G&B- Life's a Happy Song :) - 3/24/2013 WP/GF PJ

[itsmebabygi]

Hi everyone!

I have been antsy to start a PJ for a while. I was really nervous to get really emotionally committed to a date and planning before we officially got the go ahead, especially since we were in a lottery with 2 other couples, but we found out this week we got our preferred date and time!

So next March 24 at 5:00 we will be married at the Wedding Pavilion, with a reception at the Grand Floridian after.

And we will be inviting 210 people.... (just a little crazy, right?)

Here is the save the date! (Got the idea from the disboards, of course)

(I don't know if that will be our wedding website just yet, its just a placeholder)

So... Time for the intros...

Me:
I am 25 years old from Staten Island, NY. I am a Mechanical Engineer (and a wannabe Imagineer of course) and I have been dreaming about the Wedding Pavilion for as long as I can remember, but never took the idea seriously until about 2 months ago.

This is Bobby and me, shortly after our Christmas Eve engagement.

Bobby (age 28) and I met through my brother, technically. He is a lacrosse coach at the high school that brother played (although my brother graduated last year). We met randomly a little less than 3 years ago. He recognized me, (probably because of my overenthusiastic cheering at the games), and came to talk to me. I did have to get my little brother to give him my phone number to seal the deal , but the rest is history.

Over the first couple of months of dating, I was amazed how many mutual friends we have. There were numerous times where we were able to pin down that we were in the same place at the same time. He is actually best friends with one of my good friends from high school's older brother. Its almost like he was always there but the timing just wasn't right yet.

This is our baby, Daisy. But shes unfortunately not invited to Disney.

She's a bit bigger now, she was still a puppy in that picture.

I always thought doing a Disney wedding would be a silly dream (even though it was a dream I had since I ordered the planning DVD's when I was ~13 years old ). We are both from Staten Island and 98% of the invited guests are from the NY area, so I felt really bad planning something too far from home. We looked at a bunch of places around us, and every place that was within budget and could fit our 200 person head count really didn't feel like it fit our personalities. I was actually getting really down on the whole process. The entire time, I had friends and family whispering Disney Disney Disney. They all knew that was what I really wanted and they knew that DF loves it almost as much as me. So eventually we changed our mind about the location, and realized we wouldn't be happy with anything but Disney. I was surprised when the majority of the people we are inviting we're almost more excited than we were when we told them we were doing it in Disney. In retrospect, I don't know why I was as concerned as I was.

For our bridal party, I have 8 Bridesmaids (two of which are Maids of Honor), and Bobby has 10 Groomsmen. But one of them is my brother, so I keep telling him hes actually a bridesmaid because we need to keep it even, lol.

I have two Maids of Honor because I couldn't choose between my best friend and my sister. My sister was a little bummed at first not to have the solo spot, but she is very close with my BFF too, so she understands. (I think Bobby is going to end up doing the same thing, but that hasn't been officially announced yet.) Our bridal part is huge. We originally both said that we could do 3 people 8-10 people each, but we both figured everything would be more fun with all of our favorite people involved, so we went for it.

We already have some planning done other than the location, so I'll put that in the next post.

 

[itsmebabygi]

We have a couple of things already planned (even before we got our Disney confirmation).

1. I have my dress!

I thought it was just ok when I saw it online, but it was perfect when I tried it on. It was so much fun and just the right amount of princess.

I did "say yes to the dress" (not the TV show, just a visit to Kleinfelds). It was amazing. The designer was having a trunk show that day so I have a sketch that he did while I was wearing my dress! The whole experience felt so special. And everyone from my eccentric god mother to my more conservative grandmother cried when I put it on, so I new it had to be the one.

2. I have my photographer!
http://rootweddings.com/blog/
When I saw Roots on the disboards, I feel in love. I knew I wouldn't be able to find a photographer I liked as much, so we went for it. We are both very excited about it! They are the perfect balance of pretty pictures and silliness. We will most likely be doing an engagement photo shoot in NYC this summer, so it will be awesome to have a piece of home mixed into this process too. I am almost as excited for that as the wedding itself! (ok, maybe not, its a lot of excitement, just a different excitement)

3. I started work on my bouquet. I am making a brooch bouquet. Still sloppy and no where near done, but I have some florist friends that hopefully can help me pull this all together. We are still going back and forth about whether or not the rest of the bridesmaids will have them too, we'll have to see. Its fun to have a project to do and I am planning on getting a bunch of other projects to do. My favorite part is that its going to last forever.

