Intimate Wedding - Advice??

[druidia]

We are researching an Intimate Wedding at Disney in April 2005, but we are really struggling with the small guest list restriction. It is important for us to have our immediate families there (parents, brother, sister, grandmother), and we can accomodate them, and they should all be able to make the weekday schedule. However, I am really concerned with the flow of events with so few people. I know that the ceremony is supposedly very short followed by a cake cutting and champagne. The question is "Then what?" I know there are a million things to do in Disney, but what should we do? I considered dinner at the Napa Room so we could all enjoy the MK fireworks, or dinner in Epcot. I know that there is also an opportunity to create your own reception that all of the other guests (non-ceremony) can attend. Is it completely tacky to ask my other guests to come all that way on a weekday to just skip the ceremony and meet us for the reception? I'm also considering doing what Doctor Tigger did. My parents may throw a party for all of the other guests after we return from our honeymoon, and we will skip the reception at Disney. Oh the choices!!! Any advice from previous Intimate Wedding brides would be appreciated!

 

[Merandab4]

Hello Druidia,
I too am having an intimate wedding, and we struggled with the limited guest count. We opted to pay the $500 to have the additional 5 guests be invited. We only included our parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters and each of us a best friend. Unfortunatley, the spouses of our sibblings and friends will not be attending the actual ceremony, but will be meeting us at the GF for our dinner/reception. When we told our family and friends amount our limited guest count, they were not upset, and they understood. The spouses that will not be attending the wedding will be staying at the resort with the children. ( so it worked out better this way anyway) besides, you can't come to disney and not bring your kids !!!! and they knew that it was inappropriate to bring the kids to the wedding anyway, (because of their ages, they are young).
As far as having any other guest attend your reception only, how far away do you live from Disney? If you don't live very far, many guests would probably love to drive over and celebrate with you afterwards. I live VERY far from Disney, so we are planning on hosting an "Open House" when we return from our honeymoon. This will give us a chance to meet with the friends and family that we couldn't invite to the wedding, and give them a chance to see the new home that we bought. When we send out our invitations to the wedding, we will also be sending out our announcemnts/invitations to the open house.
I know that it isn't proper etquitte to send out announcements till AFTER the wedding, but I don't want my guests to feel as if they were an "afterthought". Besides, we want to host our open house the weekend we return. Sending the announcements/invitations out AFTER the wedding, may not give us enough time!
Well, I hope this helps. Sorry this post was so long. If you have any other questions about intimate weddings, please feel free to pm me. I've been learning alot on these boards.
Good Luck!

 

[hAm53]

We're having an intimate at Sunset Pointe in labor day weekend '05, and we think we found a way around this whole 13 people thing.
we're telling all of our friends that they're free to come down for the long weekend, but they just can't sit down at the wedding. sunset pointe is so open that as long as its a nice day, the 12 extra people we think will go down, can stand 20-50 feet down the beach and watch. although they can't hear, they can still see. in fact, when we went to check out sunset pointe, we stumbled across this:

we were surprised about how close we were able to wander up, without distubing the wedding of course.

~ Chris

 

[tiggerbride]

My husband and I had an intimate wedding in July '03. It's nice that your family is soo understanding. My husband's family became extremely upset about our immediate family only wedding. It did work out well in the end though. My family threw a party/reception for us in my hometown, and my husband's family did the same. We had so much fun. It was a great way to go. Now we have memories of three events. Each one was very different and special.

 

[Diana Lyn]

We got married almost two years ago. We had paid the extra for 5 extra guests and had a few more who had planned to stay along the beach and watch from a distance. I can tell you my Event Manager would not let them do it and told them to come right up and join the rest of the group! I was so surprised and thankful. This just goes to show that the little things you stress over have a magical way of working themselves out at Disney!!

 

[hAm53]

Diana,

That was pretty cool that the EM told everyone to come over. We're goingto tell them from the beginning, that there's no way we can afford the custom, so we're gonna have everyone that we can't "get a seat for" to either meet us on the beach for dinner, or to grab some sand and watch from afar. Although I would love for our EM to tell everyone to come over, we won't count on it.

~ Chris