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

BJones82

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
First of all if this needs to be moved please feel free to do so :)

Ok so we got engaged about a month ago now and are in the process of planning our WDW wedding so I thought I would post a step by step process for others to read when they start planning their wedding :)

About us, we have been dating for 3 and a half years and starting at 3 months have visited WDW every year of our relationship. Our first trip was on a whim we were going to go to New York and see some shows on Broadway but we decided to spend the two weeks at WDW and have gone back ever sense. WDW is an important part of our relationship and it brought us close together when we first visited and now is something we look forward to doing every year so getting married there was a natural step after I proposed to her our last trip in the Epcot Canada Pavilion where the outdoor weddings can be held. I chose this spot because it was private and beautiful :)

On to the planning:

Over this past month we have been emailing with Disney Fairy Tail Weddings and first had to reserve our venues and times which we were lucky enough to not have to be part of a lottery for so we got the Wedding Pavilion and a room and balcony at The Grand Floridian :) We are doing a Wishes wedding so we were able to reserve the venues at 12 months out which just happened to be a few weeks after we were engaged so the timing worked out fairly well.

Our next step a week later was setting up a room block and deciding who would go. We do not live in Florida so this was tough because we know that most of our family will not make it to WDW for our wedding :( Our solution to this is we are holding a second reception/celebration in our home town for our extended family.

With that decision made we had to select a minimum of 25 room nights spread out around our wedding date at different hotels. 25 room nights is the minimum required for a Wishes wedding and if our guests do not use at least that many nights we will need to pay for the nights up to 25!!! :/ so hopefully this will work out lol... We have 60 nights setup in our room block including our Honeymoon which we want to stay in the Contemporary resort and we will hopefully get a free night at the Polynesian at the end of our honeymoon :)

Our next step is signing a Letter of Agreement and sending in our deposit which we will be receiving our letter in email in the next week or so and I will post an update when we reach that step :)
 
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flipadeeflop

Active Member
So exciting! I can't wait to read more! My fiance and I just really got the ball rolling wtih our wedding planning because we are doing the Memories Package because no one would have been able to make it to WDW except our parents and by brother, so we are doing the same thing as you where we are have receptions/ceremonies back home in my home state MA and where we live now, CO. We just got the Letter of Agreement - it came about a week after we sent the wedding planner the information to put on the contract, just to let you know!
 

BJones82

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
So exciting! I can't wait to read more! My fiance and I just really got the ball rolling wtih our wedding planning because we are doing the Memories Package because no one would have been able to make it to WDW except our parents and by brother, so we are doing the same thing as you where we are have receptions/ceremonies back home in my home state MA and where we live now, CO. We just got the Letter of Agreement - it came about a week after we sent the wedding planner the information to put on the contract, just to let you know!
Yea we have made our deposit already and are into scheduling a planning session and getting the save the dates with room block information out to our family and friends being invited to Disney. I haven't posted anything else for two reasons lol... No one seems to be responding or caring about these posts (you are the 2nd person who has said anything between the post or a private message) and I am worried about disclosure based on the legal writing in the letter of agreement lol... My fiancée would never forgive me if we got in trouble for this lol...
 

flipadeeflop

Active Member
Yea we have made our deposit already and are into scheduling a planning session and getting the save the dates with room block information out to our family and friends being invited to Disney. I haven't posted anything else for two reasons lol... No one seems to be responding or caring about these posts (you are the 2nd person who has said anything between the post or a private message) and I am worried about disclosure based on the legal writing in the letter of agreement lol... My fiancée would never forgive me if we got in trouble for this lol...

I feel like if you are vague enough, like "we talked with the wedding planner and picked our this, this, and that today" type of thing wont violate the contract, especially since stuff like bouquet, food, cake, etc. choices are already accessible by the public. Maybe just watch out for anything negative, or don't say stuff like "they pulled some strings and got us this"
 

BJones82

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Hey everyone sorry for how long it has been sense an update, it's been pretty busy because I am trying to find a new job to move after I get my degree in December. Anyway time for another update.

