Dreams Really Do Come True! - Our Wedding Trip - Spring 2011

[torsie24]

Hi Everyone!!

The time has finally come for me to start doing my Wedding and Disneymoon TR!!

I'm really excited to do so, although I must admit it went by in such a blur that it's not going to be quite as photo heavy as I was imagining beforehand.

About the TR

I'm going to do this TR the American way and have it all in one big post. There's an index at bottom of this post linking to each installment.

In case you wanted to read my PTR it's here but there's not much on it to write home about, and I'll probably repeat myself here!

About the trip

We spent an amazing 3 weeks in WDW, staying at 4 resorts, it was broken down like this.

March 24th - 28th

At Animal Kingdom Lodge with lots of friends and family and lots of early mornings and commando touring of each park!

March 28th - 31st

Staying at the Grand Floridian Main Building, with the wedding on the 29th.

We only visited MK during this time.

March 31st - April 11th

We stayed at the Boardwalk, spent a LOT of time at EPCOT and plenty at DHS, but with a few trips to water parks, DTD, AK and Universal thrown in. Most of this time was happily spent with the friends and family who were left, although for the last couple of days we were down to jsut the two of us.

April 11th - 14th

Bay Lake Tower with an amazing MK view.

We chilled out a lot during this time, had a wonderful meal at CG, and wandered to the MK a lot. A wonderful way to end our trip.


Index

Day 0 and Day 1, Part 1 - The night before and the Flight
Day 1, Part 2 - Finally, back at AKL
Day 2, Part 1 - Magic Kingdom
Day 2, Part 2 - Two Yummy Meals
Day 3 - Animal Kingdom - Part 1
Day 3 - Animal Kingdom - Part 2
Day 3 - Suit fitting, CSR and a miserable trip to DTD
Day 4, Part 1 - Future World
Day 4, Part 2 - World Showcase and my favourite bear.
Day 4, Part 3 - Welcome Meal at Whispering Canyon
Day 5 - Part 1 - Hollywood Studios in the RAIN!
Day 5 - Part 2 - Checking into the Floridian!
Day 5, Part 3 - My last night as a single lady

Our Wedding Day
Waking up, breakfast, starting to get ready
My flowers arrive!
My handsome groom!
All dressed and ready!
The Ceremony Begins!
My Dad and Jack's Mum get the ceremony off to a good start
We're married!!!!!
Just Married Photos
Let's Eat!
Two Very Special Guests
Another surprise event!
More yummy food and a little bit of craziness!
Wishes and the end of the night

Day 7, Part 1 - Our first married morning
Day 7, Part 2 - A sad goodbye.
Day 7 - Part 3 - Magic Kingdom in the RAIN! And a bit of boat drama!
Day 8 - Part 1 - Checking into the Boardwalk!
Day 9, Part 1 - Ohana means Family
Day 7, Part 2 - Typhoon Lagoon and Illuminations

[torsie24]

DAY 0

It was finally here, the night before we left!!!

I'd been wondering what it'd feel like for over 2 years, and suprisingly it felt about the same as before any other big trip, mainly me worrying about a good few things in this order:

1 - Leaving the cats, the longest Boo has been left is 3 nights, and Bella 14 nights, but normally my parents look after her. This time though they were coming with us. Luckily I have a wonderful, cat loving neighbour who was going to spoil them rotten in my absence. It still didn't stop the guilt though!

2 - Getting to the airport on time and them letting me through with my (BIG) wedding dress as hand luggage, and it being pulled out of the box at security and Jack seeing it!

3 - The flight, I'm not scared of flying but I never get excited about 10 hours on a plane, I'm far too impatient for such things!

4 - Immigration and collecting our cases at the other end, especially as there was a lot of wedding stuff in our cases!

Basically I was worried about everything up until boarding the Magical Express!

So....

I finished work and headed straight over to my Mum & Dad's to get my wedding dress and squeeze it into its travel box.

Mum and I managed to do it pretty well and I headed back home with it all wrapped up.

Jack and I had tea and then awaited the arrival of his best man, David, and his lovely wife, Karen who live in Birmingham but were flying from Gatwick with us, so they drove down the night before.

They arrived with us at about 9:30pm so after a cup of tea and some excited squealing from Karen and I we all called it a night.


DAY 1, Part 1 - The Flight!

I was expecting to get zero sleep, but surprisingly slept until 30 minutes before the alarm at 5.30am! I decided that was as good as I was going to get, so checked Facebook and stuff on my phone before getting up and ready.

The cab was coming at 7.30am and it turns out that we were all awake before 6, so we had time for showers and a bit of a chill out before our cab arrived.

Here are Dave and Karen ready to go:



And Jack holding the Dress!



And my parting photo of Bella:



At 7:25am we decided we may as well wait outside, and I waved goodbye to our home.

Within 30 seconds the taxi was coming up our drive, we had the loveliest driver ever who tackled our huge pile of luggage into the car, checked we had everything we needed (I think he's done this before!) and then set of to Gatwick.

