Cost of Custom Wedding?

zetalove08

Mouseketeer
Joined
May 25, 2007
Messages
226
Hey everyone!

I just got off the phone with Heidi Pickert, she's the sales consultant I am talking with about my wedding and I had a bad surprise! On the Disney Weddings Wishbook it says that Fri/Sun weddings at the WP during any month regardless of low, regular or premium season is minimum of $15,000. When I called though she told me that premium months (October, November, May, June) are a min. of $20,000 on Friday/Sundays. So I am really bummed because I had Oct.12 set as the date (Sunday) and the 7-night Disney Caribbean cruise we wanted to go on is the following Sunday. Well then I thought about pushing it up to Aug. or Sept. because those are low/regular season months and having it Aug.31 (Sunday) since Monday is Labor Day and guests wouldn't have to ask off work but there are no Disney cruises to the Caribbean from May-Sept and I really had my heart set on this!

This next statement is going to make me sound spoiled rotten... but I know my Dad would probably be okay with staying in October since he said he'd be willing to pay UP to $20,000 even if it was a min. of $15000 but I just feel like it's so ridiculous to pay $5000 extra dollars... what do y'all think? Also, another thing that kind of ticks me off is that it says on the web-site specifically that the min. is $15000. I understand prices change or whatever, but for example, when I worked at Winn Dixie for a while as an assistant manager if someone came in and said they saw a price advertised and that's now what we had in the store- it didn't matter, we gave them the price advertised. lol okay so I know this is a totally different situation but still.. and to clear up this is nothing against Heidi because she has been nothing but helpful and sweet! Actually she just replied to my email so I better go check and see what she says...

Sorry for such a long post but I wanted to see if anyone else had this problem! Thanks for any help and input!!
 
Sorry about your bad news! One thing to keep in mind before changing dates over minimum differences....it is a minimum that they are stating. More often than not the final total for everything ends up being a fair amount more than the minimum.

How many people are you planning on inviting / having there? What locations would you like? These decisions have quite a big impact on the final total. Depending on your plans, the difference between them saying it's 15k or 20k for the minimum may be a moot point.

Let us know a little more about what you have envisioned. We may be able to provide some suggestions on how to have the wedding you have dreamed of without having to pay tons of $$ or change your plans.

HTH
 
As DVCGirl49 mentioned the minimum is before tax and gratuity on many things so you will pay more than that amount on the event. If your dad will pay up to $20k then I would try to go with a date that is $15k minimum. What about getting married the last Saturday in September and cruising the first time the ship is back?
 
Unfortunately, the prices on the DFTW website are almost always wrong. Sometimes you'll see two different prices for the same thing on different parts of their site.

I totally wish they had a Winn-Dixie-style policy of honoring the prices listed on their site, though, 'cuz then I could have a weekday Custom wedding for a minimum of $8,500 :rotfl: (Unless they've finally fixed that typo...)
 

Let me give y'all a few more details about what I want and see what you think. ;)

I want to have a wedding for around 50-70 guests, it'll probably be close to 70. I'd like it smaller but we have such huge familes and we really want them all there. We plan to get married at the Wedding Pavilion probably around 12pm and then having a buffet/brunch afterwards (I've been looking at the TinkerBell Brunch package that Heidi sent to me, and it's around $45 a person). I know we'd have to spend a min. of $75 a person so I guess we would add a cocktail hour package or something. We want to have the reception at the Boardwalk Resort. Other than that, there aren't too many extra's that we want! We want to use Randy Chapman for photography (thanks to all the rave reviews on here!!!) so that wont be included in our Disney costs... we will probably go with Disney for floral though but we're not sure. So what do you ladies think? Do you think that could be $15000 or should I stick with the date and the min. of $20000 because it would cost around that much anyways? Thanks for any input!!!:thumbsup2

By the way... I agree with you LurkyLoo, they should totally adopt a Winn Dixie style attitude!!! :banana:
 
Actually on the website it does say that the minimums during the premium months are higher. The minimums listed are for the off-season. Disney weddings have 3 season (just like the parks) low season ($January, February, August, & September), regular season (March, April, July & December), and premium season (October, November, May, and June). I want an October wedding so when we started planning this all out last October is when we found out about the different seasons. The Minimum expenditures for each season are as follows:
Monday-Thursday is a minimum of $10,000 no matter what season.
Friday & Sunday is $20,000 during Premium season, $15,000 the rest of the year, and Saturday is $25,000 Premium, $20,000 regular, and $15,000.
The wedding location has nothing to do with your minimum expenditure -- the day of the week & season of your wedding does. That's why if you use the wish book at the dftw site they ask you to put in a time and day so it can give you a slightly more acurate calculation. If you don't put that info in it gives you prices for mid-priced regular season.
 
