twinkybel81 & workmantm's Wishes VR 12.06.16 Japan/ADH/Lochside UPDATE 11/23 Two Weeks Out!

[twinkybel81]

I love your theme!! We were considering a Nightmare Before Christmas theme as well for a while. From our experience with Disneyland, the DFTW are an interesting beast. Since the weddings are so customizable, it is so hard to know what your options are without the help of previous brides experiences since they don't exactly give you a brochure for every single possibility of what you can do for your wedding. Since one of the big features of the wishes wedding is that customization, you'd think they'd be a little more enthusiastic to what you're doing you're research to come up with a clear idea of the kind of day you would like to make it easier on them to present you with options you may actually say yes to. One thing I have learned from our planning experience out here is you may as well ask and see if something is possible no matter how impossible you think it would be. Their responses can be very interesting and enlightening (and sometimes very expensive haha).

I think we are all in agreement that we would think they would want us to be educated, to make their job easier and to make sure we really get the wedding of our dreams, but it surely doesn't come across that way. I also think I have figured out that a lot of the questions that I and my husband have, are more for the planner than the consultant, so I just need to compile a list of questions to wait and ask until after we have been assigned a planner in a few months. No biggie.

What theme did you end up deciding on?

 

[LadyD]

Since it is at the Rose Court Garden, it sounds like we're going with a Beauty and the Beast theme/inspiration. Uhhh we're working on things from there

 

[twinkybel81]

Since it is at the Rose Court Garden, it sounds like we're going with a Beauty and the Beast theme/inspiration. Uhhh we're working on things from there

Love it!

 

[twinkybel81]

This is a collage of photos of the two of us that I put together and had printed and framed to give to him last year on the 5 year anniversary of us meeting. Enjoy!

 

[twinkybel81]

Just a quick update, only somewhat wedding related......

Only 24 wake ups til we are on a plane heading for our WDW vacation!!! 9 nights and 10 days and I can't hardly wait!!! Which means 26 wake ups til our site visit and family photo shoot with the Roots!!!

 

[mlegerto]

i love your theme! Sounds amazing and there is SO much you can do with it.

We are just getting married and decided to go the COMPLETE opposite and stick to the simple elegance of a romantic garden wedding - my second choice of course because we are doing an at home wedding rather than Disney

Can't wait to see more!

 

[twinkybel81]

i love your theme! Sounds amazing and there is SO much you can do with it.

We are just getting married and decided to go the COMPLETE opposite and stick to the simple elegance of a romantic garden wedding - my second choice of course because we are doing an at home wedding rather than Disney

Can't wait to see more!

Hi and thanks for following along! I apologize for the very delayed response. There wasn't much to post and we were getting ready for/went on/just got back from a 10 day trip to WDW, so I've been quite busy. I love the idea of a romantic garden wedding!

I should hopefully be able to post an update about our site visit and photo session with the Roots within the next day or two.

 

[twinkybel81]

Our site visit was scheduled for 9am on a Monday morning. That morning we also had to get checked out of All Star Sports, get our stuff checked with Bell Services to be transported to the Villas at Wilderness Lodge, eat breakfast, meet our friends at the entrance of MK so we could drop off our son with them, and get to Franck's by 9am. Everything went fine until we got in line to take the monorail over to the GF. The monorails had gone down with no ETA on when they would be back up and running. Fortunately we pretty much ran down to the boat launch and got in line, before everyone else up at the monorail platform decided that was a good idea too. ;-)

The boat pulled up to the dock and the skipper asked us all what we were waiting for, to which we all replied, "you!", haha. Apparently no one had communicated to them that they were going to have to help pick up the slack since the monorail was down. We boarded and were on our way over to the GF. We disembarked, found a map of the property to figure out where Franck's was, only to discover that it was basically on the complete other side of the property. At this point we had less than 10 minutes, so we basically ran, and we made it a couple minutes early.