4. The bridesmaids don't have dresses yet... but they have shoes!

Gotta start somewhere, right? We all thought they were so cute, bling and a bow! What more could you want!?


Here are some of the bridesmaid dress options:

I think we'll need to try a bunch on before we know which direction to take it. Plus it'll be fun to have a dress shopping trip with my girls.

5. The current item on our to do list is estimating our room blocks right now. We are blocking out rooms in the Grand Floridian, Port Orleans Riverside, and Pop Century. Its kind of hard to judge how to find the right number for this. I am antsy to get this part done so we can finally meet our Wedding Planner! Anyone have any tips?

I have a bunch of other ideas pinned on pinterest, but I haven't gotten to that point yet. Still have a lot to go, but we still have a year to pull it all together.

 

[DisneyEverAfter]

Hi! Love your dress!! (I saw you posted it to the dress thread too on the main page) Glad you had fun at Kleinfeld's~ Looked like an awesome experience Your bouquet is so cool! I'm looking forward to the finished product & you're too funny, I love your collage of bridesmaid dresses Can't wait to see more of your plans!

 

[itsmebabygi]

Haha. My bridesmaids keep teasing me about how silly the collages look. But it so fun and addicting to put them together! And its hard to tell how dresses will look together since I am trying for the mismatched look. Polyvore is fun to play around with, its like digital paper dolls.

I also stumbled across this on polyvore (not wedding, just disney related), and I'm completely addicted to looking at what she puts together. She is so creative. I figured you guys would probably appreciate it as much as I do.

http://www.polyvore.com/disney_bound/collection?id=1033396

http://disneybound.tumblr.com/

 

[tinydancr06]

Hi! Love everything so far! I'll be following along

 

[itsmebabygi]

After someone on the other page pointed out to me that there was a whole episode of SYTTD dedicated to that dress, I hunted it out today and watched it. I had no idea it was so popular, haha. They were definitely right though that everyone loves it for different reasons.

My dress inspiration was Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls, haha. I love that show, so I was so excited to find a pink-ish dress that I loved.

 

[Sizzle]

Great planning! Such a great story, sounds like the world had been trying to put you two together for some time!!

The dress is beautiful, I recognized it from SYTTD right away! I love the collages for the BM's too. It will be so fun to shop with everyone for their dress. And with those shoes, oh yeah!

 

[CinderALLIE]

Congratulations on getting engaged and your dates through the lottery.

Can't wait to see more...and I love the collages.

 

[yourgypsy]

Hello! Congratulations and yay for getting the date/time you wanted! That dress is GORGEOUS! I look forward to reading more of your plans

 

[Wshs0127]

Joining in!

My hopeful date is not long after yours next year so hopefully we can share a lot of the planning experiences and share ideas. And guess what, we got engaged on Christmas Eve too, how funny is that. I love your planning so far! I also love the save the date, I saw that one time before on the boards and I thought "how cute is that"! I'm struggling with my STD design right now, I have too many ideas!!

Also, the room block is one I dread trying to figure out. I mean, how do you guess who will stay where when you have 100+ guests! I'm not looking forward to that part, but I am looking forward to next Thursday to finally book our date!!

When you posted your wedding dress, did you have to use Photobucket? Also, did you do the collages in a design program and upload them to PB? I'm trying to find an easier way to upload photos!

 

[virtuous girl]

Welcome Great plans & pics so far

 

[itsmebabygi]

Thanks guys! I love that I am able to blabber on about wedding and everyone loves it as much as I do. I think I would drive my Bridesmaid nuts if I talked about it as much as I want to.

When you posted your wedding dress, did you have to use Photobucket? Also, did you do the collages in a design program and upload them to PB? I'm trying to find an easier way to upload photos!

I have been using photobucket for everything, so I have no clue if there is a better way to do it, but if anyone has advice let me know! I am definitely going to start following your PJ though Nicole! It really exciting to talk to people that are going through the same stuff. I have been holding back doing too much Dis-ing because I know I'll get hooked, but it too late now! And now I feel really far behind! (plenty of time to catch up though...)

I haven't really noticed anyone else doing it, but this might be helpful to someone so I figured I would share my room blocking. I have 210 people on the invite list with a decent amount of children and people sharing rooms.

This was my original list that I estimated to start the contract process.

