Gwen & Todd - 24 May 2011 - WP/Narcoosee's/Italy West *UPDATE: If I had only known...

[pixie921]

Quick question!

Everything at Disney has the 18% gratuity already added in. Does that mean that we do not have to tip anyone? The planning books and such that I have say that you can/should tip your vendors, but because everything is Disney and they are already charging a gratuity, then we don't have to tip right?

Also, while I love our florist (she has been super helpful and just lovely - she sent me a cute card when I got my wisdom teeth taken out a couple weeks ago), our planner has left much to be desired. She started out not doing the best job, my dad yelled at her for it and now she's gotten slightly better, but still gets things factually wrong and is the least "magical" Cast Member I've ever met. [She was this way before my dad yelled at her, too.]

So I would like to do something special for our florist, but not really for our planner. Any ideas?

Here's my opinion on this. If there is a gratuity added in already (and actually, I think it's 21% on most DFTW items, even more than the 18%), I think you're good. Unless someone is *incredibly exceptional* and you feel like giving more, of course.

For any outside vendors or anyone who is paid by Disney but has no gratuity pre-added (is that a word?), then a 20% tip is the usual (limo drivers, musicians, etc.).

As far as your florist and planner, if the florist has been great, I would definitely send her a gift card or something similar. If your planner has not, I see absolutely no reason on earth to "reward" her for being less than you hoped.

Have a wonderful wedding!!!

 

[Pengwend]

Here's my opinion on this. If there is a gratuity added in already (and actually, I think it's 21% on most DFTW items, even more than the 18%), I think you're good. Unless someone is *incredibly exceptional* and you feel like giving more, of course.

For any outside vendors or anyone who is paid by Disney but has no gratuity pre-added (is that a word?), then a 20% tip is the usual (limo drivers, musicians, etc.).

As far as your florist and planner, if the florist has been great, I would definitely send her a gift card or something similar. If your planner has not, I see absolutely no reason on earth to "reward" her for being less than you hoped.

Have a wonderful wedding!!!

Thanks for your advice Amy! I think that is exactly what we will do. I am not sure how we will tip the limo driver, etc. I certainly won't be carrying anything with which to pay him but maybe Todd will.

We had some snafus yesterday with the Grand and our wedding planner (again). We are having our welcome reception in a suite in the Grand because our planner won't help us with it. But the poor people at the Grand are confused because they haven't heard anything from her and feel like they should have to get everything organized. Basically, they don't understand why we are doing this whole thing on our own and want her to manage it, but she has just refused to touch it. This resulted in three of us (Todd, me and my dad) spending several hours on the phone, trying to make sure we could actually do what we want/need to do at the Grand. And this morning, there's apparently going to be a meeting between management people to figure out what has been going wrong this whole time. (Finally!)

Also, we're dropping off our bins at Franck's this morning so hopefully all goes well and I'll be able to come back and update that everything is set! I'm really not that worried because I know Disney will fix anything that needs to be fixed. While Diane has been sub-stellar, I know other people within Disney are great and they will do what they're supposed to do.

 

[Pengwend]

I never finished this thread, because there was too much going on and then I didn't want to think about anything wedding for a while. Now, a little more than a week away from our first anniversary, I find myself thinking about our wedding a lot. For a long time afterwards, I had really mixed feelings (and quite a few angry ones), so I didn't want to write anything. But now I think that maybe (hopefully) other, future DisBrides might benefit from our experience. If there's interest, I'll write a full report.

Here are some tidbits, as I wait for people to express interest (or not):
1) I approached our wedding planning without much gusto and insisted on being a "laid-back bride." This may have been a mistake.
2) I did not speak up when I should have, even though I was feeling uneasy.
3) NOT ALL DISNEY EMPLOYEES ARE COVERED IN PIXIE DUST. Some of them are nearly villanous.
4) If there is only one piece of advice I would offer to future Disney brides, it's this: STAY ON TOP OF EVERYTHING YOURSELF! Do not rely on the Disney people to take care of things unless/until you have double, triple & quadruple checked. Who cares if you seem like a crazy bride-zilla? You are paying for it! Even after you've quintuple checked, stay on top of it yourself or with someone you trust (family member, etc.) Our reception venue was not prepared for our reception and everything was thrown together at the last minute because I hadn't checked. Luckily, I'd kept my family well informed and my brother was able to find out. Instead of the 9 servers we were supposed to have, Disney scrounged up 2 for us in mis-matched costumes.

