Jess & Ben's Wishes Wedding 11/18/14 Sea Breeze Point/Backstage Prop Shop

[Disneyducks12]

First off I want to say I love your living room with Mickey theme! Its so awesome I have been trying to convenience my DF to let me do more Disney right now I just get color inspirations haha one day one day! but back on track i love that Jess is using a calender to count down how exciting that all the days are almost all marked off! and seeing that clock now almost all gone can't believe how fast time goes I have loved following your guys journey and so excited to see the final product!

 

[alyaki]

Hope you guys hear back really soon about the Dans - I'm crossing my fingers for you! And I think, as long as the two of you are happy with it, decorate however you like! You're the ones living there, so you're the only ones who need to really love the decor.

 

[edeneye]

Thanks! We must be due to hear back about the Dans any day now! Then either way we've got lots of decisions to make about songs so that'll be tough. I won't know what Jess chooses to walk down the aisle to until it happens so there'll still be surprises - I'm just looking forward to finding out which way it goes! And yep, we love adding to the Disney touches in the house and it's almost a shame Flower & Garden Festival isn't on, we could've started dressing up the outside too!

First off I want to say I love your living room with Mickey theme! Its so awesome I have been trying to convenience my DF to let me do more Disney right now I just get color inspirations haha one day one day! but back on track i love that Jess is using a calender to count down how exciting that all the days are almost all marked off! and seeing that clock now almost all gone can't believe how fast time goes I have loved following your guys journey and so excited to see the final product!

Thanks Melissa! We're both getting so excited now that the long long wait is almost over. Jess has only two more days left of work before she has next week off to get everything prepared so I bet she's counting the hours now. We're even only 4 days away from the one-month-to-go mark, it's almost time to stop planning and start our holiday. We'll get a lot of final small details wrapped up in the next week and then it's time to travel and enjoy ourselves as we honeymoon in reverse! I'm hoping it'll be calming getting a couple of weeks *before* the wedding that we can just relax and not have to worry anymore. We'll see!

 

[TiffinyKaye]

Thanks! We must be due to hear back about the Dans any day now! Then either way we've got lots of decisions to make about songs so that'll be tough. I won't know what Jess chooses to walk down the aisle to until it happens so there'll still be surprises - I'm just looking forward to finding out which way it goes! And yep, we love adding to the Disney touches in the house and it's almost a shame Flower & Garden Festival isn't on, we could've started dressing up the outside too!

Worry not. Mitch and I have been there during the Flower and Garden Festival. It was gorgeous...but we've noticed that the majority of the stuff that you can buy during the festival you can still buy in various places around the parks year-round. It's just "clustered" more in one place during the festival. They'll set up specific booths in April and May just for it. Once the festival shuts down, they start moving it to different places. We found all sorts of stuff at Mouse Gear this past September when we were there.

Hey--when you guys get there in November, could you give me an update on the selection of apparel? DF and I looked everywhere for long-sleeved shirts and didn't see very many. It was mainly all t-shirts. We live in Utah. It may be hot in the summers, but our winters are pretty cold. We need winter weather stuff!!!!

Tiffiny

 

[TheBurchBunch]

AH! Im at the end of the PJ! I'm on pins and needles for Nov 18 now! Thank you for taking us on this journey with you Ben! Can't wait for the next update.

 

[lthiesfeld07]

Can't wait for the next update!

I absolutely LOVE your menu for your reception!! If you don't mind, how much are you paying per person? I'd love to have some of those items at my reception!

 

[edeneye]

Today was an interesting day. Not only was it exactly one month until our wedding, it's also exactly one week until we leave! All day long we were talking about where we'd be and what would be happening 'this time next month'. And as of right now, this time next week we will have landed in Los Angeles and hopefully finally cleared customs, security and immigration.