(sorry if its too big, I was worried it would be difficult to read)

Since then, my mom and my FMIL have emailed a good amount of the guests asking for an estimate of when they would be staying and where they would be staying. We have heard from about 1/3 of the group and this is where we are with the room counts now:

So I guess I initially underestimated, but I was really nervous to overestimate! And we can just add on rooms if we need later on, so I am not too concerned. My planner (I had Michelle) told me to try to get it as accurate as possible as early as possible though since this will be Palm Sunday/Easter week next year, so the rooms will most likely sell out at some point. I asked and they only set aside a certain number of rooms at a "blockable" rate, so even if the hotel is not sold out, they can sell out of the rooms available at a discount.

I keep seeing info in other PJ's that I forgot to mention so I think I am going to have a lot of posts coming up as I read through more and more of these!

 

[itsmebabygi]

I really don't have a focus on particular colors or one set style yet necessarily (at least I feel really unorganized with this), but I have been gathering thing I like and I think I am starting to narrow it down.

These are flowers that I like (although my bouquet is going to be a brooch bouquet like I mentioned before):

I like different textures to the flowers. I guess I am having trouble pinpointing exactly why I like certain thing, so I feel like its unfocused.

And here are some of my general inspiration photos:

I think maybe it can be described as romantic/soft and playful/fun. I don't know.

All I know is what I have officially paid for already and the we NEEEEED a candy buffet

If anyone is better with words than me and can more clearly pinpoint my style, that would be really helpful

 

[NoOrdinaryPrincess]

Joining in! Your inspiration board looks beautiful!

 

[Wshs0127]

Oh Gina, I love the inspiration boards, those colors are so pretty, very elegant and romantic. And as for making decision right now, it's still early, you can change your mind a few times, right! I'm still having trouble with my colors, I feel like they are missing a darker contrast, but my Mom keeps saying it's fine with white or ivory as the accent color. I can't decide! I think once we start shopping for the bridesmaids dresses, it will all start coming together hopefully.

On the room block, is that the sheet that Disney sent you to fill out once you booked your date? And is that the discounted rates? That's very helpful though, I think I'm going to set up a sheet similar to that listing the entire wedding week to have a better idea of when people may start to come in, etc. All I've done so far is basically guess by each family who will stay where, but I haven't really narrowed it down to how many night or what days of the week. Thanks for this!

Michelle is our coordinator too! She's been very helpful so far and has even suggested things to help us out that we would have never thought of. We are going down to meet her at the end of the month during our random Disney trip! It will be nice to finally put the name with a face, but then not long after that, we'll be getting a coordinator assigned. Do you have any suggestions for the week prior to booking the date, anything I should be doing? We book our date next Thursday and I'm anxious to get things done now!

 

[itsmebabygi]

The top one is the sheet from Disney. And yes those are my discounted rates ... But those are the rates for Easter week so basically it's the highest prices of the year (other than Christmas week I think), so yours should be lower (hopefully)
Really the only thing to do at this point I think is to talk to as many guests as you can to try to make it accurate. I didn't realize how specific the room block needed to be so I didn't gather any of that info until after my "official booking date". So any info you can get now will just speed the process up. They told me it will be about 7 to 10 business days from when we sent in the room block info (and other general info) before they send me the contract. So I think pretty much the only thing to do in the next 3-4 weeks (when we should finally get our wedding event planner) is to write a check.

I definitely wish we could have taken a trip to see the places. But I trust pictures enough and have walked around the Grand Floridian, so that should be good enough until the PS trip.

Have fun on your trip! I kinda wish there were some headshots available for the people I talk to on the phone. I wish I could put a face to the voices.

 

[CDsSleepingBeauty]

Welcome! Your dress is beautiful!

 

[itsmebabygi]

My dress is everywhere!
It's on the disneyweddingblog now!
These pictures are so cute.
http://disneyweddingsblog.com/inspiration-boards/inspiration-beauty-the-beast/#comments

 

[peachydreamyxx]

Joining in!

My rates for our hotel block are the same! I was supposed to get married in NY on 3/23/13 but I was terrified the rates would be to high for guests bc of Easter so I moved to the week after Presidents day thinking the price would be *slightly* lower.. but nope! Could have kept my original date!

Im actually hoping that Disney offers some amazing discount for the time frame we're there to encourage more of our guests to stay on property with us!

 

[One_Song]

Oh wow I love your inspiration photos. Gorgeous. I'm really excited to see how your wedding will turn out!