We are having a custom wedding on a Sat. our min. is $20, 000. After a long dispute back & forth about whether or not we should change the day or have an intimtate we decided that it was best for our money to keep the Sat. and stay custom. After we started doing a rough tally of everything we wanted, we were so close to hitting that min. Also my DF thought that it was great that we had such a high min, because we can now add all the little extras and increase our floral budget just so we can hit it.
I think that you will have no trouble hitting the min. with the amount of people you are having. If you switch to another day there's a chance that you could easily spend just as much money.
If you really want that day and the money thing is do-able then got for it!
 
/
Let me give y'all a few more details about what I want and see what you think. ;)

I want to have a wedding for around 50-70 guests, it'll probably be close to 70. I'd like it smaller but we have such huge familes and we really want them all there. We plan to get married at the Wedding Pavilion probably around 12pm and then having a buffet/brunch afterwards (I've been looking at the TinkerBell Brunch package that Heidi sent to me, and it's around $45 a person). I know we'd have to spend a min. of $75 a person so I guess we would add a cocktail hour package or something. We want to have the reception at the Boardwalk Resort. Other than that, there aren't too many extra's that we want! We want to use Randy Chapman for photography (thanks to all the rave reviews on here!!!) so that wont be included in our Disney costs... we will probably go with Disney for floral though but we're not sure. So what do you ladies think? Do you think that could be $15000 or should I stick with the date and the min. of $20000 because it would cost around that much anyways? Thanks for any input!!!:thumbsup2

By the way... I agree with you LurkyLoo, they should totally adopt a Winn Dixie style attitude!!! :banana:



Let me see if I can help a little bit. I think for that many people, you're going to surpass your $15,000 very quickly! Here's why:

Our total was $14,000

We are having only 34 people and here is some of the breakdown
Wedding Pavilion $2700
Disney Floral $2000 (this is like bare minimum stuff!)
2 limos $600
Cake for 50 people $700
Alcohol packages $1200 (this was necessary to meet our reception location minimum!)
Pre-reception and reception buffet food $2650
DJ $900
Dessert Party $2000
MK Photo Shoot $800

That's the general idea. The rest is just delivery fees, service charges, etc...

If you did everything the same as us, but with 70 people (your max) your break down would be similar to this:
Wedding Pavilion $2700
Disney Floral $2000 (this is like bare minimum stuff!)
2 limos $600
Cake for 70 people $805
Alcohol packages $1890 (this was necessary to meet our reception location minimum!)
Pre-reception and reception buffet food $4288
DJ $900
Dessert Party $2840
MK Photo Shoot $800
Your total would be around $16800 and that's not adjusting the floral.

On top of that we also had:
officiant fee
tuxes
dress
alterations
shoes
hair/makeup
steaming
favors
placecards
Randy Chapman
invitations
thank you cards
thank you gifts
welcome bags & supplies
etc...

So keep in mind that just because your 'Disney total' is $15,000 that doesn't necessarily mean that's your total.

Hope that helps :) :)
 
We are having a custom with around 65 people. We are just barely meeting our $15,000 minimum because we went with outside photography and videography in order to get more for our money compared to Disney. We are having a morning ceremony at Epcot with a brunch luncheon and an evening dessert party. Since our meal is earlier in the day we only have to reach $75 per person in food and beverage compared to the $100 at night. We also are not having alcohol; just adding a nonalcoholic toast.

I know how you feel about having to change your date. We wanted to get married on Leap Day 08 which would have been our anniversary or March 1 the next day (my late grandfather's birthday), but decided in the end it was better to save the extra money. We opted for March 3, the following Monday. Plus, it gives our guests the weekend to travel and we're having events leading up to the wedding (welcome party, bridal tea, rehearsal dinner, etc.) This way our guests only have to take a few days off of work too compared to if we had a Saturday wedding.
 
Plus, it gives our guests the weekend to travel and we're having events leading up to the wedding (welcome party, bridal tea, rehearsal dinner, etc.) This way our guests only have to take a few days off of work too compared to if we had a Saturday wedding.

This exactly why we chose a Monday wedding as well! :thumbsup2
 





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