So what else has been happening while I've been SO BUSY that I haven't been here? Well lots and lots of work. Jess officially finished with her job on Friday but I'm still going at mine until this coming Friday - 5 more long days to go. Jess had been working at a local theme park though which has it's perks, they have been running their Halloween party nights the last couple of weekends so Jess & I went to that on consecutive Friday nights for free! We were sitting down to eat last Friday night and Jess mentioned it'd be funny that we go there two weeks in a row and then the third week we could end up at Universal's Halloween Horror Nights in LA - half the world away. It's fun looking at things like that, for example this coming weekend we've gotta both go get our hair cut on Saturday and then maybe on the Sunday we'll take a walk out to the Hollywood sign.

Aside from that there has been a FLURRY of emails the last few days between us and DFTW. Naturally, we are at the 30-day mark where things are getting locked down and paid for. We're still awaiting a couple of confirmations - one of which being the Dapper Dans whose schedule gets finalised next week and we will know then if we can borrow them or not - but the BEO is just about final. We've had some additions and subtractions and are still lingering around $17,500 for our now 21 guests (extremely likely final total). That's including cake, floral, Dans, the white twinkle light dance floor, everything.

Because we are doing a ride mix-in at Tower of Terror from 8pm, we have extended our reception a further hour at the Prop Shop because otherwise by the time we made it back in there it'd be time to say our goodbyes and Jess really wants to get some dancing in! So even with the extension on the room, the dj, the bar (which is now BOC because the cake and some menu additions meant we didn't need to pad out our bill anymore), the minibus charter - a requirement due to our backstage reception - scrubbing through the BEO and finding things we can alter or remove entirely has allowed us to add so much without really increasing the price. One example that we removed today was the audio package, if we have the Dans we don't need a cd player at Sea Breeze and because we have a small group we won't need the microphones for people to hear us. Boom, $1,000 saving right there. Practically pays for the Dans!

Oh & I mentioned some menu changes! Here is if not the final menu, then very very very close to it.

As you will see, our per person price has risen. What a fun problem it was to have to spend more on food! Enter the legendary Le Cellier Wild Mushroom Filet. Prepared 'on stage' apparently! I emailed our planner and asked for a wheelbarrow to be on standby so that it can assist me leaving the venue. I'm thinking I might add some elastic to my suit pants.

Outside of all that we're basically just ironing out the floral details and then we're all done. I'd describe the current phase as the storm before the calm. Once this week is up we get on a plane and enjoy our honeymoon and in one month from now we'll be waking up to our first day as man and wife.

I'm ridiculously excited at this point. It comes in waves. At first it's anticipation of our holiday. LA! Vegas! Orlando! Then it occurs to me that my friends are coming. We're gonna have our friends at WDW! Best holiday ever! Then I realise there's a wedding in there too. Mine. Can't wait.

Worry not. Mitch and I have been there during the Flower and Garden Festival. It was gorgeous...but we've noticed that the majority of the stuff that you can buy during the festival you can still buy in various places around the parks year-round. It's just "clustered" more in one place during the festival. They'll set up specific booths in April and May just for it. Once the festival shuts down, they start moving it to different places. We found all sorts of stuff at Mouse Gear this past September when we were there.

Hey--when you guys get there in November, could you give me an update on the selection of apparel? DF and I looked everywhere for long-sleeved shirts and didn't see very many. It was mainly all t-shirts. We live in Utah. It may be hot in the summers, but our winters are pretty cold. We need winter weather stuff!!!!

Oh that's great! We're taking SO MANY SUITCASES over there for our trip that we're gonna fill with all sorts of Disney homewares and things. And yep I'll definitely be on the lookout! I personally really like long-sleeves and am always keen to see what I can find, it's just so cosy and I used to live in a fairly cool part of the country. I was even excited that the Wine & Dine Half tech shirt was long-sleeved, I might still get one at the expo even though we're not running! Like you say, so often all you can find is t-shirts it's nice to have that variety.

AH! Im at the end of the PJ! I'm on pins and needles for Nov 18 now! Thank you for taking us on this journey with you Ben! Can't wait for the next update.

