Meredith & Matt's PJ-June 19th, 2011 Germany/LSS - Completed TR and Blog Feature!

irishwishes

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
I've been all over these boards for months and have gone back and forth about starting a PJ. I'm not really a writer and have always preferred to take a test than write a paper. I've seen so many brides get great advice and think a PJ is an awesome way to chronicle your planning and wedding so I'm breaking down and starting one.

Now a little about us....

Bride: I'm 25 years old and work as a pediatric emergency department nurse.

Groom: He's 25 too, actually he's 8 days older than me, and he works as an Athletic Trainer for a high school. In case you're wondering Athletic Trainers are the people you see running on to the field during a game when someone gets hurt. He'll probably be going back to PT school after the wedding. Wow his intro is so much better than mine...I must live a boring life.

Anyway, we met at Penn State our sophomore year and we were both Athletic Training majors. We didn't start dating until our Junior year since he was a taken man our whole Sophmore year. Both our families are HUGE Penn State fans and we all bleed blue and white. Right after college I went to nursing school in Philly for a year and he started grad school at Delaware. Well now we're finally done with school for now and found some time to get married. :yay:

Me and Matt at a wedding recently
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Engagement Story: The DF and I visited Disney World together this past February. I've been obsessed with Disney all my life and wanted to take him down there since he hadn't been since he was really young. While we were in Disney I kept seeing bridal parties around the parks and told my DF that I REALLY wanted to get married in Disney. He responded by saying yea we can look into it, it sounds really cool. I immediatetly told him to not respond with any form of yes if he had no intention of really exploring the possibility because I would run with it. Now we weren't engaged at this point, but apparently the ring was ordered and was trying to figure out how to propose. I took a lot of video of Wishes and he decided right then that he was going to use that video to propose after we got home.

Now for the actual proposal. Wilimington, DE has a St. Patrick's Day celebration every year on a Saturday in March. It's an awesome day with a parade in the morning and then nuns tap kegs at St. Patricks church. It's all you can drink until the kegs are kicked. Then the day continues with a bar tour through Wilmington. My sister, MOH, lives in Wilmington and her and her husband were in on the engagement. It was a rainy day so we were wearing crap clothes with ridiculous fake eye lashes and boppers They knew it was happening that night once my DF got down after work sometime that evening. All day I heard from both of them, you need to eat because you have to last ALL day. I thought nothing of this since we do this every year and it's always so much fun. The DF arrived around dinner and my sister made up some excuse to run and errand with her husband. I was already well on my way at this point so I was oblivious. The DF called me upstairs and showed me a video he made of the Wishes fireworks with a bunch of pictures of us in Disney, with the end asking me to marry him. Of course I said yes and immediatley called my sister to yell at her for letting me put the ridiculous eye lashes on earlier that day.

First Engagement pic, eyelashes and all
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Wedding Planning

Of course I immediately started looking into having a Disney wedding and to be fair I did look into having a wedding at home. Both my extended family and my DF's extended family are pretty big and it's an invite one you invite them all. So it was either going to be a 150+ at home wedding or less then 100 person Disney wedding. Then I found out you could have a brunch reception in Disney, along with mickey waffles, for a lot cheaper per person than anywhere in Philly and I was sold. It took a little more convincing for the DF and my family, but they're now all really excited about Disney.

We've booked our ceremony at the Germany Pavilion because the DF's family is all German and then a brunch reception immediately following at LSS on June 19th, 2011. We were assigned Ken Weaver as our wedding planner and planning things since.

At the Germany Pavilion, I think it's so cute
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Enjoying delicious German beer and pretzel!
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Loved the Living Seas! Especially the gulls outside saying "mine"
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Love your engagement story! It sounds like he put so much effort into it! :goodvibes

Can't wait to see what a wedding in Germany will look like!
 


Congratulations and welcome! The Germany pavilion is a really unique place to hold your event, I look forward to reading all about it!
 