When we left off we were getting ready to sign the letter of agreement. I cannot go into too much detail on that because there is a lot of legal talk in it but we signed it and sent in our deposit so there is no backing out from a Disney Wedding now unless we want to lose that money lol.

Immediately after we sent in the signed letter we got emailed from our Wedding Event Planner instead of our wedding consultant. Basically a wedding consultant from what I can see is someone who helps you get through the initial hurdle of deciding to have a wedding there and signing a contract. We came in having done a lot of research so we didn't have a lot of questions but I imagine that they would be helpful figuring out what kind of wedding you wanted to have there and where in the WDW Resort you wanted to have it. The Event Planner and their assistant seem to be focused on all the small details down to switching rooms after you're married to where you will get your hair and makeup done the morning of your wedding.

We were sent a lot of information from our Event Planner about hair & makeup, DJ's, photography, and even officiants for the wedding who are available in the area. They give us time lines for when we should start planning things including a private photo session at the park which we want to do. A cool option for hair and makeup we found out about is having it done at the Grand Floridian Spa (probably wrong name sorry everyone lol) but depending on price we want to do that.

At this point we have the date, time, and venues locked in and are setup to have a Introduction Phone call with our event planner next Wednesday before Thanksgiving for them to get an idea about who we are and what we want to do. We also are going to send out save the dates in the next week or two so people can begin to start reserving their rooms in WDW for the room block. We actually will get our own reservation specialist who will keep us updated on our room block so we can add or subtract rooms when needed. I thought this was cool because I was wondering if it was something I would have to always be thinking about but it is not :).

We also found our prefect invitations randomly from the email that they sent us with other information. We are having our wedding at Disney, we think that is plenty Disney we don't want characters or anything crazy at our wedding we want it to be a modern wedding and at most wanted hidden Mickeys in our invitation which is exactly what we found :) We had been looking for a long time (4-5 months) and were not able to find anything so that really excited us. The sad part is they do not do save the dates so we are making those custom which has included about 12 hours of work on by me in photo shop and MS Publisher to get them just right, then I had to make 2 different versions one for people we are only inviting to our reception back at home and one for people we are inviting to both the wedding and the second reception.

Ok so recap: We are sending out save the dates, we will be meeting with our Event planner for a phone call next week, and we are starting to plan the details.

Our next steps are to schedule a Planning Session on site with our event planner probably around late March or early April, we will need to start dress shopping(though I will not be part of that my Fiancée is very excited about that) and we need to decide if the guys are going to be wearing suites or tuxedos though I think we(by we I mean my FIancée lol) is leaning towards the latter. Also something keep forgetting about is in the next few months we need to start registering for gifts and create a website for our wedding. I am a Full Stack Software Developer so I am excited for that part lol.

Right now things are going pretty slow because we are still 10 months out but so I am not sure when the next update will be but I am sure eventually they will start coming more frequently.
 
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BJones82

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
So I only have a small update around the holidays. We just got our packet with our contracts which also included our Annual Passes :)!! So we are excited to use them and visit Disney World Many times this year :)
 
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mikenatcity1

Well-Known Member
So I only have a small update around the holidays. We just got our packet with our contracts which also included our Annual Passes :)!! So we are excited to use them and visit Disney World Many times this year :)

Congratulations on your engagement and Disney Wedding! I am planning a Disneyland wedding for September- a lot of fun!

Very excited to read all about the WDW side of planning and your enjoyment of it all!
 

Kaznagan

Member
Keep this going I love hearing about the progress! I expect photos once your big day happens. I'd love to get married at Disney world or land by sadly I need to find a guy first and one who is willing to travel across the world to do it.... Lol
 

BJones82

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Hey Everyone I am sorry for the lengthy delay sense my last update to this thread.

