Mr. and Mrs. Weak Sauce Go the Distance (a completed Disneymoon TR!)

[jecskc]

Oh we wanna hear about the wedding and see more wedding photos, don't you fret. Bring it !!! Loved the photos you already posted. I hope all of your health problems have been resolved and that you are feeling better !!

 

[MelMel11]

Congrats!!! Count me in!!!

 

[marDgreen88]

Yall have such a great story! I always find it fascinating to learn about couples and how their relationships evolve! What a great beginning! (I would love to hear about wedding stuff, by the way!)

 

[mermaid764]

Awww your background story almost brought me to tears, such a sweet way you guys were brought together.

I personally would love to hear about all of the wedding stuff...I think it really adds something extra to TR's when additional information like that is included.

I totally admire you for how you went about buying your dress...I've always said that when my day comes I just can't fathom being one of those girls who spends their down payment on their house on a dress they'll only be in for one day. Your dress is one of the most gorgeous I've ever seen and definitely proves that you can still have perfect on a budget

 

[Leasha_Loves_Disney]

Hello there I just wanted to let you know that I am here for the ride

I read your back story and loved it. Andy and I are about the same age apart and I feel we are a lot like you and your new hubby. I can't wait to read all about your trip seeing as you were there the same time as we were!!! May I just say that your wedding pictures are precious I can just feel the love in them. Congratulations on your wedding I look forward to reading more.​

 

[CW4DW]

Just found your trip report and love hearing about all the background without having to go read the entire previous trip report. Y'all look so happy ~ can't wait for more!

 

[IheartDDuck]

I'm here and can't wait to hear all about it. You guys are so adorable.

 

[RunningGirl]

 

[RachelNinja]

You two are so cute together!! I wish you all the best!

Thank you!

I can't wait to hear more!

We had our very own DisneyMoon back in 1999 and it was heavenly!

I think Disneymoons are the absolute greatest! It was the first vacation we took by ourselves, so even that was so great in and of itself! It's so difficult dealing with WDW with a big group, so this was so much more relaxing and fun.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us! I think relationships that take time to build are the strongest of all!

Well, it looks like Mom really does know best!

I would LOVE to see wedding updates before you start the actual TR! I am obsessed with weddings haha!

You're welcome! I remember your TR with your wedding stuff in it, and I just LOVED reading it and seeing all the pictures. I was just following in your footsteps

More pictures to come! I'll eventually post a ton on Facebook too, haha. I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet!

Oh we wanna hear about the wedding and see more wedding photos, don't you fret. Bring it !!! Loved the photos you already posted. I hope all of your health problems have been resolved and that you are feeling better !!

Yup, I've already got a wedding update to post! My health problems have kind of subsided at this point in that they're under control with 2 kinds of medication. Before Howard and I got back together, I also had 2 major surgeries (one being a cholecystectomy to remove my gallbladder), so that helped in getting back on my feet. Thanks for the well wishes!

Congrats!!! Count me in!!!

YAY, I love having new readers

Yall have such a great story! I always find it fascinating to learn about couples and how their relationships evolve! What a great beginning! (I would love to hear about wedding stuff, by the way!)

I think our story would've been pretty boring if we had just stayed together all that time, haha. I like that we had time apart to realize that no one else was going to be good enough and that we needed to get back together!

Awww your background story almost brought me to tears, such a sweet way you guys were brought together.

I personally would love to hear about all of the wedding stuff...I think it really adds something extra to TR's when additional information like that is included.

I totally admire you for how you went about buying your dress...I've always said that when my day comes I just can't fathom being one of those girls who spends their down payment on their house on a dress they'll only be in for one day. Your dress is one of the most gorgeous I've ever seen and definitely proves that you can still have perfect on a budget

I'm glad you enjoyed reading our story! I agree; I really like reading personal info and stories on other people's TRs too! I just know I get really wordy, haha.

Seriously, the girls who spend a fortune on the dress itself just baffle my mind. And the crazy thing is, I don't even think that all of the expensive ones are even that pretty! They're very over the top, in my opinion. That's not to say that I don't love watching Say Yes to the Dress, haha.

Hello there I just wanted to let you know that I am here for the ride

I read your back story and loved it. Andy and I are about the same age apart and I feel we are a lot like you and your new hubby. I can't wait to read all about your trip seeing as you were there the same time as we were!!! May I just say that your wedding pictures are precious I can just feel the love in them. Congratulations on your wedding I look forward to reading more.​

Yay, thanks for joining! I think it's funny that I already feel like I know you and Andy because of your current TR and the fact that I'm reading your "Crazy Eights" TR too!

