vamassey1
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2005
I'M MICHELLE!
My Disney Fairy Tale Wedding
#FontenotFairyTale
Hello, all! As my mother mentioned, I've been briefed on my participation in this thread. I'm Michelle, and I GOT MARRIED AT THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH! That's my claim to fame. I see my mom's making her way through the first part of the trip when they arrived prior to all of us. I guess I just wanted to throw out the background before we "arrive"... in terms of Disney Wedding Planning. So my apologies in advance if there's a ton of info. and I'm super new to this, so my emoji game is a little weak.
First of all, I'm major Type A personality. I make lists to make lists to have meetings to plan things. That's just how I roll, and I'm good at it. So essentially, planning a wedding should be a dream for me, right?! WRONG. When we got engaged, it was in New Orleans because my husband knew if he tried to ask me to relax at home, I'd be more concerned about what needed to be done around the house or what groceries needed to be bought for the next week. This also made a big impact on our decision to do a destination wedding. I was not interested in all of the hulabaloo and $$$ that goes into a big, white wedding so I could walk around for hours, smile for pictures, and mingle. However, that does mean we missed a few things, like dancing with my dad, the Church's blessing, and having all of our friends and family there. But there are pros and cons to everything and we wouldn't have changed it for the world. In fact, my husband and I very seriously plan to continue to renew our vows in every place Disney allows you to over time!
Around our engagement, we had toyed with the idea of a big, white wedding and I tried to find ways to make it work in my head, but it just didn't pan out. So his cousin comes to town and everyone is talking about how great her wedding in Vegas was and how destination weddings are the best. Note: she got married in Vegas, but it was still no small affair. My husband comes from a large, Italian, extended family. So, yeah. That was a hot topic at dinner while she was visiting. The next day, my husband and I went tailgating at an LSU game. I'll never forget the moment the words left my lips. We were talking about wedding planning and, half intoxicated, I just said, "If we're getting married, we're having a destination wedding. And it's going to be in Disney World!"
And that was it! We looked into it, sent a few emails, inquired about the whole process. Next thing you know they gave us all available time slots and locations for the week we were planning and it was just a matter of checking a few boxes. We decided on a Sunday-Friday trip with the wedding on Tuesday. Now I don't remember why we chose Tuesday, but I want to say it was to give everyone time to get there and settled before the big day, but early enough in the trip so we still had a simi-honeymoon... with my (now)step daughter and both of our families.
Honestly, originally we had planned an "Escape" package wedding which would have been at the Wedding Pavillion with about 20 people total and a small reception at the Grand Floridian. Forgive me if I don't remember specifics, but that was going to run us a lot more money and trying to get our family and friends to Disney was a lot more difficult than we had anticipated. Not to mention life just got in the way and I was to the point that I didn't care about a reception or how many people were there. I just wanted to marry my love and enjoy our "wedding moon." So we moved to the "Memories" collection with the help of the wonderful (I can't say this enough) people that work for Disney!
Moving from Escape to Memories meant we were giving up on a lot of the amenities included in that price, like a cake, a small reception, annual passes, etc. But it was nothing worth crying over for us, and Disney still made a point to make us feel like royalty throughout the planning process as well as the day of. At the end of the day, we would be married with our closest family there, and in the Happiest Place on Earth. What the Memories wedding did allow us was four guests (more on this later), location, a photographer (20 5x7s included), 3 hour of limo time or an "in room celebration", fresh flowers, a violinist, and an on site coordinator. From that point, it was just picking the details. Disney is AMAZING at this. They basically give you a form with all the options and you pick the ones you want. It was like picking all the toys you wanted for Christmas from the sales circulars. I'll post more on that later. I don't want to write an entire book. And there will be plenty of pictures to come!
Michelle and great wedding planning. You're so good with the details.