Disney Wedding DVC style???

[Dean]

My daughter is planning to get Married at Disney next December and we are simply starting the information gathering process this weekend. I'm looking for a DVC perspective, especially as it relates to the room night minimums. But I'd appreciate any and all info provided. I'm going to send my daughter to the Wedding Board and she's already starting to look at the Unofficial Disney Wedding site and the official one.

 

[married@wdw]

DH and I got married at WDW, as did my sister-in-law. My in-laws were DVC members when we were married and by the time my SIL was married, DH and I had bought into DVC too. Disney counts DVC nights in the minimum so it doesn't matter if you pay cash or are on points. Even with my in-laws putting up at bunch of their family in a GV, we still had more than enough nights to make the minimum. SIL had more trouble -- she married a guy from Orlando and his family wouldn't stay over.

The GV was great for both weddings -- made for some easy entertaining and a good place to do tux fittings and hair & make-up on the wedding day.

I have to make one comment of pricing for Disney weddings. I'm not sure how they currently handle prices for the wedding pavilion vs. other places, but we got married in the Italy Pavilion before the countries opened. It was absolutely magical AND they didn't charge us a fee to use it (it was $1500 for SIL to use the wedding pavilion)!!! Another way we saved money -- we got married during the holidays -- almost no need for decorations as the pavilion was SO BEAUTIFULLY decorated!!!

Good luck with the planning -- we had the most fun organizing our special day. And Disney made everything so perfect!!!

 

[loribell]

That sounds wonderful Dean. I would love it if I could get my DD to get married at WDW when it is time for that. Of course I have a long way to go, she's only 6!

How many are you planning to get rooms for? What day of the week will the wedding be on? Is the happy couple going to stay on at Disney after the wedding for their honeymoon or are they going on somewhere else?

I am anxious to follow along with this. I'll have to start saving up for Ally's wedding!

By the way we will be there for Ally's birthday next December. Probably will be there the 19th through the 27th. If your you're there at that time we can come crash the festivities and have some of that great Disney wedding cake I have heard so much about! LOL!

 

[dianeschlicht]

Dean, sounds to me like you better wait a bit before you put those points on the market! Will you need to try to do some trading in too?

 

[gjw007]

My daughter is planning to get Married at Disney next December and we are simply starting the information gathering process this weekend. I'm looking for a DVC perspective, especially as it relates to the room night minimums. But I'd appreciate any and all info provided. I'm going to send my daughter to the Wedding Board and she's already starting to look at the Unofficial Disney Wedding site and the official one.

Dean, there's a poster who I believed is named Janet2K. I think that you will find her posts interesting. While long, they provide lots of information on wedding planning at WDW. I would look up some of her posts. You might wish to start with this link, http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=634041.

 

[WithDisneySpirit]

The wedding board is loads of fun, Dean! I've been hanging out there also, planning a vow renewal for my tenth anniversary It may get expensive to let her spend a lot of time there! By the way, there are no free venues that I know of anymore that will give your DD the coveted title of DFTW bride This title lets her choose an MK photo shoot if she wishes! A custom wedding will allow her to wear her wedding dress into EPCOT for an Illuminations dessert party!!!!

What a wonderful time of year for a wedding

 

[SyrCinderella]

Our DD has announced that she and her soon to be fiance would like to be married at WDW. He is also a member, as are his parents. My question is - how do they count the points toward the room minimu? For example, if we get a GV (which I think would be very nice for all the reasons listed above, and besides its a good excuse....), would that just count as one room toward the minimum even though its mega points?

 

[JimFitz]

Congratulations Dean. I am sure your daughter will have a wonderful wedding.

My wife and I were married 5 years ago and were not really "into" Disney at that time. If we could do it over, we would get Married at the GF.

Enjoy!

 

[Patty3]

Dean, how exciting. I am just coming along for the ride since DD is not engaged and does not plan to be for quite awhile.

 

[WithDisneySpirit]

Something else new on the wedding front that really has to do with DVC is Disney is building a second wedding pavillion at SSR They are already building it, don't know if it will be ready any time soon.

 

[RobDoc]

That's wonderful. Congratulations !!

We would have been thrilled if our DD's had wanted a Disney wedding. However, they chose to get married 3 weeks apart and that was enough of a challenge!

Get your checkbook out ... and enjoy the experience.

Definitely contact Disney's FairyTale Weddings and they can walk you thru the process. The Wedding Pavillion is wonderful and Franc's is a fun "store" to visit (be sure to bring your checkbook there too!)