Just found your trip report and love hearing about all the background without having to go read the entire previous trip report. Y'all look so happy ~ can't wait for more!

Thanks for joining! I'm glad you're enjoying it!

I'm here and can't wait to hear all about it. You guys are so adorable.

Yay Danielle! I am SO behind on your TRs, it's not even funny!

 

[RachelNinja]

The Lure of a Disney Escape Wedding

You are cordially invited to read this long and wordy trip update about wedding stress and all the DIY projects. Don't worry; I'll add pictures to break up all the text! Haha.

Designed by my guy! All the couples going around the border are important to us in that we saw the movies together or see ourselves in those couples.​

One thing that you need to know before I get into this update is that I was and am extremely excited to BE married to Howard, but I was not looking forward to actually GETTING married. I knew from the start that I was not going to enjoy being the center of attention, AND I knew that I would find issue with the cost of all these things used for just one day! Haha, I just have to write that kind of as a disclaimer so that no one mistakes my venting for not wanting to marry my guy! Okay, let's get started!

My bear from Build a Bear from Howard! His name is Howie Wary Bear (who knows where I got wary bear?), and he loves wearing Disney costumes made for Duffy! Haha. I think HWB is much cuter than Duffy!​

If you ask me what I think is the ideal wedding, I'd have to say that it's the wedding of Jim Halpert and Pam Beesly from The Office. For those of you who don't watch the show or have not seen the episode, Jim and Pam choose to get married in Niagara Falls, hoping that the bulk of people invited (ex. their co-workers) won't attend because it's so far away from their hometown of Scranton, PA. Well, they all end up going, and a few things begin going downhill so Pam calls Jim on the morning of the wedding because she needs to see him even though she is already in her dress. She is upset because her veil tore as it was the one thing that she could control, so to calm her down, Jim takes a pair of scissors and cuts off half of his tie ("Wear a tie much?")! Pam then says the one line that Howard and I said many times in preparation for this wedding, "This is supposed to be our wedding day! Why did we invite all these people?" Jim then takes Pam by the hand, and they slip away from the church to get married on their own by the captain of the Maid of the Mist while getting drenched by the falls!

Our rings and my shoes from Payless! I initially ordered $70+ shoes, but I couldn't justify spending that much for shoes that wouldn't always be seen AND that were uncomfortable! Would you believe that my Payless shoes cost around $15 AND were extremely comfortable? Woohoo for bargains!​

Now I didn't actually want to get married at Niagara Falls, and I didn't want to get married on a boat while my dress and hair got wet, but I was VERY into the idea of having a wedding where it really is all about the bride and groom and their vows to each other. It's not about the fuss of the hairstyle or the right shoes or the many vendors and their contracts. It isn't about having to please parents or figure out who's paying for what (in the Chinese tradition, the groom's parents are supposed to be the ones in charge because the sons are more important than the daughters). Can you see why I was so lured by having an Escape Wedding at Disney? For us, it wouldn't have been an issue at all to invite only 18 people! We would've had a party back home to celebrate with everyone else. We considered this possibility for quite some time.

My bouquet! The family who took care of my flowers go to my church. What's pretty awesome is that the dad and mom were responsible for getting the flowers and materials since the person actually arranging them was a freshman in high school! He has such a talent for these things; he actually does the floral arrangements for our church too! When they asked me what I wanted, I said, "Um, I just don't want it to be heavy. Oh, and no baby's breath." Haha, those were my 2 things because I didn't really care about anything else (I toyed with the idea of silk flowers or paper flowers), and boy, did they deliver! I loved the bouquets, boutineers, and bouquets for the parents.​

Of course, it ended up not being a possibility because we would've gotten in a lot of trouble had we done a destination wedding (ex. having to leave people out, my grandmother not being able to attend). Okay, so maybe we can't get married at Disney, but we'll have a smaller wedding with an informal reception, barbecue style! When I was in HS, I remember watching this wedding special on E! or something where Kimberly Williams-Paisley had a backyard barbecue-type reception where people wore jeans, and everyone ate superbly delicious food. I found a BBQ caterer in a magazine and thought that'd be a great way to go! The messiness of the food made me nix the idea though, so then I shifted over to the idea of having an hor d'ouvres and dessert reception. I mean, how good is wedding food anyway? Wouldn't it make more sense to get trays of California rolls and party dishes of Southwestern Eggrolls and Boneless Buffalo Wings from Chili's? But NO, I got in trouble for that idea as well because weddings are supposed to give the parents an opportunity to "show off" to their friends because their children are getting married.

