EllieBride
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 13, 2010
With only a 6-month engagement (and ultimately, only four months dedicated to the planning process), I didnt have time to complete a Planning Journal. However, I spent many hours reading through other PJs and TRs and they were enormously beneficial. THANK YOU to all of the other users on this board for sharing your plans, creativity, experiences, reviews, and lessons learned, and especially for sharing such a personal part of your lives. Its really appreciated!
My plan for this post-wedding report is to share some vendor reviews and some of our favorite things about having a DFTW. I hope you enjoy hearing about our magical day (because I know I will enjoy writing about it). If there is anything you would like more information about, please feel free to send me a message.
Overview:
Welcome Dinner: Ohana, Polynesian Resort
Ceremony: The Wedding Pavilion
Reception: Whitehall Patio and Room, Grand Floridian Resort
Total Guests: 40
Background:
Ive loved WDW since I was little and have been even more enthusiastic in my adult life. I drag my best friend there with me for annual vacations and cry each time we leave. Yet even with a love for Disney so deep, it was never my fantasy to get married at WDW.
Fast forward to early 2010 Andy and I started having some preliminary discussions about marriage Were in our mid-30s, and neither of us had ever been married before. As our talks grew more serious, so did the urgency to set a date. It is our hope to have a family and given our age, we didnt feel it was in our best interest to have a long engagement Our conversation of marriage continued over the coming weeks, including talk of what the wedding would look like. I pictured an intimate affair, held in our local church where we had recently started attending. But then Andy informed me that his guest list alone would be between 100-200 people!
Whoa! So much for my intimate wedding this was not at all what I had in mind! I tried to reason with him and he even admitted that he would prefer a small wedding but he simply refused to risk offending any of his friends or co-workers by omitting them from the invitation list (and lest I forget, there was the list of his parents high school friends!). It was easy to see that if he wasnt going to show any restraint with his list, then mine would likely grow, as well. So this was a problem I couldnt see myself getting excited about a 200+ person wedding! I also knew that I didnt have the money to host a wedding of this size (and not have it be anything close to what I wanted ). So now what ?
At this time, we started playing around with the idea of a destination wedding Again, this wasnt what I had pictured, but we quickly determined that a destination wedding was the only way he could possibly limit his guest list. So we started brainstorming ideas his first idea: Las Vegas. My first idea: Walt Disney World. When he said OK to my suggestion, I couldnt believe it!
We still werent officially engaged at this point (i.e. no ring), but Andy encouraged me to contact DFTW for information about pricing and availability. This all happened pretty quickly over the course of a couple of weeks as we learned more about the available venues and packages. We placed a temporary reservation for our preferred date and venue, but then we were on hold while I waited impatiently for a proposal and ring. I didnt feel comfortable booking a destination wedding without running the idea and date by our families. And I couldnt do that until we were actually engaged. To this day, I still dont think Andy appreciates how awkward it was for me to tell the DFTW sales consultant that we couldnt proceed with the LOA because we werent actually engaged
So this is our story of how we ended up planning a DFTW and to skip to the outcome, we LOVED having our wedding there. Our guests continue to proclaim that it was the best wedding they have ever attended and I think they truly mean it. I look forward to sharing some highlights with you throughout the rest of this TR. Stay tuned...
My plan for this post-wedding report is to share some vendor reviews and some of our favorite things about having a DFTW. I hope you enjoy hearing about our magical day (because I know I will enjoy writing about it). If there is anything you would like more information about, please feel free to send me a message.
Overview:
Welcome Dinner: Ohana, Polynesian Resort
Ceremony: The Wedding Pavilion
Reception: Whitehall Patio and Room, Grand Floridian Resort
Total Guests: 40
Background:
Ive loved WDW since I was little and have been even more enthusiastic in my adult life. I drag my best friend there with me for annual vacations and cry each time we leave. Yet even with a love for Disney so deep, it was never my fantasy to get married at WDW.
Fast forward to early 2010 Andy and I started having some preliminary discussions about marriage Were in our mid-30s, and neither of us had ever been married before. As our talks grew more serious, so did the urgency to set a date. It is our hope to have a family and given our age, we didnt feel it was in our best interest to have a long engagement Our conversation of marriage continued over the coming weeks, including talk of what the wedding would look like. I pictured an intimate affair, held in our local church where we had recently started attending. But then Andy informed me that his guest list alone would be between 100-200 people!
Whoa! So much for my intimate wedding this was not at all what I had in mind! I tried to reason with him and he even admitted that he would prefer a small wedding but he simply refused to risk offending any of his friends or co-workers by omitting them from the invitation list (and lest I forget, there was the list of his parents high school friends!). It was easy to see that if he wasnt going to show any restraint with his list, then mine would likely grow, as well. So this was a problem I couldnt see myself getting excited about a 200+ person wedding! I also knew that I didnt have the money to host a wedding of this size (and not have it be anything close to what I wanted ). So now what ?
At this time, we started playing around with the idea of a destination wedding Again, this wasnt what I had pictured, but we quickly determined that a destination wedding was the only way he could possibly limit his guest list. So we started brainstorming ideas his first idea: Las Vegas. My first idea: Walt Disney World. When he said OK to my suggestion, I couldnt believe it!
We still werent officially engaged at this point (i.e. no ring), but Andy encouraged me to contact DFTW for information about pricing and availability. This all happened pretty quickly over the course of a couple of weeks as we learned more about the available venues and packages. We placed a temporary reservation for our preferred date and venue, but then we were on hold while I waited impatiently for a proposal and ring. I didnt feel comfortable booking a destination wedding without running the idea and date by our families. And I couldnt do that until we were actually engaged. To this day, I still dont think Andy appreciates how awkward it was for me to tell the DFTW sales consultant that we couldnt proceed with the LOA because we werent actually engaged
So this is our story of how we ended up planning a DFTW and to skip to the outcome, we LOVED having our wedding there. Our guests continue to proclaim that it was the best wedding they have ever attended and I think they truly mean it. I look forward to sharing some highlights with you throughout the rest of this TR. Stay tuned...