There has been a lot of work done, we have our save the dates out to everyone and are now excited to do our planning session which is scheduled for the second week in April. We will get to taste cakes, 8 menu items, and really plan pretty much the whole day. The menu options are insane!!! We have to fill out a menu tasting packet before two weeks before the planning session. It is over 10 pages long with items that we can have on the menu (this doesn't include alcohol or cake). So that is exciting.

On a really cool note my parents(Groom side) just setup a reservation for our rehearsal dinner to be in the Californian Grill overlooking the fireworks the night before our wedding. As I am sure most of you know it is the only place they pipe in music for the fireworks for a private event if that makes sense... But anyway that will be really exciting. We have decided we are honeymooning in the Contemporary Resort for two weeks and are ending our last night at the Polynesian for a romantic quiet night.

Anyway I will try to give an update for the planning session in April, everything is moving fast and keeping us busy:)
 
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Chloegirl

New Member
Love the posts! Just started planning our wedding...dealing with the menus...very tedious!! Please let us know what you liked at the tasting and pictures would be so awesome!!! Good luck!!
 

BJones82

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Love the posts! Just started planning our wedding...dealing with the menus...very tedious!! Please let us know what you liked at the tasting and pictures would be so awesome!!! Good luck!!

Yea we just sent in the menu tasting form last week and it was rough picking things out. We are definitely going towards a fancy wedding with about half of our guests being vegetarians. I will post an update after the tasting, I will try to nerd out taking food pictures... I am sure my Fiancée will love that lol
 

TXDisney

Well-Known Member
We just did this whole process like 1.5yrs ago and loved it. We checked to see if a disney wedding was in our budget 1st off. We don't live in Florida either, so doing a disney wedding we knew would cut down the guests which helps with cost. We roughly knew 100 people would still go to our wedding at WDW. Doing the math we found out it was in budget. Right away we chose our date. My wife's brother is in the military and he was doing another tour in February of 2014. We got engaged (at WDW) in April of 2013. We chose WDW around May or 2013. Once we called and the sent us the I go and all we booked our date. Being we'd have 110 guests that eliminated most the venues we could get married at. We chose the wedding pavilion for the ceremony and the GF for reception. Sounds like you did the same. You won't regret it. Then the process began. We sent in our deposit and our payment early to get that out if the way. We booked our wedding planning visit for September of 2013. Only lasted a day but of course we made a whole trip out of it. You and your fiancé will get free park tickets for a year from the day you activate them. This is for the wedding planning visit and the wedding. We scheduled our visit early on a Friday morning. Was very pleasant. Carol Mickles was our coordinator and she was great. Teresa Knox was our officiant and was great and Steve Dunlap was our DJ who was great. They were all very helpful and catered to everything we wanted and explained everything incredibly well. I'm sure you already know but you have to spend a minimum per guest in food and beverage. Drawing a blank if it's $100 or $150. We chose our menu before the visit. When you do the visit it is pretty overwhelming. They show you everything upgrade wise. Based on your budget you have to pick and choose what matters to you. You make your decisions then, but can change them up until like a month or so before the wedding. We did our cake tasting which was delicious. We then did floral. The girl who did that with us wasn't pleasant at all. I can't remember her name. Didn't ruin the process just wasn't friendly really. We finished our planning visit but still had to try our menu. They had us choose 2 extra options for all courses in case we didn't like what we chose. This was great. The had head chef Orlando sit us in the kitchen and serve and explain everything we chose. Unbelievable service, cleanliness and everything tasted incredible. It made it hard to choose bc everything was great. That finalized the planning visit. The room blocks an feel pushy but it does save your guests money. My parents own a timeshare and they did 3 of them off site about 20 of our guests stayed in 3 timeshares at orange lakes. That left 90 others he needed rooms somewhere. We just sent a feeler email out to friends and family and said stay wherever you want but we do get a lil discounted rate if you stay onsite. I think we totally 36 nights stayed onsite. Some at GF most at POR. I think we had to finalize the actual nights 2 months previous to the wedding. We stayed a GF with getting 2 free nights bc of our room block total. Then stayed at POR. The only issue we had during the wedding process was with the photography. My wife loves photography and wasn't crazy about any of the Disney photographers. She didn't think they were bad, she just really liked an outside company that was better and cheaper. Should be noted that not any photographer can do a disney wedding they have to be licensed to if not an employee of disney. We wanted to do the MK photoshoot after our wedding in the morning one of the 3 days after our wedding before we left for our honeymoon. You have to do it when the parks closed early in the morning or late at night. You can only do this with a disney photographer. Bc if that we chose to use a disney photographer. Until we asked for 1 of those 3 days after to do the shoot but they couldn't bc they were taking down the Christmas lights those days. They offered to do it a later date, but since we don't live in Florida that would be a whole other trip we'd have to pay for just for a photoshoot for an hour or 2. Wasn't worth it, so we went with the outside photographer. We used misty miotto and loved her work. Did great choirs with both of us before, during and after the wedding. Highly recommend her. Some little things I recommend. Do the disney bars as part of your dessert, big hit. We had mickey and Minnie show up which is extra, but was a hit. And if you treat everyone great the whole disney staff while there they can extend your reception time for free if they're nice. They let our reception go an extra hour with n charge. Still letting us drink and eat. Overall it was the best day of our lives and disney made the process unbelievable. A lot less stressful when you have to do everything ur self. Congrats and good luck. If you have more questions just ask.
 

