Gina & Carl's Wedding - 6/22/12 - Swan/Ohana ~ TR Day 4 Wedding Ceremony 8/9

[MrsDuck]

Hi Gina! I'm a Swan bride just jumping on your PJ. I love your newsletters!

I can't wait to read more of your plans!

 

[2dogmom]

Do you have a cricut? I think many brides have tried to cut out those darn Mickey heads by hand and had to give up and buy a cricut, because they just couldn't get a neat finish cutting them by hand.

No, I don't have a cricut, and I don't think I have any local friends with one. I was going to attempt by hand. Crazy, but worth a try. I'm willing to attempt any DIY project once. Worst case, I was thinking of getting some fold up paper hawaiian ones and using those since it is a beach wedding.

Hi Gina! I'm a Swan bride just jumping on your PJ. I love your newsletters!

I can't wait to read more of your plans!

Thanks so much!

 

[Jilian]

Just popping in to check out another swan bride's PJ Congrats on booking Randy, we have him too and booked him directly. Good luck with the Mickey fans, I'm thinking of giving them a try too. I've heard about the etsy seller too and honestly, her prices are great. If I cannot get access to a cricut I might order from her too. I figure it will save me time and probably would be the same price if I had done them myself.

As for lulls, I definitely have them too. I'm just coming off a month long one. I go in phases, some weeks I do tons of stuff and other weeks I do nothing at all.

 

[2dogmom]

In order to plan some more, I need to get a head count of guests that we should be expecting at the wedding in disney. I am planning on sending out my second newsletter. I attached the pages below. What do you think? In the email I plan on asking everyone to get back to me soon (will give a date) if they plan on going to disney for the wedding. It is so hard to plan the after and everything else without knowing how many people will be joining us.

Sorry, the image is a bit hard to read since it is smaller.

 

[tinkerbell 766]

Gina sweetie - I love your latest newsletter!! What an excellent job you have made of it!! Hopefully it will inspire your guests to let you know about numbers to expect!!

 

[2dogmom]

I'm starting to look at dresses. Yes, this is one of the things I am not looking forward to doing. I definitely want to work on a limited budget and want something that will be practical for a beach in Florida in June. I'm leaning toward something like this.

OK, the image is really small. Here is a link to the webpage. Wedding dress

I am planning on going out shopping in a couple of weeks (when I have a free weekend) to see if I find anything similar and at least try on some dresses to see what size I am.


Yesterday I actually purchased a new bigger family car, the Chevy Traverse. Now we will have something comfy to drive down to Florida with.

 

[Jilian]

Great work on the newsletter, and the dress is pretty too. I love the pearl detail. The price is pretty great too!

 

[MrsDuck]

Congrats on the car purchase!!

I love the possible dress! Great update!

 

[tinkerbell 766]

Gina sweetie - Congrats on the car - you guys in the US all seem to have such lovely, big, comfy cars!!! I guess our roads aren't built for them though. I live in the Lake District, and a lot of the roads here are single track and barely narrow enough to get a car down!! I have great fun in the ambulance as you can imagine!!
The dress is gorgeous - very elegant!!

 

[2dogmom]

I went browsing for white dresses this past Saturday, but nothing struck me. I went to Nordstrom's but they didn't have the dress I posted here. I can order it (aka buy it) and try it on and return if it won't work. I decided to wait and see if I find something local. I tried some other big stores, but nothing looked good to me. Next stop will be a visit to a bridal shop, but I will probably wait until right after the holidays for that. One thing I did notice is I want to lose a couple of pounds before the wedding (typical bride thing I guess). Stand in front of 3 way mirrors is not my idea of fun. lol

I sent out emails to a couple of close friends to see if they would be attending my disney wedding and they said yes. It seems like I am pulling teeth with getting this disney count. I guess I need to prepare for a dinner for everyone and hope I can drop the count down the closer I get.

While out I did picked up some basic glass votive holders (for the luau) so I can experiment with making something to spruce them up. I also picked up some other luau basics like cups and table cloth clips. Nothing exciting.

Oh, and Carl told me he wants to invite more people to our luau and was thinking that we will be at around 175 people in my backyard. Ugh!!!! That is going to be pure chaos.

 

[2dogmom]

Reception - ugh, I don't know where to begin. I want to keep it reasonably priced (I guess under $50/pp), need a kids menu for one of my picky children. Would love to do a buffet, but would be fine with a menu. I think it would be best to stay in the area of the Swan because getting 20-30 people over to a different resort (thinking of all of the great restaurants I love on the monorail) may be a bit difficult and possibly time consuming. I will have a car that seat 7 so I guess I could have someone make a couple of trips with people, but again, time consuming. I would love pictures on the monorail thought I emailed Karen and she gave me the contact information for Leo Tarver so I emailed him and am waiting to hear back.

Garden Grove seemed good, but I am not a seafood person (Fridays), but do brides even eat at their reception??? lol But I'm not sure if there is a private or even semi private area there.

Some of the other restaurants there seem pricy. Are fixed price menus always available and are they more reasonable?

If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.