We only waited a few minutes before being introduced to our consultant and going back into one of the rooms. It wasn't very exciting, it wasn't bad, just nothing special. We went over/verified the venues we had in mind and which we wanted to make sure we got to see that day. She showed us a bunch of pictures up on the screen, made sure we didn't have any questions, and then we hopped in the car to head out to the sites.

We visited the Japan & UK pavilions, the American Adventure Parlor, and the Atlantic Dance Hall. Seeing the spaces in person helped to solidify our vision and choices.

Our consultant gave us a ride back to Franck's with notes to follow up on a couple of questions that we had. We told her we would email her with our preferred date and venues within a couple of weeks. I sent her the email last week and we are penciled in for our second choice of date, and first choice for ceremony and reception venues. Our first choice for a date is still available with DFTW, but not with the Roots, who is who we would like to shoot the wedding. In the two weeks between the time we had our family photo shoot with them (and mentioned the dates we were looking at) and when I got around to sending the email with those dates in writing to get penciled in, another bride had snatched them up for our first choice day, so that day was automatically out of the running.

Now we have to decide where we want to hold our dessert party, and on which day, so that I can email our consultant to find out availability and get penciled in.

We may have to wait until January to book, due to needing to see how finances settle out once The Husband transitions to his new job in the middle of next month. Part of me is stressed at the idea of waiting the extra month, but on the flipside, it's much smarter for us financially to wait that extra month, and we want to be as smart with our money for this venture as we possibly can.

Sorry that this was long winded, I didn't think to take pictures while we were out on the site visit. Thanks for wading through.

Next up.... our family photo session with the Roots!

 

[NoOrdinaryPrincess]

Just read through your PJ. Seems awesome!

 

[alyaki]

Sounds like you had a good site visit! Hope everything works out so you get the Roots - they do really lovely work!

 

[twinkybel81]

Just read through your PJ. Seems awesome!

Thanks! We are hoping it will be. Obviously still lots of work to be done.

 

[TheBurchBunch]

So has your consultant been a little more friendly since you visited in person? I always wonder how you can have an attitude and be in customer service. It drives me crazy. Especially in this case where the service is being more than well compensated for and it's someone's happiest day ever. How can you not be happy making someone's dreams come true? Sorry, stepping off soap box. I am hoping she is much better in person for you though.

 

[twinkybel81]

So has your consultant been a little more friendly since you visited in person? I always wonder how you can have an attitude and be in customer service. It drives me crazy. Especially in this case where the service is being more than well compensated for and it's someone's happiest day ever. How can you not be happy making someone's dreams come true? Sorry, stepping off soap box. I am hoping she is much better in person for you though.

Sorry for my extremely delayed response, I've not been on the boards very much lately. Our consultant was better in person, but just not someone I would go out of my way to work with again in the future.

Last week was our 12 month mark, and she did call (and subsequently email) letting us know that she had put in for our locations, etc and sent us all the stuff to get started on the room block and such, so that we could move forward with getting the LOA signed. Because of some changes in The Husband's employment, we are having to put things off for a bit (not sure how long yet), so I sent her a detailed email response making her aware of the situation and I have gotten crickets in response. IMO, at the very least her assistant could have responded simply to acknowledge receipt of our response.

 

[twinkybel81]

Looking back at my last post only to discover it's already been 2 months, whoops!

We were scheduled to be at WDW for 10 days (Sat-Mon), and had scheduled our family photo shoot with the Roots for the first Monday, late afternoon, which was the only day and time that worked for both schedules. We generally travel to WDW in the end of September/beginning of October, so we know to expect rain due to the monsoon season at that time of year. Unfortunately, the first 3-4 days of our trip were non-stop heavy rain, enough so that the Florida locals were even commenting on the amount of precipitation. Nate called me about 2 hours prior to the shoot (just as we were checking in for our first ADR at T-Rex) wanting to know if we wanted to reschedule for another day due to the weather. Unfortunately, that was the only day and time that worked for both of our schedules, so we told him we would still like to do the shoot and just make the best of it.

