminaries and check in with us for each day's new photo coverage. Then we'll be at next Monday's live telecast and give you one of the first interviews with the new winner who'll replace Jennifer Berry of Oklahoma who won last year when for the 1st time in its 85-year-history Ms America uprooted from its Atlantic City home for its initial Vegas debut at the Aladdin/Planet Hollywood. That broadcast seen by more than 27 million viewers ranks as the most-watched telecast in CMT history and network executives are hoping to shatter the 30 million count this year!
TKPN
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