Joanne & Eric's At-Home Wedding and Disneymoon PJ!

iheartpluto

Mouseketeer
Joined
Feb 25, 2009
Ok. Seeing as there is only a little over 3 months til our at-home wedding, starting a PJ now seems a little late, but I just stumbled onto these boards and I love reading PJ's, so I figured "what the heck" I might as well do one of my own! Plus, this seems like a great way to get to know people, and I would love to do a TR of our Disneymoon when we go!

First, a little bit about us: I am a total Disney nut, and have been since I can remember (my parents got the Disney Channel on cable as soon as it was available for me... I was 2!) My fiance... not so much. But, he loves the Pixar movies, and is getting more and more excited about our WDW Honeymoon (more about that later.) We met online, and pretty much fell in love immediately. He proposed on our 6 month anniversary (we are from the Detroit area and had taken a weekend trip to Chicago.) He tried SO hard to make it a magical proposal, but unfortunately I kinda screwed it up. We went to a BEAUTIFUL fondue place for dinner (Geja's Cafe, I highly recommend it) and the only problem with it was that it was much further from the EL station than my DF originally thought, so we had to walk quite a ways and I was in high heels. Then we went to Second City which was hysterical. We got back to the hotel, and needless to say, my feet were KILLING me so I was a bit cranky and tired. My DF said "Let's go to the Sears Tower" (do you see where this is going? I had no clue!) and I said, "I really don't feel like it right now.. can we chill out for a bit?"
DF: "Ok, but let's go tonight" Well, I don't remember exactly how it went, but I was annoyed, and my feet hurt, and I was cranky, and he was being SO insistent that we ended up getting into a bit of a fight.. :confused3 and during said fight I said something like.. "you know, when you're like this it seems like you doubt our relationship!" And then he sat up on the bed and said, "Come here" and he pulled out the ring! And I looked at him and said, "Shut up!" And he said "will you marry me?" and I said, "shut up! Are you serious?!" Needless to say, not the magical proposal on top of the Sears Tower that it could have been... just my luck! :laughing: So, anyway, I cried, and said yes, and then I said, "can you please get down on one knee and ask me again?" So he did. :)

Anyway, on to planning... We are getting married in my church (Catholic), and having an outdoor reception. The reception is at the Croatian American Center about 40 minutes outside of Detroit (my parents emigrated from Croatia with my brothers before I was born.) There is a hall there, but it is on the smaller side, but there is a covered pavilion, and we will be putting a tent next to the pavilion to have more space. My family is HUGE, so there will be about 300 guests, which freaks DF out, but I swear, I have cut out a bunch of people to get it down to 300! We've gotten very lucky with our vendors, we found a great caterer (it will be a buffet) and our DJ is DF's uncle. Our organist for the ceremony is a friend I've known since childhood, and my 2nd cousin (also a bridesmaid) will be singing. I'm doing the BM's bouquets myself (out of silk flowers) and I'm now working on lettering the invitations because we will be having a bridal party get together this weekend to put together invites and favors, and decorations. (I will post pics of that!) CONT
 
Lol awww your engagement made me laugh you must be so excited 3 months to go wow cant wait to see what you have planned

and your disney moon so excitint :)
 
So, I have my dress, but I can't post a pic because DF joined this board too! Shocking! Let me give a bit of background... When we first got engaged, I really wanted to go to WDW. I brought it up a bunch of times and DF always said no. (Even though I am a huge fan, I have only been to the World once, and that was 10 years ago!) He kept saying that he would maybe go once, when we had kids. :( Anyway, we had at first talked about going to Croatia for our honeymoon, because my family has a house there, and DF has never gotten to go out of the country (except for Canada, which is so close to us it doesn't exactly count as leaving the country!) I wanted to go too... But the closer it came to reality the more freaked out I got about it. I have lots of family there, and I love to go. My mom lives there 6 months out of the year, except for this year since she is staying for the wedding, obviously. The problem I have is this: My dad died two years ago from colon cancer, and he is buried in Croatia. He was there when he passed away. My brother and I went to visit him when he was near the end, and he passed away a week after we left. None of us could be there for his funeral because they do things much more quickly there and even if we could have gotten flights, we would have missed the funeral. So, I haven't seen his grave yet, and I didn't want the first time I saw his grave to be on my honeymoon.

Anyway, after we discussed that, I felt really bad for denying DF his first chance to go to Europe and I told him he could pick where we would go for our HM. He started thinking about an Alaskan cruise, which I was excited about since I've always wanted to go there too. DF came home one day and said "I've been think about alternatives to an Alaskan cruise," and I perked up and said "Disney Cruise?" and DF said "um, no." That was the end of that conversation. However, a couple days after that, he said "So, I've been looking into this Disney Cruise thing..." I was SHOCKED! I couldn't believe it! DF said that I should know he researches everything, and I shouldn't be so surprised, but going on all the reactions before, I never thought I would get anything close to Disney! Anyway, after further research, we discovered the buy 4, get 3 nights free deal. DF and I talked and realized we couldn't go somewhere where all we did was lay on a beach. We like to DO stuff. So, I told DF that if he found anywhere else that he wanted to go more than Disney that we could do stuff and get as much bang for our buck, then we would go there (all the while I had my fingers crossed for WDW!) and lo and behold, he booked Disney!! I cried when we officially booked the trip. So, DF has been researching more and more, and getting more and more excited, so I am hoping and praying that we have SO much fun (I know we will) that he is hooked and we keep coming back! He even looked into the DVC!! And for Valentine's Day he surprised me by upgrading us to the GF with the Platinum Package! I still can't believe that I will actually be in WDW with my DF.. (well, DH by that point!) I feel SO incredibly lucky.
 
