Andreah and Brian - Dec 8th, 2009 (Reception Photos Posted)

[Chilly]

Great beo!!!

 

[GoonieBride]

Congrats on your mins and those bars sound very yummy!
Im happy everything is coming together for you guys!!!

 

[tiggersam00]

congrats on the happy news about your DF!!! That is great that he is doing better Also, looks like you had a blast on the PS trip, everything looks very cool and fresh, love the flowers especially.

Misty did a great job, glad to hear such a good review of her! We are using her for our wedding and I love her work. Your maekup and hair looked amazing, I guess I didn't realize how long it was until I saw the Lejune pics, very pretty! I wish I had the patience to grow my hair out like yours, I am quiet jealous

 

[acwinsett]

I'm getting married in
100 days!!!​

 

[BecBennett]

eeek! How exciting! It's going to fly by so fast!


I just have to say that you are the newsletter queen, and yes I will be plagarising your dining letter... This would be so much easier if we had the same name...

 

[torsie24]

Wow Andreah!! I'm so sorry I've not been on here much, I have so much to catch up on!!

First of all your hair looks SO gorgeous!! I wish mine could look half as nice as that!

And well done on your budget! It's always great to see peoples BEOs and realise everything can be done without going way over!!

The Mickey bars sound really exciting too! Eee I can't wait to see it all together!!!!! It's going to come around so fast too!!!!!

 

[DznyGal]

Thanks for posting all everything you have done along the way, I have really enjoyed reading everything! Your wedding sounds so magical!

 

[acwinsett]

Thanks for the comments, everybody!

It's been awhile since I've updated the ol' PJ, so I figured I should post a few updates.

First off, today is our engage-aversary! Brian proposed on September 4th, 2008. Wow! What an amazing year it's been . . .

We're 92 days from our WDW arrival and 95 days from the wedding. So, you know what THAT means . . . I've been up to my elbows in park hours, Tour Guide Mike recommendations and itinerary-making, and Brian just sent in a very LARGE check to DFTW!

I'll be calling on Sunday to make our ADR's and Group Dining ressies . . . Wish me luck!

Also on the agenda for this weekend . . . try to finish up and send out our formal invitations. I hope it's not too early, but I just want to get them DONE and SENT before anyone else has a chance to move. It seems like half our guest list has changed addresses in the past four months

Oh well, I'm just about DONE worrying about how not to break etiquette rules. Can we say "OVER IT!"???? So the invitations are being sent three months before the wedding instead of two. I'll post photos soon . . . promise!

So, I hope everyone else is having a great end-of-summer. With little more than 90 days to go, it's about time to post the big "to do" list and start chipping away . . .

Bye for now . . . Wishing everyone a Happy Labor Day!!!!

 

[GoonieBride]

HAPPY ENGAGE-AVERSARY!!!!!!

 

[MiaBella05]

joining in

 

[GoonieBride]

OMG i just noticed your signature pictures! they turned out GREAT!!!! im jealous!

 

[acwinsett]

HAPPY ENGAGE-AVERSARY!!!!!!

OMG i just noticed your signature pictures! they turned out GREAT!!!! im jealous!

Thank you, thank you! I'm about to post a few of the sneak peek photos a little larger in case you're interested.

joining in

YAY! Welcome! Thanks for following!

Wow Andreah!! I'm so sorry I've not been on here much, I have so much to catch up on!!

First of all your hair looks SO gorgeous!! I wish mine could look half as nice as that!

And well done on your budget! It's always great to see peoples BEOs and realise everything can be done without going way over!!

The Mickey bars sound really exciting too! Eee I can't wait to see it all together!!!!! It's going to come around so fast too!!!!!

Thanks so much for your kind words! You can DEFINITELY do some really cool stuff and stay close to minimums. And eBay has helped. A lot!

I just have to say that you are the newsletter queen, and yes I will be plagarising your dining letter... This would be so much easier if we had the same name...