I don't mean for this to be overly negative or Disney-bashing. But I want people to know so that they can prevent what happened to us from happening to them. We sent a detailed concern letter to the DFTW management after our wedding, (and after I'd cooled down). They never responded. I wanted them to acknowledge what happened so that I would be comfortable recommending DFTW to others and basically just so I could go on supporting others who wish for a DFTW. But because they never responded, or followed up with us at all, I feel the best way to help is to keep other future brides informed. There are few reports on here that say much about things that went wrong, and I don't want people to think that it's impossible.

 

[pixie921]

I'm so sorry you were left with such unhappy feelings after your wedding! That should never be the case, of course! It seems that for every really good, almost perfect DFTW experience, there is one that is the exact opposite. I think it's terrible that they didn't even respond to your letter, either. Disney used to be known for such amazing customer service, and sadly that just doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

On a much happier note, congratulations on your upcoming anniversary! I hope your first year of marriage has been a happy one, despite the rocky DFTW beginning!

 

[Bewitch324]

I'm so glad you finally posted a bit of an update; I would love to read your full report if you end up deciding to write it.

I'm sorry to hear that you had some disappointments...I am so sad to hear that your fairy tale wedding wasn't quite the magical fairy tale it should have been!! On the upside, your picture is lovely, and you looked very beautiful and happy, so hopefully there were some special magical moments for you.

I don't think presenting the facts is Disney bashing. While we all love Disney or we wouldn't be here, no one and nothing is perfect. Fortunately, it seems like difficult experiences like yours are unusual, but it's helpful to know where there are potential landmines or holes so that we know what to protect against.

Take care, and congratulations on your anniversary!
Brooke

 

[peachydreamyxx]

Im so sorry your day did not go as planned at all!

I would love to hear what happened, as I am extremely nervous with this being a destination wedding! Any advice is appreciated!

 

[Pengwend]

Thanks for the sentiments. It really wasn't awful, if I made it sound that way. Really, I was just disappointed. Anyway, I'll start at the beginning. I think the easiest way to write this will be as a narrative of sorts, but interspersed, I'll come up with the "If I'd Only Known" points. I'll point them out with bullets as I come to them.

We contacted DFTW in April of 2010. We got our planner, Maxine, on schedule and had some communications back and forth with her; on the phone and via email. She seemed energetic and was quick to offer to send us photos and anything else we asked for; though we didn't ask for much because we both felt like we had plenty of time. Sometime in the autumn, we got an email telling us that we were going to be switched from Maxine to a new planner named Diane Bowen. It was a scheduling thing, we were told and we thought it wouldn't matter because we were still pretty far out.

I continued to come up with random questions here and there as we got ready for our planning session. Though I would email Diane and cc Maxine, I almost always got a response from Maxine and only received one or two short responses from Diane. We had our planning session scheduled over winter break, a few days before Christmas. Now that I think about it, I think the only replies we got from Diane were about the actual scheduling of the session; not about ideas or anything regarding actual planning.

I was already a little concerned and we scheduled a conference call to talk to both planners at the same time to make sure we were all on the same page (blank as it was). Unfortunately, I got laryngitis (blast being a kindergarten teacher), so T did all the talking, asking all the questions I wrote down. We still felt that Maxine was "spunkier" sounding, but figured that Diane works for Disney too, so she'd be fine. At the planning session, I was still sick and though T, my sister (MOH) and I had talked a lot about what we were thinking planning wise, I could have asked more questions if I had been more into it. Here's where I think I could have started doing things differently. It should have been a sign to me that I wasn't feeling excited about things. When our florist, Rose, came to talk to us about flowers, I was excited by her creativity and energy. Even though I wasn't feeling great, her energy got me to thinking about what I wanted really and the feeling I wanted our wedding to have. In the end, I really, really loved the flowers she did for us and my mom even valiantly tried to keep them alive until our home reception a week later!