Lol awww your engagement made me laugh you must be so excited 3 months to go wow cant wait to see what you have planned

and your disney moon so excitint :)

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the engagement story... I always feel like such an idiot when I tell it, but I really had no clue!
 


Congrats and :welcome: it sounds like you have some great plans so far. And a great DF for taking you to WDW for your honeymoon! :thumbsup2
 
Wow I just read your honeymoon post what a great surprise DFi did for you
 


Ok, so I apologize that it has been so long that I have updated anything, but this week has been SO crazy busy! Anyway, last weekend we had some of the bridesmaids over, and we got our invitations lettered and stuffed, so all we have left to do there is address them (and I still can't decide if I want to hand write them, or just do labels. I did all the writing on the inner envelopes and response cards, will it look tacky if I use labels on the outside?) We also got the bridesmaids bouquets done, and the vases for the centerpieces. Here's a pic of one of the bouquet's:
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and another one
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The vases came out really cool. They're actually just glasses from Ikea that DF found, and we wrapped them in ribbon. I really like how they turned out!
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and these are one of our wedding favors. The personalization came out in the wrong color, but unfortunately we can't do anything about it, because according to the company we ordered it from, that is what the color is supposed to look like, even though it didn't look like that on my or DF's computer. However, if that is the worst thing that goes wrong in planning, I'll be happy. And it is a nice color, even if it's not our color.
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So, we've gotten quite a bit done, and now I feel like I can breathe easier! It's also only 2 weeks until our shower, so that is crazy and exciting too! I have to go to work, but I will be back later or tomorrow with more, and I think I'm going to incorporate a pre-TR in here too, since we pretty much have our itinerary set!
 
im sorry but i had to laugh at the proposal, that is so something that would happen to me, i get cranky easily and poor DBF usually gets the brunt of it:rotfl2: the flowers came out amazing!
 
im sorry but i had to laugh at the proposal, that is so something that would happen to me, i get cranky easily and poor DBF usually gets the brunt of it:rotfl2: the flowers came out amazing!

lol... it's ok, everybody laughs! It's really fun to tell though, and it's definitely something that's uniquely us! :rotfl2: I'm glad you like the flowers!
 
I'm so excited, I'm ordering our flower girls' dresses this week! (Their moms and I finally came to a consensus!) Here's a pic of the dress... it will have a turquoise sash.
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I think they'll look adorable!
My bridesmaids will each have a different dress from Impressions Bridal. They will all be turquoise and cocktail length, but each girl picked out her own dress.
This is my junior bridesmaid's dress, it will be turquoise with a lime green ribbon:
Adriannasdress.jpg

All the girls will have silver shoes, but once again, they'll each pick out their own. I'm SO happy, because each girl has a VERY different style of dress (a couple picked separates) and they all love their dresses! That was my goal in having them pick their own, and I'm glad it came true!

oh, and just so you guys can get to know us better, here's a couple pics from when we went out for St Paddy's Day yesterday! :)

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and here we are on the ferris wheel at Navy Pier in Chicago, the day after the botched engagement...:rolleyes:
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And here is where we were supposed to get engaged, *sigh* :rotfl:
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I have a bunch to do this upcoming week for the shower, it's going to be crazy busy! I'm very excited, though. Here's my dress for the shower (DF picked it out!)
Showerdress.jpg


I still need to get shoes though... I'm thinking black patent leather peep-toe heels maybe? What do you guys think?
 
Hey Joanne... very cute engagement story and you look like such a cute couple!

I love your bridesmaids dresses... can totally relate to having a different colour sash :thumbsup2

Your DF has very good taste in clothes... that looks like a gorgeous dress and i think black heels will look great!
 
Hey Joanne... very cute engagement story and you look like such a cute couple!

I love your bridesmaids dresses... can totally relate to having a different colour sash :thumbsup2

Your DF has very good taste in clothes... that looks like a gorgeous dress and i think black heels will look great!

Aw, thanks! I think I have to go shoe shopping this weekend... :laughing:
 
So, here's what we think our itinerary will look like for the Disneymoon... We're going to be doing a lot of eating, and a lot of tours! We figured we'd treat ourselves now, because when we come back with the (future) kids, we'll definitely not have time for anything but parks! (which is totally fine, but hey, it's our honeymoon, we figured we'd live it up while we could!) Sunday is the day we can get our ADR's I'm SO nervous! I hope we get everything...
So, here we go:
Day 1 - We figured we'd kinda take it easy this day... Lunch at the Grand Floridian Cafe, then off to Typhoon Lagoon for the day, with dinner at California Grill around 9:00pm. I'm going to be jumping out of my skin to get to MK the next day, but I'm sure I will thoroughly enjoy Typhoon Lagoon!
Day 2 - Early in the morning to Epcot for EMH.. then the Segway tour at 9:30 (I'm SO excited about this one! I've been wanting to ride a Segway since I first heard of them!) Then, lunch at Coral Reef (it just looks so cool!) Then, over to MK (finally!) where we'll have dinner at Cinderella's Castle, then watch Wishes! Yay!! (I'm sorry, I can't hold back on the exclamation marks, I'm just unbelievably excited! I can't even type about it without getting hyper and having a ridiculous grin on my face! It's like finding the perfect something, and then having that perfect something covered in glitter!! It's perfect, but better!! AAAHHHH! :banana: I can't hold it in! How will I get through 3 months???!!!) I think I need to hold off on the rest of the itinerary before I give myself a heart attack.... :laughing:
 
:goodvibes love all the updates! You guys look super happy on St Patty Day! The FG and JBM's dresses are adorable, they look great, and the red dress is very classy!

You disney plans are great, the sgway tour looks amazing! I totally want to do it
 
Sorry to all that I abandoned this PJ, but I'm remedying the situation with a very late trip report! Everyone is welcome to take a look. :) The link is in my siggy.
 

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