BJones82

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Ok so update:

Wedding Planning trip:

We ended up making this a mini vacation, we were there for 5 days around the planning session and ended up staying in the Wyndham Bonnet Creek Resort, we are saving staying on property until our wedding.

The day went by so fast, our planning session was at 9am. We first finalized our rehearsal Dinner which as I mentioned before will be in the Californian Grill Napa room, we tried to see this during our dinner at the Californian Grill this trip but it was hosting an event so alas, we will wait to see it till our rehearsal dinner lol.

I honestly cannot remember everything about the menu we picked but we did a plated duo with chicken and steak and we have a large number of vegiterians so the chef will be making a custom Entree for them that night :).

After this we did my favorite part, cake testing!!! We decided our wedding cake will be three tiers, with the top and bottom being a lemon cake with raspberry filling(absolutely amazing) and then the middle tier and the random cake they bake on the side to serve will be chocolate cake with peanut butter cup filling... This was my favorite and I can say it is one of the things I am looking forward to most that day lol(at least food wise...)

Next we met with our florist and honestly, I was a little over whelmed at this point but my Fiancée handled it well and we kept pushing deciding our flowers, center pieces, table linens, and general decoration for the reception hall and ceremony. The details I do remember(sorry it was a lot to go through and all in only a few hours lol) are we are doing cylinder vases with orchids and floating candles with a runner down the isle at the Wedding Pavilion for the ceremony. Our reception will have purple up lighting, black table clothes with purple runners, sliver chair covers with purple bows. Our center pieces will be three floating candles with alternating orchids, "stock(a purple flower)", and calla lilies (white with purple centers) in the vases and an led light in the bottom of each vase.

We then had a break and wandered through the Grand Floridian for a bit before our menu tasting.

Once it started it was awesome, we were taken to a nice table in the kitchen of the convention center and the Executive Chef and another Chef(I feel horrible but I don't remember his name...) explained what we picked and how they prepared it. Honestly we are not fancy people... We had to google half the things we ended up picking for our menu before our trip so this was just over the top for us. Once again... So much information so I don't remember what we picked for everything for the meal but once we get the BOE I will post an update for the menu(After I have a heart attack for how much it costs lol...) I do know we picked for an appetizer this AMAZING breaded mozzarella thing with pears and reduced red wine... it was at one point so incredibly fancy yet so Midwest and amazing we couldn't not have it. For our salad course I think we just picked a normal salad... for the entree course we have a 4 choices (because about half of our guests are veterinarians we wanted them to have 2 options just like the carnivores lol) we picked a simple chicken breast with a simple sauce, a steak, a mushroom ravioli, and this Indian rotini pasta with a red curry which was really good too. We chose to have no desert course sense we are having the cake. For the Bride and myself we decided we wanted different things for the entree so the Bride is having the rotini pasta dish with more kick(spicier) and I am having a duo plate with seared scallops and chicken.

