Nicky's Vegas Surprise!

08/19/2004 at 12:00 PM EDT

Even by Las Vegas standards, it was clear that Aug. 13-15 was no ordinary weekend of club-hop-till-you-drop revelry. From a fully clothed Tara Reid leaping into the Palms casino pool to a stripper at a local club attempting to give Paris Hilton a lap dance (she demurred), Hollywood's reigning party posse – including Paris, her sister Nicky, pals Reid, Nicole Richie, Kimberly Stewart and Bijou Phillips, along with power couple Lindsay Lohan and Wilmer Valderrama – took Sin City by storm. And that was before the weekend's big capper: At 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 15, Nicky Hilton wed New York City money manager Todd Meister in an hour-long ceremony at the Vegas Wedding Chapel. "It was a beautiful, small wedding with an amazing energy," says pal Jeff Beacher, a Hard Rock Hotel entertainer who served as best man. "The two of them are very much in love."

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Nearly as big a surprise as the wedding itself was the Hilton beneath the veil: not the publicity-basking Paris, 23, but Nicky, 20, who has long preferred to leave the limelight to her sister. Also turning heads is the fact that until their nuptials, Nicky, a handbag designer who will debut her new sportswear collection on Aug. 30, had never publicly mentioned Meister as her boyfriend.