We arrived in under 20 minutes and headed straight to Virgin bag drop.

As we were walking away from the desk we saw my parents get into the line, so the 4 of us waited for them to drop off their bags before we all headed through security. None of our bags (and more importantly the dress) were held up, and none of us beeped. So we were through fine! Phew!

First thing on the agenda was breakfast.

We went to the Bridge Bar which was nice and quiet, grabbed a nice table for 6 and my Dad treated us all to breakfast.

Dave (the eater) went for the biggest breakfast on the menu! While the rest of us chose breastfast sandwiches, rolls or toast.

Now we're married I can post embarassing photos of Jack, like this one of him and his egg and bacon roll!



After breakfast we had enough time for Karen, Mum and I to browse Next and Duty Free, I bought perfume for myself (Love by Chloe) and aftershave for Jack (Bang by Marc Jacobs) and my Mum bought a top in Next.

Then the boys went off and bought some magazines (Puzzler for me!) and then it was time to head to the gate. I always think airport time passes really quickly!

We had a bit of a queue at the gate, but Dave, Karen, Jack and I were soon through. Mum and Dad were a bit behind us as Dad had stopped on the way down to the gate to take a phone call.

When it was there turn to come through to the gate Mum was stopped for extra security screening and Dad tried to stand next to her and got told off by the lady! So he headed over to us giggling and abandoned Mum with the scary bag checking lady.

I decided to take an impromtu "at the gate" photo, so here it is:



Not too much later we were boarding the plane. We were all sat together at the back.

Dad was quick to start 'helping' Mum with her In Flight Entertainment system....



Dave and Karen have never done a long haul flight before, but are looking excited!



The flight was uneventful. Dave, Karen, Jack and I all watched 'Tangled' which I thought was great!! Although for the first 10 minutes the IFE was having some kind of hissy fit and kept changing channels, so I got a nice mix of that and The Kings Speech. I'll get the Blu-Ray once it's released so I can finally see the start!

We did some puzzles, read a bit, I played on my DS, Jack and I watched the last few episodes of True Blood on the iPad and Mum watched Black Swan.

Lunch/Dinner was a shepherds pie which wasn't too bad, and they brought round the normal Choc Ices, which Dave and Karen were pleased with, but I can;t have becuase of the dairy. Boo!

It didn't seem too long until there were lots of lakes out of the window:



And then the seatbelt sign came back on!! I got really excited at this point and decided it was something that needed photographing. (When looking back at the photos it took me a while to work out why I had a photo of the toilet sign, before remebereing it was because of the seat belt lights!)



We touched down fine, and were soon getting off the plane!!

[Sapper383]

Yay...I've been waiting for this

...and very oddly, I just commented on another thread about you doing a trip report

great start

[eeyorefanuk]

Yeah so excited about your report, good first day. look forward to more

[sam_rogers]

yay!!! can't wait to read more

[Tinkerbellgal]

I'm here

I've been waiting for this and I can't wait to see what you got up to.

[jjk]

great start, really looking forward to reading more

[torsie24]

Originally Posted by Sapper383

Yay...I've been waiting for this

...and very oddly, I just commented on another thread about you doing a trip report

great start

Hee hee, I saw that, must be psychic!!

Originally Posted by eeyorefanuk

Yeah so excited about your report, good first day. look forward to more

Thank you!! I hope it's not a disappointment!

Originally Posted by sam_rogers

yay!!! can't wait to read more

Thanks Sam, I can't believe how close your trip is now! Next installment up soon!

Originally Posted by Tinkerbellgal

I'm here

I've been waiting for this and I can't wait to see what you got up to.

Yaaay! Welcome!

Originally Posted by jjk

great start, really looking forward to reading more

Thanks Rachel. Next post up in the next minute or two. Xx

[torsie24]

Day 1, Part 2 - Finally, we're back at AKL!

Up next was my biggest worry:

Customs and baggage reclaim!

As we were right at the back of the plane I had visions of a 90 minute queue, but actually it moved really well and we were through in about 20 minutes.

Had a bit of a wait for bags, and as they were coming round on 2 carousels it was a little hectic, but we got them and were onto the next step - the Monorail!

Luckily we just about managed to handle our cases ourselves, and took them on the ride with us, meaning we would get to the DME that bit quicker!

Once in the main Terminal we headed over to the B side and downstairs, where Karen and I stopped to buy some water and Mountain Dew, before heading along to the DME desk.

There was no one else there, so we checked in fine and were soon boarding our bus! Exciting times!





We sat back and enjoyed the movie, and were soon arriving at WDW! Yaaay!

First drop off was CBR:



Then Pop:



Then AKL!! I was too excited (and had way too much to carry) at this point for photos I'm afraid.

It was so amazing to be back at Jambo House, and I was even mroe excited for our friends, and my Parents to be there, and to see just why I thought it was so magical.

