Escape Wedding Catered Event Guest Count

[MinnieJem]

Hi everyone! First time posting in this forum, but I expect many to come I'm still pricing up the different packages to work out if a Disney wedding is possible for us as we need to start saving if we're going to get married in 2018.

Ideally we'd like a mini-Wishes wedding, but after pricing it up and with the exchange rate so low (we're from the UK and it's potentially not going to get better very soon) I'm not sure we can afford it. Our guest count is likely going to be around the 20 mark so it is really difficult to choose between Escape and Wishes!

I've been looking at the Escape catered events and I'm a little confused. I'd love to have a reception at the Attic and from what I understand this is a $1000 food/beverage minimum for lunch + service/tax. I know that if you book a separate catered event you can have a maximum of 50 people (if I remember correctly) but if you book through DFTW are you still limited to 18 guests? Potentially we'd like 18 guests at the ceremony and then another 4 or 5 at the reception, would that be possible?

 

[lurkyloo]

Welcome! DFTW requires your ceremony and reception guest counts to almost match, with only a 5% variance allowed. The Attic's guest max has gone down to 36 in recent years, but that wouldn't be a problem with a group your size. The problem would be having more people at your reception than at your ceremony. Disney caps the Escape package at 18 because that's how many people they can cost-effectively handle at that price. If you try to add more to your reception, they will tell you that you have to bump up to Wishes. If you plan the reception portion of your event through Disney Catered Events instead, you'd be able to have as many guests as the venue will hold, but you would not be allowed to wear your wedding gown, have a wedding cake, or do anything that makes them think you are trying to have a wedding reception without going through DFTW.

Coming from the UK, it's likely that your response rate will be much lower than if you lived in Florida, so maybe you won't have to worry about it....

 

[MinnieJem]

Thanks for your reply! I did suspect that would be the case but I was keeping my fingers crossed that I'd found a loophole.. I guess we'll have to wait and see how many people RSVP and then make a decision!

 

[Ryan2016]

Congrats!

We too were looking at a Disney wedding but a lot of the packages didn't make sense to us for costs and the group size we had. We had a larger group for the packages.

So we looked at other options which ended up being the house of blues in Disney springs. They have an outside area with a very cool arch way at the back beside the lake. It was awesome!

We also had the reception there too all in the evening right after the wedding

We found it very good for guests as it was a very neutral area for everyone to come too and buses for everyone so they didn't need to drink and drive.

our ceremony was handled by Glynn Ferguson with sensational ceremonies and he was great to work with. They coordinated a lot with the venue as we were not from Florida. They help us work it out

It was a little crazy working through emails but all worked out

If the costing does not work for you a lot of the other locations offer great event nights and they do weddings!

Congrats again!

 

[kl3w]

You can also can also do private events at a number of other Disney Springs venues, depending on what you want. We're doing an Escape wedding and then a lunch at Morimoto Asia. We'll have 18 people at the ceremony, but around 25-30 at the lunch. Having dancing and all that wasn't important to us, so this works for us. But as @Ryan2016 said above there are other options at Disney Springs where you can have a more traditional reception with dancing and all that.

You can also look into Swan and Dolphin weddings through Just Married - they don't have any kind of caps on guest-count.