Getting Married At Disney!

[J_Krafty24]

My fiance and I are getting married at Disney September 1st. We are having an intimate wedding at Seabreeze Point. After getting part way into planning a big traditional wedding back home (luckly didn't put any deposits down yet) we both decided a big traditional wedding was crazy. We wanted our wedding to be what we wanted, not necessiarly what everyone was expecting of us. The Disney Intimate wedding fit exactly what we are looking for. A nice little vacation with our closest family and friends followed by a honeymoon in the most magical place on earth.

Wedding planning can be a bit overwhealming, even with disney taking care of a lot of it. Does anyone on here have any tips? What officiants have you used? I would like to do something nice for our guests. Any suggestions? Also, is there anything I should watch out for, things that didn't go so well in your case that I should be aware of?

 

[PyxiiDustt]

First of all: Congratulations!

Second: My brother was recently married in WDW and I was quite involved with the wedding planning, so I'm offering my [not really] expertise.

1.I'm not sure what you're planning to do for your dinner/reception, but since you're getting married at the Boardwalk, you could do something at Ariel's Grotto, which is across the way at the Yacht and Beach Club, and it is a catering-type place that is only for special events such as weddings and parties. That's what my brother did, and we loved it.

2. I'm assuming you're doing a package, which would probably be the Escape Package because you said an intimate wedding. The officiate isn't included in that, so you have to pay extra for them.

3. And because I'm a cake fiend, I'm throwing this in: the marble cake with raspberry mousse cake that my brother and sister-in-law chose was to die for. But that's all taste preference.

4. They let you use a limo for four hours with the wedding package, and you can go anywhere [within reason] in it, so all of the girls went out for breakfast before we began the wedding preperations. It was nice to spend some time together just the girls beforehand.

Those are just some of my opinions from my experience. I wish you the best of luck and have fun!

 

[J_Krafty24]

Thank You for the congradulations and suggestions. I am leaving officiant decisions to my fiance since he has a little bit of a religous background and I do not.

I still have to decide what will be happening with the cake though. Myself, three grandparents and my future father-in-law are all on sugar restricted diets due to medical conditions. One of the women I spoke with early on in making my reservations suggested us having the whole cake sugarfree. i am a little bit afraid to do that becuase so often sugarfree desserts taste a bit different. I still need to speak with my wedding coordinator about this though.

Another thing that was mentioned to me but I haven't gotten a chance to ask about yet is the anniversay layer. Do they freeze this and send it home for you?

 

[ErickainPA]

I married at WDW back in December 2001. We had an intimate wedding as well.

Officiant - we had Rev Jack Day, he was awesome and send out different vows about a week or 2 ahead of time, so I could go through them and cut and paste together vows that we wanted said. I emailed them back to him and he printed them out for his booklet for the wedding. www.revjackday.com He is super friendly and a really great guy to officiate. he even had a selection of robes he could wear. We just let him chose what he wanted to wear, as we are non-denominational Christians and it didn't matter to us, he could have just worn a suit for all we cared.

Cake - we just had a marble and buttercream cake. They may be able to work with you on the choices you have ( we had a lot left over, so they took it to our room with a bunch of plates and forks and knives and we could eat it at our leisure the week we stayed there. Each day the mousekeeping would take our dishes and give us new if we were out.) We didn't get the top layer (we think it may have been fake) but they wrapped up the cake topper and had that in our room when we returned from dinner and taking pics. (we didn't use a photographer, just family members and our new camera at the time))

Flowers - they gave me a packet with all different bouquets I could get, I picked cream and red roses and requested no little pink flowers that the pic showed , got a cream ribbon to match my dress (I could choose white or cream, my dress was candlelight white)

Location - we married at Sunrise Terrace, 4th floor of the Wilderness Lodge. Was awesome view, but if you had it there, I would have suggested you face the building instead of the water, like we did. Can't really see our faces much.

Music - we had a flutist, we had a choice of violinist or something else.

Ears - get the bride and groom mouse ears, and be ready to say thank you a lot!!! We would get on rides really easy with the hats and got champagne toast at California Grille one night (we were just wearing the bride and groom pins at this point)

I know the packages have changed some since we got married there. But if you have any questions that I can possibly help you with what we did, feel free to ask.

