ONE BRIDE'S DREAM. Carol & Iain's wedding 5/8/08 SBP, Chefs Domaine, wishes. COMPLETE

[Maddiesmum03]

OK, it's time to get started on this report. We have been back from our magical trip for just over one week and we are now back to reality, and work, though the excitement doesn't end here, we are having a Luau party at home next month to celebrate with family and friends, so I have plenty of new "projects" to work on!!!!!!!!!!

I did start a thread last year after our engagement and once our wedding was booked, but then hit a "hitch". I was scared to post anything I had made or planned to do as I didnt want it to spoil the surprises should the rest of the wedding party read it. So I think the best way to start now is to give a quick rundown of my plans. Let me just say that the wedding day was everything we hoped it would be, and more. If I had to plan everything again there is nothing I would change. The hitches along the way were minor ones and yes there were a few stressful moments BUT the sun shone, the Gods looked down on us and we had the most perfect start to married life anyone could wish for...........

THE WEDDING PARTY
The Bride, me, 45
The Groom, Iain, 41
Father of the Groom, Derek
Best Man, Ade, Iains ( and now mine! ) Brother in Law
Matron of Honor, Mel, Iains sister
Flower girl, Maddie, 4 , our daughter
Little little flower girl, Ellen, 19 months, Mel & Ade's daughter
Page boy, Lewis, 4, Mel & Ade's son

THE WEDDING
12 o clock, Sea Breeze Point, Disney's Boardwalk resort
8th may 2008
reception at The Chefs Domaine, Citrico's, Disney's Grand Floridian resort
followed by wishes cruise aboard the Grand 1

Officiated by; Rev Jack Day - A good choice and a lovely man.

Photographer; The wonderful Randy Chapman, our photos are out of this world and by the end of day he felt like a friend! There will be more words of praise when I post my photos!

Hair and makeup: Anna, makeovermajic, This Lady is a real star, my hair was much better than the trial I had at home and I loved my makeup. She arrived to the minute we arranged and made the whole experience of getting ready fun and relaxing. I would recommend her to everyone.

Brides spa day; the Mandara spa, Dolphin resort. Expensive, but enjoyable and the end results were good, my pedi still looks good even now.

Dress steaming, Carolyn allans - Ok, but when I phoned to see if I could
change my appointment time, they had no record of my original appointment, even though I had the conformation email in my hand!!!!!!!!. Also, I did find a small snag on my dress as I was about to put it on and had to get the needle and thread out quickly ( no mean feat with acrylic nails ) This may or may not have happened during it's steaming, but I certainly hadn't noticed it before.

 

[Maddiesmum03]

MY PROJECTS ( AKA if you want something doing, do it yourself! )

The invitation packs

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These went out just after christmas. A fair bit of work went into them,but at least we only had to send out two!!!!!
The label on the front of the box says "caution this invitation contains pixie dust( well it is a Disney wedding) " and I sprinkled star shaped confetti into the box. The invitations were decorated with gold wire hearts I made from what was left over after making my tiara. Under the invitation, wrapped in tissue were all the information sheets about the parks and the boardwalk and Vero beach resorts together with a few extra stickers and a disney luggage tag.

My Tiara
Iv'e posted this before as I was so pleased with how it turned out. I've never made anything like this and my hands were sore for days afterwards, but it was worth it as it fit my colour scheme exactly and I even managed to include my "something blue" in the form of a hidden Mickey!

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[DecemberBride]

Can't wait for more details! I was debating the Mandara spa for my "get ready" spa mani/pedi and possibly masssage... any more details would be awesome for me... I'm now at Saratoga Springs Spa because I heard it was newer and better than Grand Floridian, but I saw the Dolphin had a spa now, so who knows!