Thanks for joining in! It has been such a long ride but now we're so close I can actually tell that people around me are getting excited by it, even people who I haven't known all that long who aren't even coming! I really hope to keep updating during the trip so I can bring everyone along, it'll probably depend on wifi service but at least I know when I get to WDW that's no problem!

Can't wait for the next update!

I absolutely LOVE your menu for your reception!! If you don't mind, how much are you paying per person? I'd love to have some of those items at my reception!

Thanks! I *think* my previous menu had been costed as $90 per person (I'm on a different computer at the moment) but at that point we didn't have a price for our cake so we had to take the bar package to put us over the minimum food & beverage expenditure for a weekday evening wedding. The one I have posted above has some additions and is at $104 per person. Kinda expensive for a whole lot of burgers when you think about it but pretty reasonable for a wedding buffet! We're all going to the Crystal Palace the day after and I'm just realising that everyone is probably still going to be feeling pretty full from the night before and might not be too excited about another buffet!

 

[Seia]

Your menu sounds AMAZING!! Fingers crossed for the Dans. I just can't wait to see pictures, especially of your twinkle light dance floor. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like that before. It sounds gorgeous!

 

[edeneye]

I'm. So. Excited. Seriously, it is now Tuesday and we leave on what is basically our Honeymoon on Sunday morning. Argh! There's still four days of work and a massive to-do list in the way, still lots of money to spend that we technically don't even have just yet but pfft to all that, I'm absolutely buzzing right now. And it's 1:11am.

I'd make like some of the others on here and post where our to-do list is at but it is literally ginourmagantuan. I have no idea how we're doing it all. Jess is a bit of a genius at scheduling things and making them happen though, I always know that I only need to present Jess with a problem and she'll find a way, we look after each other like that. On tomorrow's menu for example is a car service, dentist appointment (I'm getting some fillings, gotta look good for the photos), Jess is going to the physio - she has scoliosis so her back/hips give her a lot of trouble and she wants to feel as good as she can before the trip - Jess will pick up our US cash, a dress she had altered, we've gotta look at our wedding planning guide and start working out our ceremony format, get some cards for our vendors and planner and I've gotta go to work! That's just TOMORROW. Tonight I've still gotta email our floral planner and start wrangling our SD cards!

Here's a peek at some of what Jess accomplished today!

Jess got her wedding nails done. I don't want to call these 'Hidden' Mickeys cause look at them all! They came out really really well though, she had to get me to help her open a can earlier, she remarked that she won't be able to open any for herself from now until we're married. It's funny to me to view things that way, the perspective tells you how close we are getting now.

Jess also designed our programs! Note the Mickey colour scheme hasn't quite started at this point, we're reserving that mostly for the reception. Our ceremony carries more purple and green which are our favourite colours.

Your menu sounds AMAZING!! Fingers crossed for the Dans. I just can't wait to see pictures, especially of your twinkle light dance floor. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like that before. It sounds gorgeous!

Thanks! I feel like I'm always saying we should know soon about the Dans but now it must be true - it has to be, we're leaving soon! I'm not sure I'd seen the twinkle light dance floor either, Jess asked our planner to see what options there were and it was one of the ones she sent us - here it is!

I'm a little bit lost now as to how our reception style will look as all the elements add up but at least it'll be a surprise for me when I walk in! I'm sure Jess has it all in her head, she's great with design and probably has the clearer vision of how it will all go together. The dance floor is almost too good to do our 'Backstreets Back' on. Almost.

 

[Gracefulskinny]

Looks like everything is starting to come together! That menu looks quite yummy! Fingers crossed for the Dans!

 

[gummybear091]

I love that floor!!

 

[alyaki]

May I say, I think I love your revised menu even more than your original - even if it's a bit more! The original was really tasty sounding, but the revised has a little bit more for everyone - and if someone want's something a little fancier than just the burgers/fries/chicken fingers... well, they have options! Though, I'll fully admit, I'd probably be hitting the chicken first - I have this belief that if the chicken fingers/nuggets stink, there's a problem.