Pics are in my signature below if you are interested. Just click the Jarett & Ericka link

 

[Teenchy]

I 2nd, 3rd and 4th the choice of Rev. Jack Day as an officiant. We could not have picked a better person.
You could have small individual sugar free cakes made for those other guest if you dont want your entire cake to be sugar free. We kept both the top layer of cake and our white chocolate castle topper after the wedding. We finished off the top layer on our cruise! and sent the cake topper with family which we now have at home in the freezer.
Depending on $$ there are so many things you could do with/for your guest outside of the ceremony & reception. You can do a private Illuminations viewing with desserts, a fireworks cruise to watch Wishes, a wonderful dinner at the California Grill or rent the Calf.Grill for a private brunch...the skys the limit with your imagination...as your wedding planner will tell you ..."If you can dream it (& afford $$ it ) they can do it!

Please read my wedding report for some ideas - link is in my signature...we just were married at WDW in December...and although not your normal wedding as it was a surprise...you might get some ideas.
It was not only the best day(Actually week) of our lives every one of our guest had the time of their life as well.

Good luck and congratulations! :sohappy:

 

[kgallag8806]

my fiance and I are in the middle of planning a wedding. We actually could not decide what we wanted to do and are still playing with the idea of doing a destination wedding. What would be a better destination that WDW! If someone has a phone number or website that I could price things please let me know
Kurt

 

[J_Krafty24]

Congrats!

This is the Disney Wedding website: http://www.disneyweddings.go.com/site/gate/index.jsp

It has a ton of information on the different types and sizes of weddings. You can also create a wishbook where it will tell you most of the pricing.

Wishbook link: http://www.disneyweddings.go.com/wishbook/register.jsp

They also have a brochure and dvd you can request. I didn't get a dvd but I did get the brochure. It has a lot of nice pictures but not very much useful information. I am in the process of planning an intimate (now escape) wedding and would be happy to answer any questions I can. Also luna has put a ton of information on planning in her thread as well.

The great thing about Disney is that they provide the flowers, cake, music, limo, photography and location. This is what was the big selling point for us.

Happy Planning!

 

[Tim G]

My fiance and I are getting married at Disney September 1st.

Congratz... and good luck for the both of you...

 

[CAPTAIN HOOK]

Many congratulations - I'll keep an eye on the post for my invitation

 

[maelstrom]

Congratulations!

I'm hoping to convince my fiance that WDW can be a very romantic place and that we should definitely honeymoon there. I don't think we'll be able to afford a wedding there, ever. If we could, I'd choose to get married at the Polynesian or Wilderness Lodge. The Poly would be great; on the beach, barefoot, a nice shore breeze...

I have no advice for you as I haven't had a Disney wedding (sadly) but I just wanted to wish you well. And good for you for deciding to do your wedding YOUR way and not worrying about meeting the expectations of everyone else. It's your special day and if people don't like the way you're doing it... well tough cookies for them!

Oh, and as far as officiants go, just out of curiosity... is there a completely non-denominational officiant to choose? I'm agnostic and my fiance was raised Catholic (my mom tried to raise me Catholic as well; no dice) but does not go to church or do anything religion-related at all. I was just curious if we or anyone else getting married at WDW could have a "god-free" wedding? Sorry for the minor thread hijack, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

 

[J_Krafty24]

When you get your planning kit it includes a list of different officiants that disney has worked with in the past. There are many different denominations as well as a couple reverends who will perform a completely non-denominational ceremony if you request it. There is also a couple Notarys on the list. Another option that I have hear of is to have a close friend or family get ordained as an "internet priest" for a very personal and special ceremony. I would have loved to go with this route but my fiance wouldn't go for it.

 

[J_Krafty24]

Well, It's been a couple months and I though I'd give an update. Things are going well with the wedding planning. Jennifer the wedding planner and especially Rosie from events groups has been very helpful with everything. We have made most of the decisions for our wedding and now just need to get the form filled out and sent in. (Side note - I still need to ask them about renting chairs for the ceremony so that everyone, especially our grandparents doens't have to stand for the whole thing.)

I'll be getting the island bouquet but with lavender being the main color. We'll also be getting some flower arrangements for the arch of the gazeboo on the boardwalk and a unity candle arrangement. Afterwards our hotel room will be full of flowers. I can't wait!