Awww . . . thanks! MailChimp is soooo awesome! And I think I just saw where the limits for the free accounts were increased. Woo hoo! We've got about 8 or 9 more email campaigns to send out between now and the wedding on a big variety of topics, so stay tuned . . . I'll be posting links here, of course!

*****

Sorry I haven't posted much lately. I've been overwhelmed over the past few days roughing out our itinerary, making ADR's, and working on our formal invitations. I've got a few details to post over the next few days . . . so hopefully I'll have some more good stuff posted soon!

 

[acwinsett]

Misty posted a few of our engagement photos on her Facebook page a few days ago. We bought the CD of digital images, and that should be arriving any day now, but in the meantime, these are the first few "non-watermarked" photos from our engagement session in July:

 

[Chilly]

WOW WOW WOW

Love love that first one.

 

[MainStMandy]

Aww Andreah your pictures came out beautiful!!

Your hair is just beautiful!! I can't stand the 10 min it takes to dry my short hair...I don't know how you do it!!!

 

[happybratpack]

Your pictures are breathtaking! (and so is your hair!)

 

[acwinsett]

This has been a really big week for us! As of today, we have 89 days until we arrive and 92 days until the wedding. So, this week has been all about making our tentative itinerary and booking ADR's.

It seems like park hours came out right on the 1st, which was great! I've heard that sometimes Disney lags behind a few days and, with us arriving early in the month, we didn't have a lot of wiggle room.

So the next thing to do was to wait for Tour Guide Mike to put together his color-coded list of Least Crowded Parks per Day for the month of December. I highly recommend the Tour Guide Mike service. Yeah, it costs a little money, but in the grand scheme of your trip expenses, what's an extra $20? After my first trip with TGM advice in 2005, I have had no qualms about subscribing to his service for each and every trip since. (And, he's kind enough to provide special discount codes for repeat customers.)

I was beginning to get a little worried because TGM's Facebook status updates were talking about his sister being REAAALLLLY sick, and he was having to tend to her. So, of course, that's the most important thing - to make sure she's taken care of. So, I started trying to use the TGM "logic" from years past to rough out a schedule for us. But, surprisingly enough, he was very prompt with getting those Least Crowded Parks charts posted for us. Fortunately, my predictions were fairly close, but he had a few surprises - some stuff I didn't think about.

So, after a few tweaks to the schedule, it was time to get ready for ADR day.

I had already made most of the ADR's for our July planning session trip when the new online Dining Reservations System was launched. But, before our trip, I did use the online system to make one breakfast reservation. I was mainly just curious to see how the system worked, but ended up REALLY enjoying the Grand Floridian Cafe breakfast before meeting with our wedding planner!

Even still, I wanted to re-familiarize myself with the system before it was "crunch time". After all, there's a lot of strategery involved with snagging some of these ressies!

So, I got together my list of all of the reservations that I knew we wanted and grouped them into four lists:

(1) Less than 10 people - Theme Park restaurants - these were ones that I was going to book online, and were the more "in demand" ones to try for

(2) Less than 10 people - Resort restaurants - Still booking online, but less in demand

(3) More than 10 people - Theme Park restaurants - I'd have to wait until Group Dining opens up and speak to a human about these.

(4) More than 10 people - Resort restaurants - I'd have to call Group Dining, but these should be a "little" easier to come by

Using two weeks prior to our arrival as a test, I tried to see how "easy" or "difficult" it would be to snag reservations for our desired restaurants at our desired day of the week and desired times. Using one week before wouldn't have been a good test because that would be Thanksgiving week - and all-around jacked up.

From there I was able to rank the restaurants in each group by "hardest to reserve" to "easiest to reserve". This is the order in which I would attempt to secure the reservations. I also had a "Plan B" in mind for anything that I was afraid work out for us.

Next step . . . figure out exactly HOW EARLY I could start booking. I already knew that Group Dining wouldn't be open until 6am our time (7am Eastern). But, what about online? Midnight? 7am?