For the cocktail hour we decided to do a twist on a normal mashed potato bar. We are having three starches, a normal gold yukon mashed potato, mac n cheese(with lobster on the side), and a mushroom risotto. This sounds absolutely amazing and is something we both are really excited about and are worried we will fill up on food before the actual meal lol.

After the planning session our day will look like this:

9am:
Bride dress is delivered to Brides room by Carolyn Allen's Bridal and Tuxedos to be steamed on site, as well as to steam any other bridal party dresses or tuxes which are needed.

11:30am:
Makeup will start for the Bride and Bridesmaids.

2:30pm:
Getting ready photos will start.

2:50pm:
Limo will pickup Groom, Groomsmen, and Father of the Bride from Pop century at 2:50pm to drop off at the Grand Floridian for photos.

3:10pm:
Limo will pickup Family of Groom from Contemporary to drop off at Grand Floridian for photos.

3:30-4pm:
Groom side photos

3:45pm:
Limo will bring bride and bridesmaids from Contemporary to Grand Floridian for photos(we are not seeing each other before the ceremony).

4pm:
Limo takes Groom and Groomsmen to Wedding Pavilion.

4 - 4:30pm:
Bride side photos

4:30pm:
Limo takes Bride, and other people to Wedding Pavilion.

5 - 6pm:
Ceremony

6 - 7 pm:
Together photos after ceremony & cocktail hour for guests

7 - 11pm:

Reception.

A few things I did not mention which we are excited about for the day:

Photo Mingle: An interactive twist on a photo booth which allows guests to write messages on the photo using a 32" touch screen and then allows them to print out a 4x6 inch photo at the reception. We will get a photo book and digital copies of all photos taken at the reception with this.

Alone time: We have planned about 20-30 minutes of alone time after the ceremony where they will bring us food from the cocktail hour and we can just be an excited newly wed couple :)

Menu Flexibility: This was really important because often there is only 1 option for veterinarians at restaurants and weddings and often that option tastes great it just isn't realistic to expect 30 of them to all want the same thing at a wedding lol. Also for both the rehearsal dinner and the reception/cocktail hour Disney is being incredibly helpful and flexible with my Sister's menu; she has crones and her specific issues are dairy and uncooked vegetables. They helped us design a custom menu for her which works around these which I did not expect and is great because it means she doesn't have to worry about how much or what she can eat at my wedding which is something she always has to worry about.
 

BJones82

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Update 2: So sense our wedding planning session we have started roughing out everything else we have to do which is surprisingly quite a bit. We are in the process of booking our officiant, we have setup the dress steaming for both the wedding day and our photo shoot, we have setup the photo shoot at the Magic Kingdom and I believe we picked the 1st route, it is the one with the teacups I know that much lol. My Fiancée's dress also has come in about 2 months earlier than we expected so that is exciting. We are in the process of setting up the hair and makeup appointments for the two days. We also are in the process of paying our deposit for Photo Mingle and have officially booked all of our hotel rooms for the 18 days we are in WDW... Just saying we will be in WDW for 18 days makes me happy lol...

Our next steps are: Finalize bridesmaids dresses, Tuxes, & Flower Girl Dresses. We should get our estimated bill mid to late May so at that point we will cut stuff because I know it will be more than we want to spend lol... We also have committed to not cutting from our honeymoon and instead cutting from the ceremony. I work over 60 hours a week and my Fiancée generally works at the hospital around 70 hours a week and another 15 hours a week at home so we really want that time to just be together and not have to worry about work or anything else. After that our next big ticket item is to purchase and mail out the invitations.

Thanks for being patient with the updates and I'll do my best to keep them coming more frequently!!
 

P_Radden

Well-Known Member
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
 

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