I love that my flower guys chose yellow for the bridesmaids because I love ANYTHING that's yellow since I can't actually wear yellow clothing without looking sickly pale, haha.​

Alrighty ... at that point, I knew I had to have the typical wedding and reception. Finding the church and venue for the reception was pretty easy because I like all things simple (no stained glass at the church, no marble columns at the venue, and ample natural light in both places). There weren't many options that fit that criteria where I live (most girls where I live have the dresses that cost thousands of dollars and the receptions with the columns and chandeliers). But even with that decision came a ton of crying due to one issue that popped up after another.

No marble anywhere! Yay!​

Howard and I were very stressed during the whole process, and we ended up arguing more than once but always because of an issue caused by someone else! It was never an issue that WE actually had. Oh, the many times that we thought of just going to City Hall to elope! It also didn't help that I was doing a lot of DIY projects to save money. For the centerpieces, I found small vases for 49 cents each at IKEA, and I folded paper flowers. I was NOT about to pay for real flowers! This took AGES to do because I did a lot of experimentation first and then when things were decided, I had to cut the paper, fold the paper, attach the wire stem, and then glue the 5 pieces for each individual flower together. Howard arranged them in the vases using the green floral foam. As we got closer to the wedding and I was so behind, my mom and Howard helped by folding the first few steps for me so I could jump into the more time-consuming part of it. It was definitely worth it though because everyone LOVED the centerpieces, and some were taking them off of other people's tables because they wanted to take them home! In total, each one probably cost only $2-3 to make (haha, not including the time I had to put into it!).

There were about 2-3 of each color so that the whole reception place had different colors.​

I also knew a long time ago that I wanted to have chocolate covered pretzels as part of my wedding favors, so that meant I had to order 45 pounds of the stuff (thank you, Nuts.com, woohoo!), food-safe bags (thank you, clearbags.com, woohoo!), and pink and green twine (thank you, thetwinery.com, woohoo!). By the way, I fully stand behind those 3 companies as I've ordered from the first 2 many times, and I know The Twinery is an excellent company because I'm a crafter. Of course, stuffing all those bags and tying them would take a ton of time, but praise God that I had volunteers willing to take this on just a week before the wedding! I had asked my former student to play the piano and sing with his sister, who is a current student of mine. Their mom (one of my co-workers) volunteered to do the pretzels for me, and she also helped out so much in setting up the church! Okay, so that was taken care of.

I love how they did the bows with the twine!​

What more is there to do? Reception favors! I debated what to get for favors for the longest time. Initially, I wanted to get one Mickey egg ring per family, but it ended up not making much sense since I had a lot of singles going so the whole "family" thing wouldn't have saved me much money, and boy, those things are expensive (I have 2!). Then I switched to heart cookie cutters, but when I decided on that, they were already sold out when there was some super sale with free shipping. Okay, brainstorm, I need a new favor. I looked at coasters and other useful items, but nothing really jumped out at me. Then I came up with the perfect idea!

We asked that the favors be put around the centerpiece to fill up the empty table, but they stuck in the napkins instead. Haha, whoops to the almost empty table, but I didn't care.​

I'm a papercrafter (visit my blog at loveandsushi.blogspot.com or find "Love and Sushi" on FB), and so I decided to make a set of 4 cards for each person in a cute little package! Since it was crunch time when I actually spent time mass producing cards, I actually was only able to do 2 cards per person. One card was a stamped and colored image, and the other card had a very simple Cricut cut. I couldn't make any of them complicated because there were a ton of cards to cut, score, fold, color, adhere, and stamp (I have a personalized stamp for the back of my cards).

Just one of the samples of the Cricut cards. I love my Cricut! Greatest investment ever that I technically didn't pay for. Thank you credit card reward points!!!​

For whatever reason, we wanted to make the favor even cuter by adding a personalized pen! This was one thing I didn't do as Howard designed the pen with Cinderella Castle on it! We were upset because the exact design couldn't be used (pink and green star swirling through the sky), and then we were even more upset when we got the pens and the green star going straight up was not on the pen at ALL. Those were our colors, and it would be a clear indication that it was designed by Howard as opposed to just taken from a stock of choices. Oh well. It still looked really cute with the 2 cards that we then had to stuff in bags (again from clearbags.com; I buy stuff from them in bulk).

