Ok, this is my third attempt this afternoon to write this, so hopefully I will get it posted.

The first time I accidentally hit the wrong button and it vanished. The second time our cat, Yaz, decided to walk across the laptop and hit something to make it all go away.

If he wasn't so cute, he would be in trouble.
After a bumpy flight and morning (Paul wasn't feeling well and didn't know if he wanted to fly

), we arrived in Orlando. We picked up our rental car and headed to the Grand Floridian. I had been able to get a great AP rate, so I had booked the Sugarloaf Concierge building. We had never stayed at the GF or concierge, so we were excited.
When we arrived at the resort, we were met right away by Sam, who told us that our room was ready (at 11am

) and she would take us there. I had done online check-in, so we just signed the slip in our room. We were handed our keys and ready to go. It was awesome!
Our appointment with Bill was at 1pm, so we grabbed lunch at the Grand Floridian Cafe. If you have never eaten there, we would highly recommend it. The food, the service and the atmosphere were all fabulous.
We arrive at Franck's a little bit before 1 and Bill was waiting at the welcome desk. A few minutes later and we were off to Epcot. It was so cool to go backstage and see what is behind all the magic.

Our first stop was the UK Rose Garden. This is our first choice for ceremony location and looking at it in person and in that light was amazing. It absolutely is where we want it.
Bill told us that we can set the chairs up on the lawn sections, which I think is perfect. I think that the regular chairs with the white covers with light pink and silver sashes will look lovely on both sides. We will then use the center portion for the aisle.
We will use this space as an altar. I don't think that it needs much decoration, but I do feel that some pillars with arrangements on top are needed to set off the space.
We also stopped at UK Lochside (for our dessert party) and the courtyard in France. We love Lochside and think that our guests will be blown away by the view of Illuminations.
We got back in Bill's car (so cool that he can park anywhere!) and headed over to the American Adventure Pavillion to see the Parlor. We were really excited to see this space since both of us love colonial American history (I even have my degree in it), so we thought it would be perfect for us. We went up to the third floor in the secret elevator and when we fell in love instantly. We found out that we get the whole floor, which is great and it has it's own restrooms (rare in Epcot).
This is the parlor room. I love the furniture, but I think we are going to have it removed and put our dining tables in this room.
This is the other side
I absolutely love this little balcony/landing and hope that we can work it out that we get introduced from here.
This is the hallway downtown to the Thomas Jefferson dining room (which I just didn't get good pictures of), but our thinking is that we would set up the buffet in the dining room (maybe), but definitely set up the dance floor in there.
When we came back down in the elevator found out that not only is it secret (located behind paneling), if you go out the other side it actually opens up to the outside courtyard.
We then left Epcot and travelled to the Boardwalk. I wasn't sure if we should really take the time for this stop, since I really had no interest in The St. James Room, but Diane thought it was a good space and we should see it. So happy that we did. We loved it!!!!

What a great, intimate space. We instantly decided to hold our welcome dinner here. Paul really loved the ability to open up the doors to the patio.
If we weren't going to look at 2 spaces at the Y&B Convention Center, we probably would have told Bill we were all set. Our first stop was the Asbury Patio, which is where I am planning on hosting a ladies luncheon/tea there the day before our ceremony. What an absolutely perfect and lovely location. My plan is to do the Mad Hatter table decor and the centerpieces and think it will be stunning. Doesn't even need any more decor.
We then looked at The Asbury room, which is what I thought we had wanted. It is a very nice room, but it seems cavernous compared to the St. James room and AAP. Glad we found a different direction to go in. It was also your typical ballroom space, which since we did that the first time, we really didn't want to repeat it, if at all possible. I won't take up the space with the pictures, since we probably won't be using it (unless we have to).
Bill then drove us back to Franck's. We had about an hour to kill before we met with Shelley from Impressions, so we headed back to Sugarloaf for a snack. They put out an afternoon tea and it was great. Jam tarts, scones, some fruit. Hit the spot.
We walked back to Franck's and Shelley was there a few minutes later. We talked about our theme "Rockin All Over the World" and she suddenly had a million ideas. Her first was to do Backstage Passes on personalized lanyards as Save the Dates, which we love. We are going to ask our guests to bring them to Disney with them because we are going to hand out pins to everyone at each of our events.

We fell in love with this idea!!! We also came up with assigning a character to each guest (we have less than 40 invited) and giving everyone their character pin. Now we are having a blast coming up with who is what character (and finding them on ebay!

)
We also talked to Shelley about the actual invites, enclosures and such. We definitely want a pocket (which will be pink), a layer of silvery gray and then a cream rectangle printed with pink glitter ink. Since Shelley has access to the entire Disney art library (wow!), we are going to have Donald & Daisy in wedding attire on the invite. Each enclosure will also have a different character on it (TBD). We talked about a bunch of other things too, but it was a blur.

I am sure it will become clear later on.
When we were done with Shelley we headed back to the GF. We had some apps. and a couple of beers before heading back to the Grand Floridian Cafe for dinner. After dinner we were so tired that we just passed out.
Thanks for reading along so far. This one was a LONG one, but it was a really busy day.
Next up: Day 2 and lots of shopping!!!