My Mum (who I get my excitedness from) was in awe as soon as we arrived, and we just stood in the lobby and took it all in,

There wasn't any wait for check-in, so we took it in turns and all exchanged room numbers before heading off to discover what our views were of!

We were all on the 5th floor in the villas, as we were staying on points, so I was excited to see the studio, as last trip we were in a hotel room as opposed to DVC. (We think the studios are much nicer, love having the extra space and sofa and kitchenette.)

Here is a map of the room numbers.

Jack and I had another awesome Arusha view, from the Zebra trail right by the elevators. (Room 5501)

This is our view:



You can see our previous room in this one, bottom floor, 3 away from the lobby. It was really nice to be up high this time!


Mum and Dad were in 5502 across the hall with an Uzima view, which had lots of giraffes and felt really quiet and peaceful compared to Arusha, it was really lovely.

And Dave and Karen were opposite us in 5321, it was great fun phoning them, saying "Get on the Balcony!" and the waving to each other across the Savanah!!

Once we'd got settled, and changed into hot weather clothing (and my Minnie Bride ears and Disney Bride top I had made), Jack and I had the task of activating our Annual Passes.

This can't be done at a resort, so we would have to go to a park to do it.

Luckily AK was open until 7 and it wasn't quite 6pm, so we headed out through Zawadi (grabbing a much needed bottle of water) and down to the buses, luck was on our side and an AK one was there!

I was so happy to hear the Disney Transport mans voice once again, and we were soon at AK.

No one was at the Guest Relations office, and after a little while we'd gotten our passes (Goofy on mine and Mickey on Jack's), bought our TiW card and headed back to the bus stops.

At the AKL stop there was another Disney bride who had gotten married a few days before, she asked where my top was from and was very complimentary when I said I'd made it! (Thank you!)

We had a chat about our weddings and then the bus turned up.

We were back at Jambo house by 6.45pm! How good was that?

We stopped at Bell services to see if our GG order had arrived (was scheduled 7-9pm as I thought we'd be getting in a lot later than we did) which it had! So we asked to have it brought up to the room.

When we got in we called Karen and Dave to say we were back and it was on it's way over. So they headed around to us, by the time they were there so was the bell man and our food!

We unpacked, knocked on Mum & Dad's door to deliver their Coke, water and snacks but no answer, and then between us lugged Karen and Daves food and drink around to the other side of the resort.

I admired their room and view for a bit, and then we gave them the tour of AKL!

This is their view from 5321



First stop was Zawadi as I'd declared the next day (MK) as "Mickey T-shirt Friday" and Karen didn't have one! So Dave was a good husband and bought her a lovely one. (Which will be modeled by Karen in the next installment.)

We then showed them Boma and Jiko, the pool and finally went into the Mara.

Jack and I decided to share a Turkey Ciabatta and fries, and Karen and Dave shared a flatbread. It was also time for us to buy our refillable mugs! I was a little too excited to get a pink one of the new design!

As we were paying my parents strolled in, so once we'd all gotten our food and mugs we sat outside and chatted about the day and our plans for the next morning before saying goodnight.

Back in the room I had a bath, unpacked the bits we needed for the next day, and finally went to bed about 9.30pm.

[simba_one]

I've been looking forward to this TR for ages... Great start!

[jjk]

lovely, Hubby and I love AKL its just so relaxing, glad you all got good views xx

[tinks_1989]

more please x

[Tinks1984]

Wooohooo!!!!

I've been rather looking forward to this one appearing Victoria!! Thank goodness for FB previews

Loved reading about the two instalments so far, and those views from AKL look amazing. It makes me realise why my DF wants to stay there so badly when we go for our wedding trip, I just don't think we'll be able to save enough. Then again, we may do a couple of days there? Hmmmmm...

[jopaly]

I've subscribed can't wait for more

[torsie24]

Originally Posted by simba_one

I've been looking forward to this TR for ages... Great start!

Haha, thank you Simba One (in Safari man's voice!! Love your name!)

Originally Posted by jjk

lovely, Hubby and I love AKL its just so relaxing, glad you all got good views xx

It's Jack's favourite Resort, he missed it pretty much as soon as he checked out! I think our next trip will definitely be back at AKL unless I can get a few nights at the GF added on too. Definitely my favourite!

Originally Posted by tinks_1989

more please x

No worries, Leanne. I'm in a TR kinda mood right now.

Originally Posted by Tinks1984

Wooohooo!!!!

I've been rather looking forward to this one appearing Victoria!! Thank goodness for FB previews

Loved reading about the two instalments so far, and those views from AKL look amazing. It makes me realise why my DF wants to stay there so badly when we go for our wedding trip, I just don't think we'll be able to save enough. Then again, we may do a couple of days there? Hmmmmm...

Weee, thanks Rachel! DEFINITELY stay at AKL, have a look at renting points, makes it a lot more affordable.