By the way, I don't think I've seen that picture of the twinkle dance floor - it looks very cool! We're probably just not going to have one (which is not unusual in LSS), but if we did, that would be fun to go with.

As for the huge list - at least you two have a plan! Sounds like things are getting done, even if it seems like a lot right now. And I must say, Jess's nails look awesome!

It's exciting that you two will be off so soon! Hope you get one more update in before you leave, but if not, I hope you guys have a blast!

 

[Disneyducks12]

Hey Ben!

Glad to see everything is pretty much all together now less than a month and you and Jess will be married how exciting for you two!! I love your menu it made me so hungry and I would have to be wheel barrowed out as well lol

Also please pass my compliments on to Jess I just love her nails they are so awesome! and will photography very nicely

Programs and dance floor also look amazing I love the color scheme and the lights on the floor and only two more days of work left and then you guys are going to start such an amazing vacation I can not wait for a full TR you are going to have so much to post about and you guys are doing a Disney cruise after the wedding right?

Happy Planning
Melissa

 

[Aschenputtel]

Hi Ben! Sorry for not posting for quite a while, but I always read along!
Please tell Jess that her nails are amazing!

Everything looks so beautiful and I'm sure your trip is going to be awesome! Can't wait to see everything come together and see and hear all about your trip!

Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly!

 

[DisneyWorldTraveller]

Looks like I found the thread just in time. Hoping you'll get chance to fill us all in on the trip & wedding at some point after. Hope u have an awesome trip.

 

[edeneye]

All day long I've been so excited. Practically vibrating with anticipation. We've been so busy and today my cousin arrived to look after our house and our pets for the month that we're spending away on our Wedding/Honeymoon trip. So many good vibes all day, I was looking at pictures from our first trip and I saw the All-Star Movies Food Court and was so happy knowing we were going to be there again soon. But this evening my parents called to wish us well on our trip (as mentioned early on, they're not coming) and from the emotion in their voices and the sniffles in the background the enormity of what we're about to do really hit me.

That is the last time I'll speak to them until I return home again a married man. It's a profoundly bittersweet feeling that has really stalled my productivity, Jess gave me a big hug afterwards and there were some tears and a sad feeling I can't shake at the moment but they offered nothing but love and support and hopefully feeling this way now means I can put it behind me when the day comes. Planning a wedding is such a rollercoaster ride that it seems quite apt to have a Disney Wedding. I'm still very excited for what is to come but definitely brought back to Earth a little bit for now.

Enough of that though! Here's what's been happening in what will be my last post from Australia! Jess has continued making our programs by hand and they've turned out even better than I thought. She's naturally really critical of them but I'm really impressed, I'll get a good picture of them when I can but basically they look a bit like a Mickey Bar but on a green and purple stick with a yellow or red bow around it. They have taken quite some time to make, today Jess and I had our hair cut and we brought them with us to do some last minute arts and crafts.

Jess with her tongue-out-concentrating-hard face, getting her hair done and finely cutting out our programs. Wedding multitasking level: Final Boss.

Tonight has been all about packing and cleaning. I would love to say we were prepared but between work (I worked 9 of the last 10 days) and everything else it has been quite last minute. The major feeling is 'overwhelmed' at the moment, Jess put herself to bed about 9:30pm because she couldn't take any more and could no longer think straight enough to get things done. She's hoping to get up at 4am with a clearer head and make sure that we tick off everything on the numerous lists she's put together. In the meantime though I've been doing everything I can to make the morning run smoothly as, of course, I can't sleep! Already here is the first night of Jess fast asleep and me catching up on the Disboards. I'm expecting there'll be more of this to come.

Anything to declare? Oh, about 6 pairs of Converse sneakers and some artificial flowers. Please, please, please don't throw those out, I swear they're not real.

