The short answer is that the only way to get married on Disney property is to do it through Disney Fairy Tale Weddings. Anyone caught doing a wedding not through them will be in trouble. Probably not something you'd want to worry about on your wedding day.
I'm not sure about what she thought was over the top, or whether she looked at Escape or Wishes weddings. Like I said, the Escape has a maximum of 18 guests, so it's really not designed to be big. We did parents, brothers/sister and two aunts and an uncle. Very small. It was at the Yacht Club in a gazebo, took about 20 minutes and then we did a dinner at California Grill. There are several smaller, simple outdoor locations that are not as formal as the wedding pavilion (which is an extra thousand anyway!). The package came with flowers for him/her, violinist for the music, photographer (can substitute for a honeymoon shoot if you're going to do the pictures), cake/champagne and a limo to take you back and forth to where you're staying. It was very simple and very lovely. It also includes two annual passes, which were great for the honeymoon and the trip we have planned for October.
The other option would be to consider a wedding at the Swan and Dolphin. I believe they start at $2200, and if she really wanted she could still have characters or something. They looked very nice, but I have little-to-no experience with them.
The marriage license didn't end up being too big of a problem. Obviously if she has a few days down there before the wedding she could apply in person since there's no waiting period for non-Florida residents. Alternatively, what we did was get out license through the mail from Brevard County (since it can be from any county in FL, not necessarily the one that Orlando is in).
http://199.241.8.125/index.cfm?FuseAction=MarriageLicenses.Forms
You have to mail asking for information (we did this about 1.5 months out), then they send an application which you have to fill out and notarize (~$50), and send back, and then they send you your license (~$95). Alternatively there are other services that say they do it for you, like this one:
http://www.aweddingforyou.com/forminst.htm
But honestly they charge you over $200 and you
still have to pay for the notary and mailing, so I didn't think they were worth it.
I should warn you, I went once to try and change my name here in Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation in Ontario didn't want to accept my marriage certificate from FL. I believe this to be because of particularly difficult rules held by the MTO, but I'm not sure. I haven't really pursued this much since then because we had to book plane tickets for October and I didn't want to worry about what my name would be when October rolled around. I haven't heard one way or another about this being a problem outside of Ontario.
Honestly, for us the Disney wedding was absolutely incredible and I couldn't recommend it enough. The Yacht Club was beautiful and the gazebo kept it from feeling overly-formal. All of our guests thought it was a gorgeous location. Then we had a private room at California Grill (only available for DFTW brides) with an outstanding supper. Then, half-way through everyone got up and went onto the balcony to watch Wishes. It really was amazing.
I think that if she thought it was "over the top" because of pictures she'd seen, etc, then she really could do it as simply as her tastes wanted. The wedding pavilion certainly isn't necessary, and I found we were able to do an acceptable level of customization and I didn't think anything in the package was excessive - cake/champagne could be take home, flowers could be very simple, limo/violinist weren't things I would have done if I had picked them out but I don't think it made things very formal. And actually, I believe you could arrange to use the limo at another point in your trip if you didn't want to use it as wedding day transportation. However, if it's because of the money that she's thinking it's over the top, then the Swan and Dolphin might be an acceptable alternative if she has her heart set on doing it as close to Disney as possible.
Any more questions, just let me know!
p.s. If you'd like to see some pictures from our day, just let me know and I'll PM you a link!
