Committment ceremony at Castaway cay?

[smmast]

Has anyone done this? This is my dream and i got the green light from my partner to start planning. We would like to do it in 2010 which would mark 14 years together. Would love to hear any experiences. Thanks

 

[Timon-n-Pumbaa Fan]

First, congrats on deciding to have a ceremony and way to go making it a pixie dusted one!

The whole committment ceremony at Disney thing is still pretty new. So far, I haven't heard of any ceremonies at CC. You might actually have better luck in looking over on the Wedding Planners Board found here.....http://www.disboards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=55...of course the folks over there are mostly straight, but the planning aspect is much the same.

Please, do come back and share your planning journey with us. You never know who else here might benefit from your experience. Best Wishes!

 

[rpmdfw]

While I haven't heard about a Commitment Ceremony on Castaway Cay, while we were honeymooning aboard the Wonder, they told us they'd done a commitment ceremony on the ship in September.

My advice is to contact the Disney Fairy Tale Weddings team http://www.disneyweddings.go.com/site/gate/index.jsp

They were so amazingly wonderful to work with while we planned Our Big Fat Gay Disney Wedding.

And congrats! Enjoy every moment of it. It's a blast!

 

[DVC~OKW~96]

I have no clue, but I would hazard a guess that Disney would do a ceremony wherever you were willing to pay for it.

I think it sounds like a great idea, and will be very interested o learn what you find out!

 

[smmast]

I am very excited. We actually booked the cruise already. Originally it was a cruise with family and friends to celebrate my 40th birthday, but since all the major players will be there anyway... why not?
By the way i will not be turning 40, instead i have decided to turn "thirty-ten"!

 

[mjrseb]

Congrats to you and yours!!

 

[DVC~OKW~96]

Thirty ten! LOL. I love it!

Sounds like perfect timing for you. I hope it all works out!

Will be looking forward to hearing all about it!

 

[Jeff90]

How cool! Keep us updated and good luck with everything!

 

[DVCajun]

I have no clue, but I would hazard a guess that Disney would do a ceremony wherever you were willing to pay for it.

Nope. Not so much. They have very specific rules and locations set out in their packages. In a way, I guess they could seem very "cookie cutter" because you can only have your ceremony, here there or over there, and you can only have a pianist or a violinist, or both, and you can only choose from these four cakes, etc .... but it doesn't turn out that way. We had hoped to be able to get hitched on the beach at BCV, but we aren't allowed. We're doing i on the boardwalk instead.

Haven't started officially planning yet. We're being optimists and waiting until it's legal. We already did our own ceremony, exchange of rings, etc.

 

[kingLouiethe1]

I think the only problem with castaway cay is that the available spots for a particular cruise fill up fast, since I think they only do one or two ceremonies while the ship is in port. I would contact Fairy Tale Weddings soon to make sure you get an available spot.

 

[tig82174]

Has anyone done this? This is my dream and i got the green light from my partner to start planning. We would like to do it in 2010 which would mark 14 years together. Would love to hear any experiences. Thanks

Oh I love that you've posted this thread over here!! I've actually been going through that HUMONGOUS array of Disney Wedding threads on the wedding boards just looking to see if anyone was posting anything about LGBT ceremonies with DCL! If you do decide to pursue this, please please please keep us posted over here!

My partner and I are highly optimistic that NY state will start granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the next year to 18 months now that we have a governor and state assembly who have already passed the measure...and the recent election has changed the make-up of our state senate apparently in favor our community's rights! If and when this happens, it's our hope to get married here to get the recognition and documents, but to plan our ceremony with Disney----and we're avid DCL vacationers so having a ceremony on the ship or on CC are both very appealing ideas. We are already booked for B2B cruises in 2010 ourselves----we're doing the last 10-night Mediterranean and then the Westbound TransAtlantic crossing immediately after bringing the ship back to Florida....so we have 24 consecutive heavenly nights aboard the ship.....and the cool thing is that quite a few of our close friends are also booked on the TA crossing, so we were thinking if the timing is right then a ceremony aboard the ship or during our stop at CC would be amazing. Our other option would be to make that cruise our "backwards honeymoon"----meaning do the honeymoon BEFORE the ceremony....and actually schedule our ceremony to be at WDW when we get off the ship. That way friends and family who were not able to be on the cruise could perhaps just travel to Orlando to share in the ceremony.

So regardless....if you do end up planning a commitment ceremony with DCL I, for one, would be thrilled to hear how the planning goes!!

 

[rpmdfw]

Oh I love that you've posted this thread over here!! I've actually been going through that HUMONGOUS array of Disney Wedding threads on the wedding boards just looking to see if anyone was posting anything about LGBT ceremonies with DCL! If you do decide to pursue this, please please please keep us posted over here!