 

[Dean]

Thanks all, we are literally just starting the process.

 

[athenna]

Thanks all, we are literally just starting the process.

Just as an fyi...I have been hanging out at the Weddings Forum a little bit lately and they've mentioned that there will be changes in pricing, and what the DFTW include and don't include for '06 and after, so what your daughter sees on the FTW website might differ as we get closer to '06.

And have you heard about a wedding pavilion at SSR? They mentioned it on the Weddings forum, but it was the 1st I heard of it. Nice idea, though.

 

[Dean]

Dean, sounds to me like you better wait a bit before you put those points on the market! Will you need to try to do some trading in too?

LOL, actually we were planning a family type trip that will be the same time so we won't sell until after that is done anyway. She's actually looking at just after Xmas 2006 and I'm worried how that will work, for many reasons.

 

[Jenn]

Hi Dean,

My sister was married at WDW on 12-3-03. We are DVC owners, so we got her room as well as the rooms for ourselves and for our immediate family at BW. BW is our home resort, and knowing how busy that time of year is, I knew I had to book right at 11 months. We tossed around the idea of checking availablity at the other resorts at the 7 month window, but decided to stick with BW and were glad we did.

They had an intimate wedding package, and Disney simply removed the hotel portion of the package since they didn't need it. There were no room minimums with the intimate package (there were only 12 or so guests there).

She was married in the Wedding Pavillion and had a brief "cake and champagne reception" immediatly after on a balcony at GF. Then, we all went back and changed into more comfortable clothing, and we had dinner at Yachtsman Steakhouse, followed by a Illuminations Dessert Party on the Upper UK terrace.

It was a beautiful day! Everyone had a ball! Any questions, feel free to ask or PM me!!

 

[NJOYURLIFE]

Dean, congratulations to your daughter and her intended!


It will be exciting planning a Disney wedding.

 

[married@wdw]

Dean --
First off, a GV only counted as one room for both my wedding and DSisIL's wedding. We had no problem making the minimums for our wedding -- she married an Orlando native, so for them it was a little tougher. Do you have many people you'd invite that are local to Disney? The discounts my family got were excellent and made it well worth the money to stay on Disney property instead of trying to "save" by staying off site. You could canvas your families ahead to see if they're interested in going, etc. And remember, it's room nights, not rooms. We stayed for 12 nights including pre-wedding through honeymoon nights and they counted all of it. Don't fret about that too much -- and you might want to check with the Disney Weddings folks to see what they say about that now. Since the GV has three bedrooms, they might be willing to count it for more. We didn't even pursue that option with DSisIL because, we found the room nights we needed by using two studios for my family instead of a two-bedroom (saved points and we were barely in the room anyway!).

Also, my wedding was 12/28/98 -- right after Christmas. We chose this time because a) we had many small children and teachers in the family and wanted to accommodate their vacation schedule and b) the Christmas decorations meant we didn't have to decorate the wedding site at all. We were married in the Italy Pavilion in Epcot -- the decor was lots of white poinsettas, gold angels, etc. It was absolutely stunning -- we just added chairs and a small altar with a floral arrangement for the candle lighting ceremony.

Our reception was at Atlantic Dance -- we used boats to move everyone from Epcot, which was awesome!

Didn't know about the new wedding pavilion at SSR! I'm already trying to convince my niece and nephews they want to marry at Disney (the oldest is only 14). SSR would be a great option!
HAPPY PLANNING!

 

[Dean]

Thanks all, it's looking like this will not work out for other reasons. Plan B is she will get Married on the Sat the week before Xmas and then my immediate family will go to WDW for the week immediately proceeding Xmas. Staying at DVC of course.

 

[Mickmse2002]

I have to make one comment of pricing for Disney weddings. I'm not sure how they currently handle prices for the wedding pavilion vs. other places, but we got married in the Italy Pavilion before the countries opened. It was absolutely magical AND they didn't charge us a fee to use it (it was $1500 for SIL to use the wedding pavilion)!!! Another way we saved money -- we got married during the holidays -- almost no need for decorations as the pavilion was SO BEAUTIFULLY decorated!!!

Wow, no charge for getting married at the Italy pavilion, what a deal!

 

[dis-happy]

Congratulations on being the father of the bride! You really raised her right--teaching her to love all things Disney. Hope you have a wonderful year of planning the big day. Now that I think about it, you may have to give yourself an extra DVC weekend away just to get away from all the planning....