After a lot of Google searching and reading some of the dining threads on the DIS, I found that the "official" word is that the system rolls-over at 6am Eastern (or 5am my time). But . . . I was also seeing some stuff about travel agents having access to the system at 3am Eastern. And then I read a post by one girl that said that she just happened to be awake and made reservations at about 4am Eastern Time just earlier this week.

So, just because I'm a die-hard, and just because I was curious, mainly, we set our alarm clock for 1:50 AM my time. And, sure enough, the 10 days on our calendar lit up at 2:01 ON THE DOT! So, this means, at least for now, the online system appears to open up at 3AM Eastern Time.

This is a long post, so I'm going to split it up into multiple parts . . . more to come!

 

[acwinsett]

WOW WOW WOW

Aww Andreah your pictures came out beautiful!!

Your hair is just beautiful!! I can't stand the 10 min it takes to dry my short hair...I don't know how you do it!!!

Your pictures are breathtaking! (and so is your hair!)

Aww . . . thanks, guys! You all are waaay too sweet! Between Patricia LeJeune and Misty, they were able to do wonders with our photos!

 

[acwinsett]

Okay, so I left off at 2:01 AM (3:01 AM Eastern), when our dates auto-magically appeared on the calendar . . .

In the matter of about 15 to 20 minutes, we had booked all of the Group 1 and Group 2 reservations - everything that was less than 10 people.

So, at that point, just out of curiosity, we started looking at the restaurants we wanted for our large groups and searching the maximum group size (10) to "guess" how difficult it was going to be to snag them up once we were able to call Group Dining 3 hours later. Surprisingly, it seemed like it was going to be 'Ohana and not the theme park places that was going to be the most difficult to get. So, we knew to ask about that one FIRST THING when we got on the phone with Dining.

5AM rolls around, and we spoke with a really sweet lady at Group Dining. She made our first three reservations with no trouble at all:

Ohana - although we had to opt for the late seating as there were no earlier seatings available for a group our size. I don't mind myself, but there may be some folks that don't want to wait until 8:55 to have dinner, like some of the older folks and people with little kids. So, I'll recommend that they try to call for a smaller party size reservation. Maybe they can get a seat earlier or at a different restaurant.

Liberty Tree Tavern - got a 4:25 seating for 26 on a party night! Woo hoo!

Brown Derby - this is where the guys are having lunch on the day of the wedding. They got a table at 11:40.

Surprisingly enough, it was the two reservations that I thought would be easiest to get for which there was no availability showing at all. A brunch at Grand Floridian Cafe for 12 on a Tuesday and a Monday night dinner at Yachtsman Steakhouse. She even tried splitting these up into smaller groups (as I was able to provide additional hotel confirmation numbers), and still no luck at all. Even our Plan B for Yachtsman, which was Citricos, was a bust. That's when I knew something just wasn't right. Okay, even with the Pop Warner football and cheerleading competition in town and even with the free dining promotion going on - this is a quiet time of year at the mouse's house - and these were not exactly the places that kids and teenagers would be flocking to. And we walked right in to Citricos with NO reservation in July and there was hardly anyone there at all.

So, the lady on the phone with us put us on hold for a minute so that she could talk it over with her manager. When she came back on the line, she gave us the telephone numbers to speak with the managers of the restaurants directly. She found out that there are certain places (especially Signature restaurants, that booked large groups in-house.)

We've got messages in to both of those places and, in the meantime, had no trouble booking them into smaller groups using the online system and three different resort reservation numbers. So, worst case scenario, these will be groups of 10 dining within 15 minutes of each other. That being said, I have no doubt they'll be able to "merge" these reservations together for us.

Next up . . . the itinerary and reservations so far!!!

 

[beatlesblonde]

Hey date twin! You've been one busy gal haven't you? I amazed at how organized you are at being able to book all those ressies, some with such large numbers. The largest ressie I had to make was a party of 5! Can you believe we're less than 3 months to go? Like you said, time to start chipping away at the old to-do list. Can't wait to read more!