Escape to Wishes

[disbridemimi]

Hi everyone! I am SO excited to finally start planning! I have been a lurker for quite a while and I have really enjoyed reading all of the helpful information on this site, it is going to be a lifesaver! We have finally decided that we will be having a Disney wedding, and although a lot of our family is NOT on board with this idea, we are going to hope for the best.

We are leaning towards an Escape wedding right now with some kind of resteraunt luch & then a dessert party or Grand 1 Wishes cruise, but we may end up bumping to WIshes if more people are willing to make the trip!I have a zillion questions!

1. If we book a Wishes wedding, but then less than 20 people want to come, can we change down to Escape? I am pretty sure you can go Escape to WIshes, just not sure if you could also downgrade.

2.Any tips on keeping Wishes close to the minimum spend? Can it be done, and still be a nice wedding with decent food?

3. Are there any site that you can hold your ceremony/location that are not listed on the Disney Wedding Website, or any Planning Journals or Trip Reports from more unique wedding/reception locations?

4. Anyone else have a family that isnt on board for the idea?

Sorry for all of the questions!

 

[lurkyloo]

Welcome!

I had almost all those things! (Although we went Escape to Wishes, but it is definitely possible to go from Wishes to Escape - several people on these boards have done it).

We kept our wedding to within about $70 of the Wishes minimum and still had an event that was good enough for this wedding magazine!

If you click on the "PJ!" and "Wedding!" links in my signature, you can read how we did that. There are also numerous posts on this board full of money-saving tips. Try searching by Googling the term "BEO" and adding "site:disboards.com" after it. (Using Google works better than the DIS search engine).

You'll turn up threads where people have posted their budgets and discuss money saving tips, like this one:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2036700


If you want to look for venues that are not the usual DFTW locations, log on to the Disney Meetings web site and click on “Theme Park Venue Map” in the “Let’s Get Started” box. Clicking on each theme park’s name will show you just about every event space inside Animal Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Epcot. Not all of them may be available (it depends on each park's managers), but the maps will give you an idea of possibilities that Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings doesn’t usually volunteer.

And we also had family not on board with the idea. It is quite common, and the people on this board can offer you lots of encouragement to have the kind of event you want since, at the end of the day, it's your wedding and you will be the one who remembers it most.

 

[disbridemimi]

Thank you for all of the info! Your pics are awesome! I wish they had more pics about the meeting venues, but its nice to see a different list of locations. I think the Animal Kingdom ones look really interesting!