• Your planner should be excited about you and your wedding

T and I weren't that excited about planning our wedding, and thought that our planner would help us get excited about it. {We both just had a lot going on at work/school, and really just didn't have time to get excited.} She didn't. She wanted to stick with cookie-cutter things that weren't necessarily us. From reading the Dis, I knew about all kinds of fun things people had done to make their days special and I wanted to do some of those things too. Diane wasn't interested in doing any of them. In fact, when we mentioned at the end of our planning session that we were going to the parks, she commented that the parks were the last place she'd want to be, with all the crazy crowds there to see the decorations. Yikes. THAT should have been a huge red flag.

Some things we wanted to do and Diane flatly refused to help with?
1) I wanted to get a bunch of KTTW cards to make into luggage tags to send to our guests. I'd read on here that someone else had asked and their planner procured them for her. Diane said it wasn't allowed. We went to the Poly after our planning session and talked to a lovely manager (who was also getting married in DW in May) and she gave us more than we needed!
2) I wanted to plan some kind of welcome reception. Being a destination wedding, and knowing our guests would likely make the trip after work, I wanted something nice for them when they arrived. If not an actual reception, welcome bags in their rooms or at least waiting at check-in. Nope. Not possible said Diane. If we wanted a reception, we'd have to plan it ourselves unless we wanted to book a ballroom, and even then we'd need to talk to the other event planning people at the Grand (assuming we were going to have it there). We couldn't have things left in their rooms because of some rule that Disney employees can't go into people's rooms even if they haven't checked in yet. We could leave bags at the check-in desks, but if our guests didn't ask for them, they wouldn't get them. Plus, we'd have to deliver the bags ourselves, to the various hotel desks the day the guests were to arrive. We'd also have to check back with the hotels that night to see if any of the bags had not been picked up. If there were bags left, we would have to deliver them to the guests' rooms ourselves, assuming we had gotten the guests' room numbers on our own because the hotels couldn't provide them to us.
3) T was interested in doing some custom cocktails, one for each of us. That was ok, but we'd have to provide the recipe to Diane and then she'd check with the chef and give us a price. No offer to have the chef work with us or anything (though the tasting had not yet occurred.)

 

[Pengwend]

After the planning session, we interacted solely with Diane, and didn't get any more help from Maxine.

We went back and forth MANY times on the BEO. At this point, T started to get annoyed as well. We would mark up the BOA, scan and send it to Diane. She would make about 80% of the changes and leave the others unchanged. In addition, somehow other things which had been corrected previously would come back wrong again. For example, we have some family members who are lactose intolerant and wanted them to be noted for special accommodations. This was something that would get fixed and un-fixed over and over. (One of these people is my mom, so I wanted to be sure she got something she could eat!)

Another problem was that in various places, T's last name was misspelled. This was really worrisome! Every now and then, we would call to talk to Diane directly to see if we could get the problems straghtened out and she seemed to forget key elements about our wedding. We didn't want any dancing, and she kept making reference to where we should put a dance floor, etc. Eventually, my dad heard about this trouble we were having and decided to intervene. In his line of work, he is friends with people who work closely with the upper management of Disney corporate, so he made a few calls. He insisted that Diane call bi-weekly to keep us updated on what was going on and also called in a favor to get some increased oversight to see if they could put an end to the continued mistakes.

This "increased oversight" seemed to work for a while. We would encounter a snag here and there, and certainly didn't get any more warm fuzzy feeling from Diane. But we thought that was just because she had managers breathing down her neck and we didn't care if she wasn't nice as long as she got it right.

 

[pixie921]

Ugh! I'm sorry your planner wasn't more into it! It makes you wonder why they choose that job if they don't sincerely want to be helpful and "make dreams come true". The BEO thing seems to be a common complaint ... I'm not sure why they seem to have such a hard time getting their act together on those.

On a positive note, I'm happy for you that you were happy with your floral planner and flowers! That's such a huge part of every wedding, and I'm glad that part went right!