I got my dress before we even booked the wedding since I had to wait until 12 months out. I know it was a bit early but it was the only thing I could get excited for before we could sign the LOA. My sister and I went out to a few stores and tried on a bunch of dresses. She fell in love with a Romona Keveza dress, I put it on my maybe list but thought it was a little bit heavy. I was really looking for an A-line, light weight dress that was super comfortable and didn't feel constricted in. So on one of my days off I was checking out some stores and saw that a store in Philly was having a Romona Keveza trunk show. I called the store and asked if they had the dress my sister loved and figured I should try it on again, since something about it was so great. Well, when I had it on it really wasn't doing anything for me. Even though I was by myself, I tried on a few more dresses since I was already there. I told the consultant what I wanted in the dress and she pulled THE dress. When I put it on I immediately thought, well I don't need to try on anymore and that was it.

I really like this dress because it's so light I can wave it around with one hand and it's so comfortable. I also really like that you can't see any zippers or buttons. I had tried on a dress similar to this at another store but didn't like it because it had buttons all the way down the back. The flower part pulls over and hooks on like a bra so it hids the zipper area...I LOVE IT!!

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Yay for another LSS bride! I love seeing what other LSS brides plan on doing with the room :)

Your dress is beautiful and you look amazing in it... great choice!
 
Congrats from one Philly girl to another! I can't want until it's time for me to start planning! :cool1:
 
Pretty pretty dress. It's hard to tell exactly what color it is with the lighting - is it more beige than a light yellow?
 
Thanks for all the compliments!! Everyone is so nice on these boards :goodvibes.

The dress is listed as ivory. The lighting in the dressing room was terrible. I should have taken some pictures out in the main room with the natural light. In the natural light it actually looked lighter than the typical ivory I've tried on.
 
So I'm not starting to get nervous about my guest count and budget. More of our families and are telling us they want to come and how excited they are. I've already had to cut out a LOT of our friends because our families are so big. Now that more people are saying yes, I'm getting nervous for the capacity limit of 104 at LSS. The big reason I got my DF to say yes to a Disney wedding was because of the LSS so changing venues is out. My ideal guest count is LESS then 90 and I'm really hoping it gets down to that. We had to invite 124 with the fams being so big. I just have to remind myself that people are going to back out when push comes to shove and it will all work out.

I've come up with things that are important to me and not....
Important - Music with at least a DJ, we love to dance
Pictures, I really wants pictures in Epcot before the ceremony
Open Bar with beer, wine, mimosas and bloody mary's
Delicious food, I love brunch and not worried about Disney food
Good chairs for pics during the ceremony
Not Important - Special transportation
cocktail hour
extravegant welcome party
over the top decorations

Budget ideas I have are...

Riding bus to the ceremony, I don't care about a limo and who sees me before the wedding, they're going to see at some time. As long as there's air conditioning I don't care.

Cutting the pre-reception and doing pics with the bridal party before the ceremony. It won't be as hot and we can get right to the reception. Since it's going to be a brunch, do you really need a cocktail hour breakfast?

Having BOC bar and having mimosas and bloody mary's as signature drinks. Will the champagne end up being too expensive??

I would really love to have a dessert party but it doesn't look in the cards. We are planning on just going back to Epcot a couple ours after the reception and drinking around the world. Anyone is welcome to join. Downfall - no wedding dress in Epcot :(

Rehearsal dinner for immediate family and bridal party. Welcome gathering at resort poolside with some finger foods or pizza. Anyone is welcome to stop by who's interested.

I'd like to do simple centerpieces that are small. Since the tables at the LSS are pretty small anyway so anything too big would take over the table. I'm not really particular about flowers and don't even know if I want flowers anyway. I heard of other people renting snowglobes from Disney as their centerpieces and was just wondering if anyone knew how much they were.

Two teir cake with supplemental sheet cake. I really like the Mad Hatter cake and my DF likes Mickey's Delight

That's all I can think of now. If anyone else has any suggestions I welcome ALL ideas!
 
I LOVE that dress!!! So elegant and I love the flower!! I looks beautiful on you!!

I love all your plans so far!! Can't wait to hear more
 

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