 

[Maddiesmum03]

Welcome packs - I had lots of grand Ideas as to making up baskets, but as it all came down to what I could fit in my suitcases this is what I ended up doing

A white dressing gown for everyone - I ordered the children's ones with their names on from a website and took them in our case, for the adults I got Hollywood tower hotel ones from the TOT shop ( my fave ride EVER ), but the theming was lost on Iains Dad, he actually thought I'd taken them from a hotel we'd stayed at previously!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the dresing gowns came in very handy!

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A bottle of Whiskey and extra perk coffee for Iains Dad

Lanyards with a few Disney pins for trading for Maddie and Lewis

Newsletters - these weren't very artistic compared to some that have been posted on this site and are not worthy of a photo but they said thank you for coming and listed everthing that we were paying for as a way of saying thank you. I wrote something along the lines of " anything listed here is on us as our way of saying how much we appriciate you comming, we have plans for the rest of our stay here and you are welcome to join us, however if you have other plans thats ok too!"
There was also a run down of the schedule for the wedding day and a little bit about the resorts along with space to use as a planner for anything else( there was a big note on saturday " do not plan anything for this day - tba" as we had arranged for Mel and Ade to have a balloon flight as a present which they wouldn't find out about until the wedding day!)

We planned for a meal at Le cellier the night before the wedding, a spa day for myself and Mel, obviously everything on the wedding day itself and the Luau over at the Polynesian resort a couple of days after the wedding. We were also going to do a "grooms day" with a ride round over at the Richard Petty experience, but called that off as it was really for the benefit of Ade who is a real petrol head, but due to a problem with his retina ( he very nearly didn't make it to the wedding at all ) he wouldnt have been able to ride so we had another park day instead.

 

[Maddiesmum03]

Can't wait for more details! I was debating the Mandara spa for my "get ready" spa mani/pedi and possibly masssage... any more details would be awesome for me... I'm now at Saratoga Springs Spa because I heard it was newer and better than Grand Floridian, but I saw the Dolphin had a spa now, so who knows!

more details to come I promise, I can't remember what some of the treatments were called, so I'll look it up then let you know, but I was pleased with everything I had done. I had my brows shaped and face waxed 3 days before the wedding, paid for Iain to have some treatments the day after, then the day before the wedding Mel and I spent the best part of the day there....the only thing was half way in to relaxing, sitting in their lounge drinking iced water, I suddenly realise I have Maddies park pass in my bag IN THE SPA LOCKER and Iain would be over at the Animal Kingdom trying to get in without it!!!!!!!!!. So I spend the entire time having my manicure and pedicure stressing about it. When we get back to the room it turns out Iain realised straight away and got our little starlet to LIE and say she's lost it, so they checked the details and issued her with a new ticket

 

[accountingbabe08]

Congratulation to you and your new husband

 

[jennifaerie]

I can't wait to see the pictures!

 

[Maddiesmum03]

Congratulation to you and your new husband

Many thanks. I'm not sure what the problem is with my photos, I imported them into the kodak gallery and when I wrote the report they were showing. In fact if I am logged into Dis they show for me. Then when I opened a new window, there were just the anoying white squares with red x's, is this what everyone else can see?
I'll get an expert to help me fix this.( AKA my 18 year old son !!!!!!!! )

sorry everyone!

 

[orangetiggs]

yes i cant see them either.

great report so far though, cant wait for more

 

[Maddiesmum03]

I hope I have ironed out the glitch and the photos now show, although I seem to have another problem, the Photos Randy took are of such good quality the file size is to big to upload to the photo hosting sites, so the only thing I can think of doing is cropping them. If anyone has any better ideas, I would be very grateful!!!!!!!!!

on with the report

MY DRESS - not really a project, more of a work in progress. I found a dress I liked just after we decided to get married, last January, from Monsoon. I phoned them up and asked how long it would be current stock for. I was told " if you want it, then buy it now, because once they're gone we won't be stocking any more"
so, I had to decide what size to buy by guessing how much weight I hoped to lose between then and the wedding. You can imagine how difficult that was, but in the end it paid off. I lost 49 lb and my dress fit!!!
the last week was a bit scary though because it was hard to stick to low calorie food once we were away. I ended up trying the dress on the night before the wedding just to make sure I could still do the zip up!

here I am happy that my dress fits!