My partner and I are highly optimistic that NY state will start granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the next year to 18 months now that we have a governor and state assembly who have already passed the measure...and the recent election has changed the make-up of our state senate apparently in favor our community's rights! If and when this happens, it's our hope to get married here to get the recognition and documents, but to plan our ceremony with Disney----and we're avid DCL vacationers so having a ceremony on the ship or on CC are both very appealing ideas. We are already booked for B2B cruises in 2010 ourselves----we're doing the last 10-night Mediterranean and then the Westbound TransAtlantic crossing immediately after bringing the ship back to Florida....so we have 24 consecutive heavenly nights aboard the ship.....and the cool thing is that quite a few of our close friends are also booked on the TA crossing, so we were thinking if the timing is right then a ceremony aboard the ship or during our stop at CC would be amazing. Our other option would be to make that cruise our "backwards honeymoon"----meaning do the honeymoon BEFORE the ceremony....and actually schedule our ceremony to be at WDW when we get off the ship. That way friends and family who were not able to be on the cruise could perhaps just travel to Orlando to share in the ceremony.

So regardless....if you do end up planning a commitment ceremony with DCL I, for one, would be thrilled to hear how the planning goes!!

Even if you're just in the "thinking about it" stages for 2010, I'd recommend contacting Disney Fairy Tale Weddings and asking them to send you some information. It's really helpful to have that stuff handy when deciding "should we or shouldn't we"

 

[tig82174]

Even if you're just in the "thinking about it" stages for 2010, I'd recommend contacting Disney Fairy Tale Weddings and asking them to send you some information. It's really helpful to have that stuff handy when deciding "should we or shouldn't we"

Yes I know you're right ...

.....our thing is, as silly as it may sound, that we really don't want to move ahead with a ceremony until we can have legal recognition (call it a political statement ).....so we've been in a holding pattern waiting on our supposedly bluer-than-blue state to get its act together!! You're right, though, that the longer we wait, the less the chances we'll actually be able to do it at WDW (ironically, a former classmate from high school used to be part of the WDW wedding planner team and she's intimated basically exactly that to me).

The other option we've entertained is just to do a ceremony in Orlando but not necessarily AT one of the WDW venues...in which case we will likely have a great deal more flexibility. (This came up for us because of reception entertainment. Isn't it true that you have to use WDW-sanctioned entertainment at your reception? So you can't hire your own performer/musician/entertainer to be at your reception?)

 

[rpmdfw]

Yes I know you're right ...

.....our thing is, as silly as it may sound, that we really don't want to move ahead with a ceremony until we can have legal recognition (call it a political statement ).....so we've been in a holding pattern waiting on our supposedly bluer-than-blue state to get its act together!! You're right, though, that the longer we wait, the less the chances we'll actually be able to do it at WDW (ironically, a former classmate from high school used to be part of the WDW wedding planner team and she's intimated basically exactly that to me).

The other option we've entertained is just to do a ceremony in Orlando but not necessarily AT one of the WDW venues...in which case we will likely have a great deal more flexibility. (This came up for us because of reception entertainment. Isn't it true that you have to use WDW-sanctioned entertainment at your reception? So you can't hire your own performer/musician/entertainer to be at your reception?)

It's funny. We had our ceremony well before we'll ever have the legal right here. And for us it was partly a political statement. (granted that was FAR FAR down our list of reasons)

As to whether or not you can book Non-WDW-sanctioned entertainment, I'm not sure. We didn't even try. We just booked a DJ through DFTW and they assigned one that we ended up being very happy with. So, we never tried it the other way, and don't know what the pitfalls of that might be.

Which ever way you proceed, best of luck to you!

 

[tig82174]

It's funny. We had our ceremony well before we'll ever have the legal right here. And for us it was partly a political statement. (granted that was FAR FAR down our list of reasons)

As to whether or not you can book Non-WDW-sanctioned entertainment, I'm not sure. We didn't even try. We just booked a DJ through DFTW and they assigned one that we ended up being very happy with. So, we never tried it the other way, and don't know what the pitfalls of that might be.

Which ever way you proceed, best of luck to you!

Yeah....we could handle a WDW DJ, but for at least part of our reception we want our own entertainment. We have a friend who is actually a gay recording artist and several of his songs are really important to us including the song we would have our first dance to....so in our ideal world we would book him to come and perform that song live for us...and then just have him play and sing a full set of some of our favorite songs (so our guests would get a free concert out of the deal! )

 

[smmast]

A little update... i contacted Disney Fairy Tale weddings on thursday and was told the cruise wedding planner would get back to me by friday afternoon. Unfortunately, i have yet to hear. I got out of work too late on friday to call back , but will definitely do so on Monday.
We don't have legal rights in Maryland yet either, but 2010 will mark our 14th anniversary and i just can't continue to wait for the rest of the world to catch up. It is very important to both of us to have something ceremonial in front of our family and friends. We have waited too long already! I'll keep you all posted.

 

[smmast]

I did finally speak with Kathy from Disney weddings cruise division. She told me that generally the cruise line does not like her to book more than a year out, which i thought was odd. She also pointed out to me that the first day at Castaway Cay of our cruise (its a two CC stop cruise ) has already been designated for some sort of guest event, but did not get in to specifics. However, since the ship will be making a second stop she was going to inquire if we could use the second stop for our ceremony. At the very least she has penciled us in for an onboard ceremony with the possibility of an island ceremony. Let the planning begin!!!!!

 

[pixierella]

Sigh, I love weddings. Congratulations!