Had enough of all this DIY stuff? Well, we weren't completely done yet! I love the personalized guestbooks that have questions and room to draw a picture. I wanted each guest to get a page to fill out (haha, a bunch of our guests were like, "This is like homework/a test!" because I'm a teacher and all). Howard and I filtered through a ton of question possibilities, and then he designed the entire page since it was easier and cheaper to print ourselves from CatPrint as opposed to buying one from an online company.

We read the responses the moment we got back from our wedding, and we cracked up because some people were just HILARIOUS!​

The last DIY project (at least from what I remember) was placecards. I can't stand that Michaels sells placecards that are literally just cardstock cut and scored. Um, I'm not paying for that. So I did it myself and added a Mickey head, of course! The Mickeys are popped up from the rest of the placecard to give it some dimension. Then I wrote all the names and tables by hand.

I hate having to post my own photo here after all the great ones from our photographers!​

Well, I guess that gives you a glimpse as to why I was so stressed out! It was really more so due to other issues and not exactly the DIY stuff, but the other things made it so that I couldn't focus on or enjoy the DIY stuff as much as I would have liked. Now that I've been through the planning stages myself, I think it'll be much easier to help others! Haha, my cousins are excited that now I know how to handle planning a wedding because then they won't have to worry!

Anyway, thanks for reading! I promise that I'll have real trip report stuff up soon! I plan on doing one more wedding update with more photos from the actual day since this post was just about the details. Have a magical day!

 

[stephielela]

Subbing! Your story is great, and I am glad you shared it with us!! I'm so happy for you two, it sounds like it's been a long road! Congratulations!

 

[Bridora]

Your wedding photos are beautiful! You guys looked to be enjoying yourselves the whole time!

I'm glad you were able to work in some personal touches via your DIY projects. Having things that like add something special to the wedding, I think.

 

[jane2073]

Wow, that is a lot of stuff to work on before a wedding, PLUS teaching!

Everything looks lovely!

 

[NeverlandClub23]

I'm here! Can't wait to read more and LOVE hearing about all the details! My DFi and I were separated for about 10 years before we got back together. It's amazing what a little time will do!

You're crafts are amazing! I'm still debating what I'm going to DIY for my wedding, but then I go on Etsy and I'm like, I can pay someone to do it so much better than what I could do . And, BTW, I'm TOTALLY with you on the costs of wedding stuff. I bought my wedding dress off of Ebay and I think annoyed everyone in the process. I'm sorry, I refuse to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on stuff for one day, even if we can afford it.

I always love your TR's 'cause of your honesty and details. Relaxing Disney trips are some of the best! I'm also interested to hear if you enjoyed staying onsite more than off.

I remember reading about your trip to King's Dominion and the Williamsburg, VA area (which is where I happen to live) and it's amazing to keep up with someone (albeit online) and see how their lives grow and change .

 

[NancyLuvsMickey]

I totally agree that the wedding should be about the bride, groom and their vows to each other... But completely understand how the parents want to "show off" their children...

I love all your DIY items you did for the wedding!!! Since you couldn't be married at Disney, you did the next best thing ~ bring Disney to your wedding!!!

Wow!!! Your wedding pictures are amazing!!! I cant' wait to see the rest...

 

[Cinderella16]

Thank you! We're still totally loving this honeymoon phase of our marriage. I know people say the 1st year is tough, and I know it will be especially with so many changes, but we're enjoying even the mundane things about life because we're finally together! Ooo, I see that you have a PTR started for July?!? Haha, and you're gonna finally finish your old TR??? YA!

Haha! Yes, I MUST finish the TR from 2010. I can't believe I let it slip away...but you know how busy the life of a teacher can be.

Now, back to your report...
Love all your DIY/Disney touches, everything looked amazing, but I know how stressful it can be! It can be such a relief when the wedding is over and you can actually enjoy being MARRIED!

 

[mermaid764]

Wow your DIY projects turned out amazing.....I definitely think they look like they were worth all the time invested in them.

The chocolate covered pretzels for a favour is such a fun and unique idea and they look adorable all put together in the bags

 

[reelmom]

Your wedding pictures are beautiful. I can't wait to see more. The DIY items are amazing. You are truly talented.

 

[JolllyHoliday]

I don't post too often, but I always enjoy your trip reports. Congratulations on your marriage. The pictures are wonderful. Can't wait to read more.

 

[Belle83]

Can't wait to hear about your trip! Lovely wedding pics.