 

[Pengwend]

Finally, the week of the wedding, my mom, brother, T and I got to Orlando the weekend before the wedding (which was on Thursday). We had the welcome reception to prepare and we wanted to finish assembling the welcome bags and such down in Orlando instead of shipping or otherwise transporting completed, and stuffed bags.

When we arrived, we called to see if we could go over last minute details with Diane. We were told that she was on vacation and her first day back would be Thursday; the day of our wedding. Honestly, we were kind of freaking out at this point. Dad to the rescue again! He made some more calls, was told that Diane's immediate boss, Janice, was also out of town and started to get really peeved himself.

Two nights before the wedding, Dad spoke with a guy who was tangentially the manager for Disney Weddings (Tim Hill). He emailed back and forth with Dad, assuring us that he was working on it. Tim even called me on my cell phone around 10:30pm, to reassure me and to let me know that he'd set up meeting with Janice and the team supervisor, Cindy.

The next morning we met with Janice. The point of the meeting was to iron out the details that we should have gone over with Diane. It was kind of scary. All along, we had been planning that the day before our wedding (today, the day we were meeting with Janice), we would drop off little goodies at our guests' hotels. These ball goodies (clear plastic ball ornaments filled with candy and with a tag saying 'we hope you had a ball, thanks so much for joining us on our special day') were to be delivered by hotel staff during our dessert party the following night (the night of our wedding). This way, when our guests returned to our rooms after a day full of wedding fun, they'd have one last surprise from us. Diane again had said she wasn't able to help with this, but that if we spoke to the hotels the day before the wedding, they would charge us a room service fee per room, but it would be fine. We were not to drop the ball goodies sooner for fear they would be lost. Now, Wednesday morning at 10am, right before we were going to make our rounds to the hotels, Janice told us it wasn't possible. There was no way that the hotels would drop goodies for guests unless they were prepared by Disney Private Dining or the Disney gift people.

I was so... I still don't know. Mad? Sad? Overwhelmed? I think all I said was ok, we'll figure it out. Autopilot came on and I just let T do the rest of the talking. He was upset too, but not really for the same reasons. He doesn't like not feeling like he understands what's going on and he knew I'd spent a LOT of time putting these things together within the requirements Diane had told us. I'm not sure what else he said; I think it was a pretty quick meeting, just in the main area of Franck's. But we did scheudle a meeting with Cindy later that day.

At 1pm, we met with Cindy and another woman named Michelle. Cindy apologized for our experience and introduced Michelle as a very competent and experienced wedding planner who would be assisting with our wedding. Diane would stay on, because she knew what was going on best, but Michelle would be there too to make sure everything went as planned. Then, we proceeded to go through the entire BEO with Michelle and Cindy to make sure we were all on the same page. We decided that the ball goodies would be handed out at the dessert party. It ruined the effect as far as I was concerned, but at that point, I didn't care too much; it was a tiny thing I'd tried to do amongst many other things.

Leaving that meeting, I felt more confident about the wedding and felt better that T and I were able to go through the whole wedding plan with two people who seemed into it. Now we just had to hurry back to our hotel to prepare for the welcome reception that evening!

Side note: We had our welcome reception in the Roy Disney suite at the Grand. It was great! We booked the room for just the one night and the manager on duty for that night (unfortunately, I can't remember his full name right now, but his first name was Chris) was fantastic. We had already planned to have my brother, sister and one of T's brothers stationed in the lobby to guide our guests to our suite. We bought them giant Mickey hands and told our guests (in a newsletter sent a week before the wedding) to look for them. Chris reminded us that we'd need a key card to get our guests to the concierge floor, and provided us some extras for each of our stationed siblings. In addition, he provided us two Grand employees to help direct guests once they reached the concierge floor. They also kept the concierge floor refreshments well stocked, and for an extended time to encompass the stated hours of our reception!

To combat the negativity, here are some photos!

If you're interested in the Disney suite, my Flickr has loads of photos!

My brother carefully arranging and alphabetizing the name tags at the Welcome Reception

The "Forget something?" basket. I filled it with toiletries and first aid type things people might forget. I bought everything with coupons or got them for free!

A small and blurry photo of some of the MANY little sandwiches my mom made.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8146/7256650758_49fdeffeee.jpg
The candy buffet!