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FLOWERGIRL DRESSES - This really was a case of "if you want something doing, do it yourself". I fould a dressmaker through ebay last year. She seemed really friendly and even sent samples of material. She said to wait until this Jan/Feb to send the measurements of the two girls, because of their ages, which seemed sensible. However when I tried to contact her this February, she had disappeared! her email adress wasn't known and she was no longer on ebay. In the meantime, I wrote to her and had a reply from her stating she had "no record of our transaction". When I contacted ebay in a panic, I got a very personal reply, for which I was grateful, telling me that her account was suspended "due to breech of ebay policy" and that they sugest I had no furher contact with her and to contact the police instead. I had little faith in the police doing anything, but within a couple of weeks, I had a phone call from them saying they had visited her and " it was all a misunderstanding".
A couple of days later I received a cheque for the $230 I had paid her. Result! but I still had no dresses. At this point I was very wary of finding another dressmaker and time was running out. Also I had my heart set on the dresses I originally liked. SO I decided to have a go and make them myself. Bear in mind I have had no dressmaking experience since needlework classes at school
here is how they turned out

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I was really pleased with them and Maddie felt like a princess, she spent the whole wedding day twirling!!!!

 

[jennifaerie]

Gorgeous!

I really, really love those flower girl dresses! I have seen them and I always get sad (I wish there were a wedding dress like that!!). If I were having a flower girl, I would have loved to have those.

Love, love the pictures!

 

[orangetiggs]

wow those dresses you made look fantastic!

love your dress

 

[WithDisneySpirit]

Oh my gosh, the flower girl dresses are amazing! You must have some serious talent!!!!

 

[PrincessBride010103]

WOW! Those flowergirl dresses are amazing! I can't believe you made them yourself!! How long did it take?

 

[IndyBride]

The flower girls dresses looked great!!!! I'm glad you were able to make some fabulous dresses when your first plan fell through. And, I'm glad that all worked out!

 

[Raspberry Bubbles]

Those dresses are soooo cute!

Love your Monsoon dress, too!

 

[accountingbabe08]

Your dress is awesome too!!

 

[jacqu3lin3]

Everything looked wonderful.....And, you did a wonderful job on the Flower Girl Dresses!!!

 

[hope1826]

maddiesmum,
Everything looks so wonderful. Your dress and hair were GORGEOUS!! And the flowergirl dresses were perfection.

I'm so upset DH and I missed lurking at your wedding too!!! We were trying to get out there to lurk but got caught up in MK. We finally got to SBP and saw a 5 pm wedding on May 8th.

I can't wait to see and read more!!!

Nikki

 

[Maddiesmum03]

Thank you everyone for your kind words about the dresses.

One of the reasons I couldn't find a dressmaker in the time I had left was that most sites only seemed to do similar dresses from age 2 upwards. Ellen is a petite 19 months, so I really had to adapt the patten, in fact I ended up taking my first attempt apart and starting again as the dress swamped her!
We got quite a few nice comments throughout the day on the little dresses, in fact Mel said she could have got me a few orders!!!!!! but, I definately won't be taking up dressmaking for a living! It took me the best part of a week to make each one in all my spare time, the housework got forgotten for 2 weeks

I also made "dolly" bags for myself and Mel. Here is a phto of mine, laid out and ready to go! These turned out to be a perfect size, I could even carry my camera - not to the actual ceremony, but I took it when we went to Citricos in the evening.