One more question, Karen said some people do the cake before the reception so you make use of the photographer. Has anyone done that? It sounds backwards, but practical

 

[tinkerbell 766]

Hi Gina sweetie
Have you thought about the 'Yachtsman Steakhouse'. The menu looks good, it is within walking distance of the Swan and it has a semi-private area (if that is important to you).

http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/dining/diningdetail.cfm?Restaurant.ID=13

As you may know, we did our cake, champagne, toasts and speeches at a little mini reception at our ceremony site. It was one of the best decisions we made, because:-

We had Randy there to photograph it all - had we done these things at the restaurant, he would have left.

It gave us a chance to get the formalities over with and everyone (particularly DH) could relax with his meal knowing that the speeches etc were all done!!

It gave me a precious period where I was able to mingle with my guests and talk to them all, whilst enjoying the sunshine and our beautiful setting. Again, Randy was able to capture all this with some 'photojournalistic' style photos. Once we moved on to the more formal setting of the GF and our cocktails and meal, chatting to all of our guests became more difficult as we were sat at a long table.

I highly recommend having a small cake/champagne reception - it was one of my favourite parts of the day!!

 

[2dogmom]

Joanne, Thanks. I guess it is all making sense with the order that some things are done in now. I told Carl this morning to not be surprised when things are done out of "traditional" order. Most of this will be a surprise for him too. lol I am the planner, he just needs to show up

I have looked at the menu at Yachtsman. It does sound good. Hmm, if only I had time to go down and do some tastings. I'm still waiting to hear back from Mr. Leo Tarver regarding options at the Swan. I still really love the idea of Ohana (Poly is my fave resort). I just don't know if that is too much to coordinate to get everyone there.

I'm looking into cakes. I think you had used It's Tasty Too! I love their two beachy looking cakes. I think it would go great with my theme on the beach so I am contacting them too. Maybe I should just take all of your details as you have been so helpful

 

[MrsDuck]

Gina: I'm doing my reception at the Garden Grove! I believe they have other non-seafood options available on the buffet! Did you check out their menu for that day??

Also, they don't have a separate area but I was told we could be accommodated on the elevated area by the tree! This works for me-- as long as we are together and near that tree, I'm golden.

I love Garden Grove because the atmosphere is fun, laid back and the food is good. Plus, you get some free character interaction!!

 

[2dogmom]

Gina: I'm doing my reception at the Garden Grove! I believe they have other non-seafood options available on the buffet! Did you check out their menu for that day??

Also, they don't have a separate area but I was told we could be accommodated on the elevated area by the tree! This works for me-- as long as we are together and near that tree, I'm golden.

Faith, I have looked at the menu and there are some things I would eat so I know I would be fine. Carl thought it may be a little too informal. I know he really like Ohana when we went to disney last year so I may call and see if I can book a group there.

Would anyone know how much time to allow between the 4pm wedding, and cake, and dinner if we chose to go to Ohana and would be needing to use public transportation (bus/monorail)? I'm thinking definitely after 7, maybe 8.

 

[MrsDuck]

Faith, I have looked at the menu and there are some things I would eat so I know I would be fine. Carl thought it may be a little too informal. I know he really like Ohana when we went to disney last year so I may call and see if I can book a group there.

Would anyone know how much time to allow between the 4pm wedding, and cake, and dinner if we chose to go to Ohana and would be needing to use public transportation (bus/monorail)? I'm thinking definitely after 7, maybe 8.

How long will your ceremony be?? I estimated ours to be about 30 minutes...

Let's say you're ceremony starts on time at 4 and lasts 4:45 minutes. You'll probably want a half hour or so of pictures and another half hour of cake, at the least. This puts you to roughly 6pm. To allow for transportation time and extra wiggle room I think a 7:45ish ADR would be what I'd book.

 

[megsters]

Im loving for your PJ!! We're seriously considering doing the beach at the Swan too, it just seems like so much fun!

 

[2dogmom]

Im loving for your PJ!! We're seriously considering doing the beach at the Swan too, it just seems like so much fun!

Thanks, I think it will be a lot of fun too!

 

[2dogmom]

What to do? What to do? Reception...

I tried calling about making a reception dining reservation for Ohana after the wedding, but unless I'm going through DFTW, I can't make a reservation until 180 days out I'm guessing it will be the same for any Disney restaurant, even Yacht Club and such.

We thought about Garden Grove, but I'm not sure about that. Someone at Garden Grove said they couldn't guarantee we would have tables together on a Friday night since that is one of their busier days (seafood menu).

Maybe I should see about getting a private room at the Swan, but I want to keep the prices reasonable and I don't know if that will start to get crazy with 20-30 people.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be more than welcome. I want to get this last big thing tied up as soon as possible.

 

[tinkerbell 766]

Gina sweetie - You are right in thinking that you will have to keep to the usual 180 day window for your ADR (even though it is for a special event). I contacted the manager of my chosen restaurant (in my case, Citrico's) well before this time, and they had all our details etc and so when the ADR window opened up, the manager made the reservation at her restaurant on my behalf. That way I pretty much knew that I would get what I wanted!! Viviana ( the Citrico's manager) then e-mailed me to tell me it was all sorted out!! Easy!! I don't know if all the restaurant managers do this, or whether I was just lucky in Viviana.
We also had several restaurants tell us that they couldn't guarantee that we all would be seated together!! In fact, I think Citrico's was the only one I contacted which was happy to guarantee the seating for us. I needed to be sure that all our party was sat together. t meant a lot to us!!
It may be worth contacting the manager of your chosen restaurant directly to see if they can help with your queries and with the ADR.