The wedding add-on that I am most looking forward to are the magic kingdom photos the morning after the wedding. If anyone else on here has done this and has their photos online I would love to see them.

We have our rings bought and locked away in the safe. My dress is ordered and scheduled to come in in about a month. I want to look into getting it shipped to orlando and back so that I don't need to mess with it on the airplane. I also need to find the perfect shoes to go with it and decide what my fiance will be wearing and the general dress code for our guests.

We've just about finished our registry which is good because my cousin has just sent out invitations to my bridal shower. It is just going to be a small one with family (aunts and cousing, grandma and mom) since we're not having a big traditional wedding it isn't really appropriate to have a big traditional shower. I am looking forward to it. The invitation has a picture of the castle with David and me photoshopped in front of it.

Two weeks after we get back from our honeymoon we are having a big party/reception. We've rented one of the shelters at a local metropark and are having a big ole picnic. For favors we're having frisbees and beach balls printed with our names and the date on them. We are also looking into having a "rib-wagon" coming in to cater it and a good humor cart full of ice cream for dessert. We won't be having a traditional wedding cake there because it is outside during the summer and there are too many things that could go wrong with it. We've hardly done any of the work for planning the picnic yet though and that is starting to worry me. This is going to be a busy month coming up.

Jessica

 

[Teenchy]

Nice to read the update...it sounds like everything will be wonderful.

I know it might be a pain taking the dress with you on a plane....but I think its worth it. Like my wife said at the time "If I ship my dress and we get there and it doesn't :fork: . The only way something is going to happen to my dress...is if I'm going down with it" Believe me I wasn't going to argue with a bride 3 days before her wedding!

And one other suggestion. If your fiancé is planning on a tux, there is a local store that was great for me. Here is their link www.carolynallens.com and a link to my tux . It was cool but subtle http://www.carolynallens.com/tuxedos/accessories/images/vest_mickey_white.jpg

Good luck!

 

[DizneyPryncess]

I have an idea that you might like. I am planning on having a Bridal tea party at the Grand Floridian. They have a tea party everyday, but on Tuesday & Saturday you can rent the tea party room for a private party.

You can bring any cake you want (a mad hatter cake is fun, do a google image search, you'll see the kind of cake I mean). You can either invite all your guests there as an activity, or just the girls can do that while the guys golf. It sounded like a lot of fun to me.

Than after that everyone can hit the Grand Floridian day spa! =)

I'm planning on this being a day activity for the girls. Make reservations up to 5 months in advance from what they told me. Just call the GF and they will connect you!

 

[J_Krafty24]

Well, the wedding is now over but let me tell you, Disney Weddings did an amaizing job for us. They thought of everything. The wedding went absolutly perfect (well, execpt for the fact that the best man forgot about the toast but he pulled it off wonderfully last minute). We had Rev. Tim do our ceremony and he did a wonderful job. The guys with the video cameras were there from the time we got out of the limo until thru the ceremony and mini reception until we went back up to the hotel afterwards. They were right there videoing everything but were in no way intrusive. The photographer was also there starting from when we got out of the limo and continued taking pictures throughout the ceremony and reception until we got back up to the hotel - and actually took a few while we were in the hotel waiting for the limo to come back and pick us up again. He also made sure we got all the pictures that we wanted with the different family members and guests that we had there. For the reception after the ceremony they had little table and chair sets in the grass outside of the gazebo. The violinist was amaizing but really shined during the reception part of it becuase he played "guess what i'm playing now" and "bet I can play whatever you name" with us.

The flowers were all beautiful - Rosie from event groups did a great job helping me figure out everything for pictures and flowers.

Another great thing during the wedding was Carolyn Allens bridal shop. I had my dress and crinolin shipped down to them before the wedding. They recieved it about 10 days before the big day and then steamed it and delivered to the hotel the day before the wedding. Then after the wedding they picked it up from my hotel and shipped it back home for me. All I had to do was leave it at bell services luggage storage.

Anyways, I would recommend Disney Weddings to anyone looking for a fun and/or small alternative to the traditional wedding. They really know how to make your special day perfect.

 

[Teenchy]

So nice to hear things went well......congrats. :sohappy:

You will love what Disney does with your video, our video alone is worth all the $$$$ we spent on the wedding. We relive the moments at least once a month!

Cant wait to see some of your pictures!