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I am kicking myself because I had every intention of taking photos of everything I made, but I realise now that I didn't.
When I was putting presents together for everyone, I managed to find "when I was a bridesmaid" diary /scrapbooks for the two girls, but despite looking on every website possible, I failed to find anything similar for pageboys, so I made one for Lewis from scatch using a blank album and printing each page using the girls ones as ideas. I was so pleased with it, because I could make sure each page was personal, and I included lots of scrapbook supplies for Lewis to use to finish it off. I really wish I'd taken a photo or two.

I bought Deckchair photoframes to use as placenames and decided to personalise each one. Mostly I used dolls house supplies, but I made a mini tiara for mine and thought it a good idea to include something for the little ones that they could play with at the table to keep them entertained ( and when we saw the bottles of wine lined up along the floor in chefs domaine this seemed like an even better idea! )

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here's mine - you can also see a small bucket. This was filled with hersheys kisses and mine and Iain's tag said "a bucketful of kisses for the new mr & mrs" - everyone elses said "from" not "for" this was an idea stolen from another Disbride

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Here's Ade's deckchair. He is a chocoholic, hence the plate of chocolate and cookies. You can also see a little bag in front of his hersheys kisses. There was One of these for everone except myself and Iain and they contained a silver sixpence. Sixpence's were old UK currency and it's thought to be good luck for a bride to carry one with her on her wedding day, which I did.
I also sent one to Iain to take with him. Just because I like things to be "just so" I made sure mine was a 1963 coin ( my year of birth ) and Iains 1966!
I also bought Iain a pair of 1966 sixpence cufflinks as his "wedding present" which I sent along to him the morning of the wedding.
Back to the favors.....in the sixpence bags was a card that read
"something old
something new
something borrowed
something blue
and a silver sixpence in her shoe...
yes she did, he did too,
heres one to bring good luck to you!"

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this is Mel's with a bottle of wine, say no more!

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and Iain's Dad's with a sax, which he plays and a little newspaper open on a page with a suduku puzzle that he does every day!

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This is the one for Lewis with a small remote control Lightning Mcqueen. The control for it was in his goodie bag together with a colouring book and his scrapbook.
Maddie had a tiny Mickey and Minnie on her chair that belonged inside a polly pocket type compact. Again this went in her goodie bag.
Ellen had a princess from the early learning centre, similar to Fisher Price little people, and the rest of the set went in her bag. The Kids bags were a big hit and worked! They were better behaved than they had been all week!

I also made fans with the order of service on them, and then didn't use them!
I had them ready in a bag to take to our coordinator together with photos of both sets of parents ( as both of my parents and Iain's mum are no longer with us, this seemed like a good way of including them without getting anyone tearful) to take to sea breeze point.
I only rememberd the bag when we were halfway down the Boardwalk and it was too late. But in the end it didn't matter and I used them to decorate our room when we went back after the photos and had sandwiches

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Just a couple of words on our coordinator now I've mentioned her. We were allocated Karen Serrette and she was good at replying to my emails and sorting my music selections, but on the day we were given another Karen. Karen Spelling ( I think ). She was great, really down to earth and made everyone feel at ease. She even brought bubbles and used them to entertain Ellen while Randy took photos of me in the Lobby and took over camcording the ceremony while Ade did his best man bit and handed the rings over!

I also decorated tealight holders for the table with the same flowers I used to make Maddies hair garland. I saw the lanterns last year and they reminded me of sea breeze point a little bit, so I had to have them!
I made Maddies garland because I could find nothing I liked and that fit our colour scheme - which was all based around Disney's "tropical bouquet"

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I think that's all my "projects" except for the presents I put together, but more on them later.

I took most of these projects half made in my suitcase, bought glue and other supplies from Walmart and spent the afternoon my dress steamer came putting it all together. I had one of the flat boxes of the type you put cakes iin along the bottom of my case and when everything was ready to go to citrico's I boxed it all up together with a table plan of where everyone was sitting. We had arranged with Melissa from Citrico's to take this over ahead of time and they would take care of it all....perfectly as it turned out!