Booking flights and resort for wedding (UK Brides)

[Nommi]

Hello,

This may be far too early, but nevertheless...

We are looking at a wedding date in Oct 2011 and have been looking at prices and flights on the WDTC website as they are already available.

How did you book your resort flights etc, did you wait until you'd confirmed your date and booked direct with Disney? I'm just thinking about the complimentary night you get if you complete your room block, how does this fit in to what you book? I've also notcied that quite a few people stay at a couple of different resorts during their stay, I'm guessing you'd call Disney diect to do this?

At the moment its free dining and the cost of the room with the flights is not looking too bad, not sure whether to book or not!!

Sorry about the long rambling post...! I've had too much time to think about this!

 

[Chilly]

I booked everything about 11 months out, and booked the wedding 8 months out. I booked the flights direct with Virgin and the hotels direct with Disney.

It depends how flexible you can be with what you want, although most brides do seem to get pretty much what they want.

It depends what you want to use your free night for.

 

[brer rabbit 28]

Hi Nommi

I'm getting married on 5th Ocotber next year at Downtown Disney.

While we didn't book a DFTW, we have booked our flights with Charter Travel and we will be on a Virgin flight - very reasonably priced.

We also plan on booking a Disney hotel for 2 nights but don't feel too much urgency about that as there are only a few of us.

I would suggest shopping around for a good flight price before commiting yourselves. It might save you a few more pennies to spend on holiday.

 

[Brit_Jude]

Personnally I would look for good rates for flights around the dates I was considering and book the flights once I thought I had a good deal. I believe you get a better deal on flights working it yourself and not using Disney to book the flights, especially from the UK.

I would then be flexible on the dates I wanted for my wedding during the time I had booked for the flights. When the timeline allowed me to contact DFTW to pencil in the wedding I would give them the date and time of day I really wanted but also other days that are acceptable during the time I had booked the flights.

Once I knew my actual wedding date, time and location I would then book the hotel rooms (including multiple locations) with Disney direct using any discount and information that you get from Disney for a wedding room block. You will also be able to give this information to your guests to book their rooms for the room block credit. You need to have an idea of how many rooms you may need for your guests and also an idea of the locations your guests might want to stay in (value, moderate, deluxe). Keep in mind with booking rooms with Disney it is always possible to call them back and change or update reservations if you make them yourself - though I am not sure if this would work if you booked rooms and then wanted to change them to the room block for your wedding. Somebody else might know more.

Do you have Passporters Weddings and Honeymoons guide yet? If not I would get a copy to help you out. You can download it here:

http://www.passporter.com/weddings.asp

 

[clareyfairymouse]

We booked our entire package, including our escape wedding through Virgin 14 months out.
This way we got the flights, hotel, park tickets and disney dining all included. The only thing they suggest is you give the date and time of the wedding you want and then give a back up suggestion.

Then once they can book the slot for you they let you know what's available.

One thing we did find out though through booking with Virgin was you needed to stay in the same resort throughout your trip to be eligible for the DDP.

Hope that helps.

 

[angel81uk]

As clareyfairymouse mentioned free dining only really works if you're booking one single resort rather than doing a split stay. That stands no matter who you book with, not just virgin. It is possible to do a split stay with free dining but it ends up being kind of expensive. Because it's only offered when you purchase tickets and hotel at the same time as a package (and for a minimum stay of 5 nights) you would need to buy separate park tickets for each resort you wanted to stay at.

So for example if you wanted to stay at one resort for 7 nights and somewhere else for another 7 nights you'd need to buy two 7 day tickets rather than one 14 day ticket.

As for when to book, we plan on booking flights as soon as they become available at 11 months as we're going to be paying with frequent flyer miles, once we've got the flights we will book accommodation. Then almost 3 months later we will know if we've got our chosen wedding date. It should work out pretty well for us as we're flexible with date and time and plan on a weekday wedding so should get a slot at our chosen location without too much trouble sometime during our first week in WDW.