At this point we still needed to eat lunch, take a bus back to The Villas at Wilderness Lodge, get changed, do makeup/hair, etc, and be ready to meet the Roots at The Villas in two hours time. That only sort of happened. Lunch was taking forever (sadly this was the start of an extremely annoying and frustrating trend for the week) so we had to have our friends stay to collect our desserts in to go boxes to bring back to the hotel for us. We got onto a bus without too much wait, but I ended up having to do my makeup while in transit because we were running so behind, and even though it was the middle of the afternoon, it was basically completely dark out because of the clouds and the rain, not exactly the best light for makeup application....

We arrived back at the hotel and started running around like chickens with our heads cut off finishing getting ready. It was chaotic and more stressful than I would have liked, but we made it down to the lobby and met up with Nate & Jensey basically right on time. To be honest, I was so nervous to meet them because I really wanted them to like us. Jensey always writes such nice things about people on her blog, and I wanted very badly to have her say nice things about us.

The weather was still absolute crap, so they gave us a couple of options (to do a quick 15 minute shoot for the cost of the retainer we had already put down, or shoot the full hour as planned). We decided to try for the full hour, and we were able to shoot for an hour (we only really had to stop because we had another ADR to make it to over in Hollywood Studios). We bid them farewell, excited to see what the final product would look like.

Long story short, the pictures did not come out very well, and weren't really up to par with their standard work. I was heartbroken. I knew that there was a possibility that we wouldn't get as many good shots due to the weather (both of us also being photographers), but I could barely find a handful that I liked.

Fortunately, Nate & Jensey are made of awesome, so after a phone call and a couple of emails, we got everything worked out, and we will be doing a mini session the next time we head out to Florida (which will hopefully be in June for a planning session, but we shall see). The only downside to the solution is the The Boy won't be with us, he will be at his Mom's. Not a lot to be done about that though, custody schedule being what it is.

I will try to post a few of the photos from the shoot soon and then do another update with wedding related news., since our 12 month mark was last week.

 

[LadyD]

That is such a bummer your photos did not come out as well as you had hoped!! It is wonderful to hear they are willing to work with you and try to get some better ones. I hope the weather cooperates this next time and you get some better shots!

 

[twinkybel81]

That is such a bummer your photos did not come out as well as you had hoped!! It is wonderful to hear they are willing to work with you and try to get some better ones. I hope the weather cooperates this next time and you get some better shots!

Thanks, LadyD!

 

[twinkybel81]

Well, we officially are having to push everything back until December of 2016. Between finances and The Husband's new job situation, it would be a foolish decision to try and afford it for 2015. I'm bummed out right now, but not much I can do other than try to focus on the positive, which is that we aren't canceling or writing it off altogether, just pushing it back, so it should still ultimately happen.

I will go ahead and post the pictures I mentioned in my last update, but I likely won't be very active here for awhile, since there won't be any planning going on.

 

[elphie101]

I'm sorry you have to push off your VR, I can only imagine how disappointing this must be I love your attitude though, that you will have your VR one way or another.

Looking forward to hearing more whenever you post next

 

[twinkybel81]

I'm sorry you have to push off your VR, I can only imagine how disappointing this must be I love your attitude though, that you will have your VR one way or another.

Looking forward to hearing more whenever you post next

It's incredibly disappointing still. On the bright side, we have more time to save money and I have more time to figure out what's going on with my body and get back into the shape I want to be in.

Thank you for reading along.

 

[twinkybel81]

Here are some of the photos from the family/engagement shoot that we did with the Roots in the end of September. I want to make sure that everyone understands that I am not saying they are bad photos, they just aren't up to snuff with what the Roots typically produce. If you are interested in more details, they are in post #54 above (I haven't figured out how to link posts yet). So without further adieu: