Countdown to our Disney Wedding :) a step by step report of planning our wedding

[BJones82]

Congratulations! I really enjoy your posts!

My fiancee and I are currently working with our planner for our wedding next spring. Like you, we are spending our complementary night at Poly This whole process can be a little overwhelming but we are having a great time making our selections for the tastings on our planning day.

Your posts have helped greatly!

Thank you for this report, and congratulations again!!

Patrick

I completely forgot to mention that... We no longer are doing the Poly We extended our honeymoon by 4 nights so when our Room Block Contact checked to see if we could move the Poly night it wasn't available.

So there has been a change and I completely forgot to mention this:

We are now staying in two rooms in Pop Century from the 1st -3rd. Then the night of the 3rd I will still be in Pop Century and my Fiancée will be in our room at the Contemporary. Then from the 4th-12th we will be together in the Contemporary (our photo shoot at Magic Kingdom is the 11th). From the 12th to the 18th we will be at Wilderness Lodge with our complimentary night being the 12th at WL because we decided we don't want our last day to be checking out, and checking in again, it would be like ending our honeymoon a day early almost.

Congrats to you!! And I hope you have fun planning your wedding too It can be overwhelming but it is a blast. And at your planning session they really make you feel important and make sure the day is about the couple and not about the couple making sure everything goes right, that is why we are paying Disney an arm and a let to get married there, so they can make sure it all goes perfectly lol...

I am glad my posts have been helpful, I will try to be more frequent with them, I almost stopped completely but then realized there were over 3200 views of this thread even if there aren't a ton of replies people are definitely reading it so I will keep it going!!

Again Congrats and good luck you will have to let us know how your planning session goes as well!!

 

[dizfan917]

Thanks for posting about your upcoming wedding! I just found the thread and read the whole thing. I'm excited to continue reading and hearing more about the experience (and hopefully photos from the BIG DAY)!

Congratulations and Best Wishes!

 

[BJones82]

Thanks for posting about your upcoming wedding! I just found the thread and read the whole thing. I'm excited to continue reading and hearing more about the experience (and hopefully photos from the BIG DAY)!

Congratulations and Best Wishes!

Thanks for following along!! The next 5 months will be very busy so hopefully there will be more updates!!

 

[caclark4]

Thanks for the great post! After pulling my hair out over wedding plans, my fiance and I have decided to elope at Disney World. We are moving to GA in a few months (from MI) and the logistics were killing me. We were already planning on a Disneymoon and so now we'll just do both at the same time and have a reception in our hometown. While ours will not be as extensive as yours (whew! LOL), we are so excited.

Congrats!

 

[BJones82]

Thanks for the great post! After pulling my hair out over wedding plans, my fiance and I have decided to elope at Disney World. We are moving to GA in a few months (from MI) and the logistics were killing me. We were already planning on a Disneymoon and so now we'll just do both at the same time and have a reception in our hometown. While ours will not be as extensive as yours (whew! LOL), we are so excited.

Congrats!

Awesome and Congrats!!! Hope all goes well with the move and have a blast at your wedding and honeymoon!!!

 

[BJones82]

So we are still "patiently" waiting on our BEO lol but surprisingly we have our flower budget already which was supposed to take longer to get But we should be getting the BEO sometime next week hopefully, we are nervous and excited to get this because of the fact that we have been saving for a year and we have a lot saved but we just don't know how much the quote will be... We do know though that we are only willing to spend up to X on the wedding so with that in mind I am sure we may cut some things from the wedding to get it under that price, we don't want to sacrifice any part of our 2 week honeymoon so we decided cutting a little from the wedding wouldn't be noticed lol...

We have made some progress, we have a officiant picked out I think though our schedules are making it hard for both me and my Fiancée to be able to talk to him on the phone but hopefully that will change soonish...

We still have to pick invitations!!! we are dragging out feet on that, we are just having trouble finding ones we like that aren't 10 an invitation lol...

We have made progress on the bridesmaid dresses though we need to pick out a material/color I think still... We also have been trying to contact the Grand Floridian Wedding Services Spa people to setup the in room hair and makeup but after two voicemail's spread over 2 and a half weeks I have still not heard back from them so that is stressing me out lol...

One very big positive though sense my last update is my Fiancée's dress is in(it won't be fitted until late July though) but that is exciting and we setup shipping for the dress and veil to Carolyn Allen's which is so awesome and nice; we will ship it to them in September and they will steam it upon arrival, then the day of the wedding we have a 9am appointment for them to come to my Fiancée's room at the Contemporary to steam it and any of the bridesmaids or flower girl dresses which need to be steamed We also have an appointment for them to steam it and my Tux the day before our Magic Kingdom photo shoot and there is no cancellation fee if we end up not needing the second one. Then after that they will pick up the dress from the hotel and will take care of shipping it back to us once we are home

That is all I have for updates at this point so yay!! Only a little over 4 months till the big day!!

 

[PeoplemoverTTA]

Congratulations on your wedding! My husband and I were married on the beach at the Swan last July, and it was as magical as you would think

Carolyn Allen's is fantastic! I shipped my dress to them for steaming and delivery as well (my husband's tux was done through Men's Warehouse, and they delivered it right to the Boardwalk the day before our wedding, where we were staying). The owners themselves delivered it at 5:30 in the morning and were super nice. I had accidentally been overcharged (which I didn't know) and they let me know plus processed the refund that day. Really nice people!

Can't wait to hear more (and see pictures!!).

 

[BJones82]

Congratulations on your wedding! My husband and I were married on the beach at the Swan last July, and it was as magical as you would think

Carolyn Allen's is fantastic! I shipped my dress to them for steaming and delivery as well (my husband's tux was done through Men's Warehouse, and they delivered it right to the Boardwalk the day before our wedding, where we were staying). The owners themselves delivered it at 5:30 in the morning and were super nice. I had accidentally been overcharged (which I didn't know) and they let me know plus processed the refund that day. Really nice people!

Can't wait to hear more (and see pictures!!).

Thanks for the info!! It seemed like from talking to her that she is great I am also getting my tux through Men's Warehouse because we have groomsmen/ushers/father of the bride from 4 different states, plus the convenience of having the tuxes delivered to the hotel the day before the wedding is huge too for us sense it's a destination wedding.

Hopefully we will be getting our BEO soon, it has just been a few days over six weeks at this point so hopefully soon

 

[Chloegirl]

Congratulations on your wedding! My husband and I were married on the beach at the Swan last July, and it was as magical as you would think

Carolyn Allen's is fantastic! I shipped my dress to them for steaming and delivery as well (my husband's tux was done through Men's Warehouse, and they delivered it right to the Boardwalk the day before our wedding, where we were staying). The owners themselves delivered it at 5:30 in the morning and were super nice. I had accidentally been overcharged (which I didn't know) and they let me know plus processed the refund that day. Really nice people!

Can't wait to hear more (and see pictures!!).

Hi!! I'm getting married in November at the wedding pavilion (reception at Ariel's). We live in the Philadelphia area and we have been trying to figure out how to get my dress down. Do you have any contact information for Carolyn Allen's? Did you ship it directly do them and then they delivered to Disney? We were also planning on using Men's Warehouse for the tuxes as well...glad you had a nice experience. Any other advice would be lovely! So hard planning from so far away!!

 

[BJones82]

Hi!! I'm getting married in November at the wedding pavilion (reception at Ariel's). We live in the Philadelphia area and we have been trying to figure out how to get my dress down. Do you have any contact information for Carolyn Allen's? Did you ship it directly do them and then they delivered to Disney? We were also planning on using Men's Warehouse for the tuxes as well...glad you had a nice experience. Any other advice would be lovely! So hard planning from so far away!!

Their address should be in the resources Disney gave you for information about tuxes if not send me a private message and I'll get you their information!!

 

[sheriffwoody]

So exciting!! If I hadn't discovered Disney World AFTER getting married, I totally would have tried to do a Disney wedding. It will be so magical

 

[BJones82]

So exciting!! If I hadn't discovered Disney World AFTER getting married, I totally would have tried to do a Disney wedding. It will be so magical

It's a blessing and a curse lol, we just got our BEO's for the event so we are processing the information on it lol...

 

[BJones82]

Soooo.... We got our BEO this past week for the rehearsal dinner and for the wedding

It is great to finally have an estimated bill and it was about where we expected it to be we may take a few things down to get it down to what we have saved currently but that is our next big step, to go over it and get back with our wedding planner about our questions or concerns We also still need to get invitations lol... we are just really dragging our feet on that lol... Anyway nothing big to update other than that... After we go through it more I will get another update up here to go over what that was like lol... Basically though you just say, "Here WDW, please take my money!" lol....

 

[BJones82]

Hey everyone, Time for an update

So we have our invitations ordered, this has been a much harder thing to pick out than we expected lol. We ended up using wedding paper divas and it all is working out hopefully, we had to ask for a 4th item being on the response card for a meal item, if it doesn't work we will have to just order unprinted cards and print on them at home... Anyway another kind of big update is I setup a few special things as a surprise for my fiancée, out of risk of her seeing this randomly I wont go into detail but it involves flowers, chocolates, Wishes Champagne, a swarovski bracelet, and room deliveries the night before and the day of the wedding

We also have our bridesmaids dresses picked out, Disney was awesome and sent us a path of cloth we picked for our reception tables and we were able to match our dresses and Tux vests to that so everything is matchy matchy lol... So we still are bouncing between a few officiants, we officially have our photo mingle reserved which is cool We also have decided instead of a sand ceremony we will have a time capsule box ceremony.

The only crazy things we have on our BEO is the Ceremony Aisle Runner you get through Disney, we may be ordering it ourselves and having a friend who is driving to Disney bring it down for us lol...

One thing I will say if you haven't figured it out already I am a big planner (except our Disney vacations, we like to play vacations by ear) but anyway sense my Fiancée is very busy at work and not a huge planner I am taking over a lot of the planning for this as far as calling people when they need to be called kind of thing, she is still making the decisions lol...

That's important to know because as soon as we got home from our planning session I made excel sheets that had everything we wanted on it and the price the things were on their "example" BEO they gave us when we first made our deposite. I then was like we lets take that total and touble and triple it to see what the cost is. Then we looked and said this is the absolute most we can pay for the wedding leaving around 4000 for all the stuff we have to buy between now and the wedding including things like invitations, dress alterations, flip flops for the guests, photo mingle, ya know, little stuff lol. After doing all of that we come to find that with the number of people we expect to come to the wedding we actually don't need to cut anything (except the Aisle runner is just crazy through them lol) to be under our desired budget. So basically we are able to have everything exactly as it was discussed when we planned the wedding

Ok that is all for right now, in the next week we will send out our invitations and then hopefully have an officiant picked out by then too... This weekend is our deadline for that one lol...

Thanks for following along!! Less than 4 months now!!

 

[BJones82]

Gah!!! So our invitations were lost by WPD after printing or possibly lost by Fedex because the driver didn't scan them... So now we are getting our invitations some time next week instead of having this weekend to work on them, this is huge because my Fiancée's fellow pediatrician (she is 1 of 2 currently at the hospital, looking for 2 more) is going to a developing country for 10 days so my Fiancée is working the next 10 days and is on call 24/7 for those 10 days starting at 6pm tonight. Anyone who has experience being on call for life or death situations knows you don't exactly sleep well knowing at any moment you could have to go deliver a 24 week old baby who's mom used drugs her whole pregnancy (this happens more than people realize in low income areas...) So we were hoping to have them this weekend so we could get the work done addressing the invitations this weekend while she was still fresh :/ Hopefully it's a calm week at the hospital!! Other than that nothing else new, I still would recomend WPD as their customer service is great, I would not recommend using Fedex's chat service... absolutely horrible... I have never experienced such a blatant lack of active listening from a customer service rep... Anyway another story for another day lol!! Wish us luck getting our invitations out

 

[LeeA]

This is a really interesting post! We are currently thinking about getting married at Disney World and this has been very insightful! I look forward to read about the next steps!
Congratulations!

 

[BJones82]

This is a really interesting post! We are currently thinking about getting married at Disney World and this has been very insightful! I look forward to read about the next steps!
Congratulations!

Thnx for following!! I should have another update soon The next 100 days should go fast!!

 

[Sweet Melissa]

We also have been trying to contact the Grand Floridian Wedding Services Spa people to setup the in room hair and makeup but after two voicemail's spread over 2 and a half weeks I have still not heard back from them so that is stressing me out lol...

Did you guys ever get this sorted out? If the Grand Floridian doesn't work out, some of the local stylists work with Disney guests often and will come to the room. I can't recommend Beaute Speciale highly enough. They did hair and makeup for our wedding (seven women total), and everyone looked flawless.

 

[BJones82]

Did you guys ever get this sorted out? If the Grand Floridian doesn't work out, some of the local stylists work with Disney guests often and will come to the room. I can't recommend Beaute Speciale highly enough. They did hair and makeup for our wedding (seven women total), and everyone looked flawless.

We did, we were actually just starting to contact other local stylists when they finally contacted us. There was a change over in the position for scheduling this with the Grand Floridian Spa. We did look and the pricing is actually about the same as local stylists even with the 4am start time on the day of our Magic Kingdom shoot

Thanks for the advice!!

 

[BJones82]

A lot has happened in the last 5 days. We have our wedding invitations so we are hoping to get them out this week still. We have our appointments scheduled for hair and makeup to be done in my Fiancée's room the day of the wedding. Our bridesmaids have purchased their bridesmaids dresses so that's good. We got my Fiancée's shoes for the day of the wedding and have found the purple and black flip flops we want to have for our guests at the reception. We also have started receiving wedding gifts from our registry sense my Fiancée has a few wedding showers coming up in the next few weeks We are working with Disney on the Aisle Runner for the ceremony to see what other options we have for that. And we are very close to selecting out Tuxes for the wedding, everyone except the Father of the Bride will be fitted for their tuxes in a few weeks when we go back to my home town to visit people for birthdays and general happiness

Another big thing we have moved forward on is making our wedding website. We are using Nearlyweds because it coordinates with Wedding Paper Divas so our website, invitations, and ceremony programs can all be coordinated and the same, not a big issue if they're not but nice to be able to.

I've decided to make out website have a lot of FAQ type pages sense most of our friends have never been to WDW before, lots of first time pins in our group lol. I think they'll find it helpful. It's also a great way to get people directions to the ceremony sense we aren't providing transportation for people not in the wedding party and surprisingly if you've never been to the Grand Floridian or the Wedding Pavilion it's not easy to explain how to get there on the insert of a wedding invitation lol.

So as you probably know on our to do list over the next week is:

1. still pick an officiant... don't even say anything... lol
2. Generally get our program planned for the ceremony
3. Go to Men's Warehouse to setup our tuxes for rental
4. Send out our invitations
5. Finish our Wedding website before the invitations go out

I will probably have another update here next week sense things are really starting to gear up, and our first big payment which is 75% of our BEO is due next week, we get to say good by all that money lol!!