How to handle guests?

[Merandab4]

HI,
We will be having about 18 people celebrate our wedding with us at Disney. Not all will be at the ceremony(because it is an intimate one). But all will be celebrating with us at the dinner afterwards.
DF and I, and most of our guests will be arriving in WDW on a Thursday. We will be staying Thursday, Friday, (having our wedding on Saterday, also staying Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Some guests will be leaving on Sunday or Monday, and some guests (whom have children) will be staying longer.
My question is this......How do we plan to spend time with all of our guests without really taking away from our own time together. Afterall, this WILL be our honeymoon.
DH and I suggested that our guests be there Thursday through Sunday. So anytime after Sunday they are on their own, and so are we. But that still leaves Thursday through Saturday. One night we would like everyone to go to Pleasure Island, but we need to spend more time with them than that. We can't take everyone out to dinner, because our dinner to them will be on Saturday after the wedding. I looked at the brochure for the magical gatherings, but those activities still look too expensive.

We thought of making an itenerary for ourselves and let people Know what we will be doing each night, and they are welcomed to join us. Like if we go to O'hanna one night, or another restraunt. But if we do this, is it our responibility to pay for everyone that shows up? We want to spend as much time as possible with our guests Thursday through Saturday, but we don't want our guests to assume that if we invite them to come out with us, that we are going to be paying for all 18 of them to eat, or golf, or whatever the activity may be. Any suggestions? How did you past brides handle this situation? Any upcoming brides out there that already have a plan for this?

 

[inloveindisney]

I say, maybe make up the itinerary like you were saying, but only list things that you would like them to attend, for instance-only the big things like the ohana, etc.
personally, if I was invited to a disney wedding, I would not expect to spend my entire stay with the bride and groom. I definitely would not expect for the bride and groom to pay either. People usually understand that after your wedding day, you are celebrating your honeymoon.
I am thinking that you could do a newsletter like the one that is on andrea's site a few months before (remember that big events require reservations sometimes) and let them know what you are planning and that any event after the ceremony date will be considered "dutch treat", or to put it a little less obvious, you can list the prices of each event along with a short description.

Hope this helps!

 

[Kismetdreams]

We are in a similar boat. We are going to be at Disney from Weds-Mon, with the wedding on Sat. What we have told our family is that they are invited to do whatever with us, but it is Dutch treat. They understand completely, as they know we don't make a ton of $$, and will probably join us on a dinner on Thursday night. My FMIL is having a rehearsal dinner for us on Fri, but not all 50 guests are invited, so we will be making plans to get together after supper is over to go and hang out together.

We are printing an itinerary with info on what we have planned, and if it is pay your own way or not, as well as who is staying at what resort and important phone numbers (my cell, my EMs number, etc.)

 

[Doctor Tigger]

The itenerary is a wonderful idea We had the same problem as we wanted to do certain things by ourselves, we simply made everyone a "Welcome Folder" and put a welcome letter, wedding day events and times, park maps, and info about the MNSSHP and a week long itenerary that stated where we will be on what day if everyone wanted to join us. We gave them the option of coming with us as it was our honeymoon. It worked out perfectly as people knew the days we had slotted for us they weren't invited to come along!!

I highly recommend the itenerary

 

[diswedwish]

What we did was tell everyone up front when we would be arriving (Tuesday, wedding Thursday), that we would be more than happy to get together anytime before the wedding, but that after the wedding day our honeymoon started. Brief and to the point and we hoped there wouldn't be hard feelings... Guess what? Everyone was surprised that we even thought they would be upset by this Everyone's response was a "but you're on your honeymoon!" We had 8 guests. My family arrived on Monday and we did things together until the wedding - my dad picked up the tab for a meal or two, and DH and I purchased my family's 2-day hoppers as Christmas presents. DH's family chose not to arrive until late Wed. night, so we didn't have issues with what to pay for for them. Although if I were a guest, I certainly wouldn't take offense to being told that it was a pay-your-own-way type of event. HTH

 

[druidia]

I've noticed that a few of you posted messages in this thread that you are having Intimate Wedding ceremonies on Saturday. I thought that these were only permitted on Mon-Thurs? I'm still weighing the pros/cons between the Disney packages and the Just Marry packages, and this item was a big mark against the Disney option. Has this changed?? If so, YAAAAYYYYY!

 

[Jenn]

My sister's WDW wedding was on 12-3-03. She did welcome bags for the guests. They included park maps, an intinerary, and a couple of little trinkets. The itinerary had "must dos" like the rehearsal dinner, wedding night dinner, etc. and then a list of what the bride and groom were planning on the other days if the guests wanted to tag along or get together for a meal. We tended to all travel in a group (about 18 of us) and then split up throughout the day at the parks for a few hours at a time.

 

[Kismetdreams]

druidia,

Intimate weddings can only happen on weekends if they are at an outside location...No WP.

 

[druidia]

Thank you, Kismetdreams. I'm such a dummy. I have the Disney planning materials for the Intimate Wedding AND I bought Andrea's book online, and I still didn't pick up on that fact. I was just thinking all Intimate Weddings; not only WP weddings. The Disney Wedding option just got bumped up several notches! Thanks a lot.

 

[CA disney lover]

The itinerary idea is fabulous, but one thing I HIGHLY suggest is that you try to break your personal itinerary down in such a way that there is a little something for everyone, but not necessarily one or more things that all of your guests want to do together at one time outside of the primary wedding activities. Primary reason, it is VERY challenging to maneuver a large group around WDW.

Within our 12 guests, we really had four sub-groups of families. We did go to the MK all together and easily within an hour decided to split up and meet at a certain point at a certain time because it was pretty much impossible to keep everyone happy as a group. You will also find mealtime difficult to manage if you're trying to get everyone together. Getting a table "on the fly" for more than 6 people can result in a long wait. If you have a PS arranged, but not all members of your party are present, most restaurants won't seat you and if you've got a lolly-gagger in the group who is more than 10min late for the PS, you risk losing the PS entirely and having to wait for the restaurant to be able to turn multiple tables in the same vicinity so you can be seated as a group. Yep, it happened to us! Nothing like one person making everyone else miserable just because they can't show up on time for whatever reason.

So we got smart about it very quickly. Two of our sub-groups had young kids so we spent an afternoon at MGM with them doing all the kiddie things. One group was parents who explored Epcot on their own all day then met up with DH & me for dinner at The Garden Grille. Three people not even from the same families were real MK ride hounds so we went to E-ride night with just them and went around in circles on Splash Mountain. Like I said, a little something for everyone!

And most importantly, DH & I absolutely positively kept one of the four extra days exclusively for the two of us. We had one family member try to extend their stay so they could have more time with us, but we politely discouraged that person from doing so. That day it poured rain and would have been a wash-out to anyone else, but it was our favorite day of the trip!

Be sure to keep some time for just the two of you!