In other news there's really not much to report on the DFTW side. We've made a late addition to our BEO and will now also be being joined by Donald and Goofy who will overlap with our visit from Mickey & Minnie during our reception. Including characters and ourselves, our guest count is now 25. And that's about it! The final total is due, our signed BEO is due and we're leaving on a jet plane in roughly 10 hours from now. This time tomorrow we'll be in Los Angeles, ready to leave the airport and check in to the Hilton before a long day and night at Universal Studios. I hope I sleep on the plane (unlikely, I never do on the way to the States). It's hands off planning now, a few final confirmations but this 'planning journal' is just about complete.

Oh & a quick weird note - I'm currently wearing my wedding band. Jess & I are both wearing ours now (on different fingers) because we don't want to run the risk of packing them in a bag that is going to be out of our sight for any length of time. I said to Jess not long ago that we better make sure she doesn't turn up at our ceremony with the ring already on!

Looks like everything is starting to come together! That menu looks quite yummy! Fingers crossed for the Dans!

Yep we're almost there! For the longest time I was hearing about other Disney Weddings and thinking ours is going to be so plain by comparison but now that it's all coming together I'm really happy with what we've been able to do. Cannot wait to see it all become reality.

I love that floor!!

It's so nice! It was an easy decision for Jess to pick that one out of the three our planner sent us. Surprisingly though, we were looking back at some images Jess had saved over a year ago of different Disney Wedding inspirations and the exact picture we were sent of one of the other dance floors was in there. When she saw the white twinkle light floor she must've completely forgot about that!

May I say, I think I love your revised menu even more than your original - even if it's a bit more! The original was really tasty sounding, but the revised has a little bit more for everyone - and if someone want's something a little fancier than just the burgers/fries/chicken fingers... well, they have options! Though, I'll fully admit, I'd probably be hitting the chicken first - I have this belief that if the chicken fingers/nuggets stink, there's a problem.

haha What a good way to think of it! I don't even know where I'm gonna start, I'm basically going to need enough plates to have some of everything. I'm really excited about the Le Cellier Filet though, I haven't seen how they set it up but they'll be preparing it 'on stage' which merges Jess' love of Teppanyaki with how impressed she was with the Filet when we unknowingly tried it out at Food & Wine in 2012. And I love that Disney does adult-sized nuggets around the parks, I think it really speaks to Walt's philosophy about how 'too many people grow up'. Jess & I often wish we could order from the 'kids menu' - our reception has no such distinctions!

Programs and dance floor also look amazing I love the color scheme and the lights on the floor and only two more days of work left and then you guys are going to start such an amazing vacation I can not wait for a full TR you are going to have so much to post about and you guys are doing a Disney cruise after the wedding right

Thanks Melissa! Yep, once we're married on the 18th we have a few more days at the parks (quiet ones where we'll mostly keep to ourselves) and on the 21st we have our Hollywood Studios portrait session and then it's on to the Disney Dream! There's going to be so so so much to update on from our trip, we're away for an entire month! I'm going to update as much as I can while I'm away so I can get as many details in as possible - and so we can look back on it later and remember it because it'll be a blur otherwise!

Hi Ben! Sorry for not posting for quite a while, but I always read along!
Please tell Jess that her nails are amazing!

Everything looks so beautiful and I'm sure your trip is going to be awesome! Can't wait to see everything come together and see and hear all about your trip!

Thanks! She is getting so many compliments about them! This past week has involved a lot of cleaning and packing though so she's taken little bits of paint off in the process, she's definitely going to need them touched up in about three weeks time! Depending on which one of us gets jet lag (usually Jess), I hope to be able to give at least a brief update tomorrow once we've arrived and have officially got this show on the road!

Looks like I found the thread just in time. Hoping you'll get chance to fill us all in on the trip & wedding at some point after. Hope u have an awesome trip.

Welcome aboard! I'm so grateful to the Disboards community for all the support and amazing ideas and inspirations and resources that have made this trip everything it could possibly be. I'm so happy that there's people riding along with me here and I'm honoured to share what I can. There's definitely times when you wonder if all the stress is worth it but having so many nice people being so excited and positive really helps me get through that

 

[LadyD]

How exciting!! Everything is coming together beautifully! I can't wait to see your programs. The weather in California is gorgeous right now. Great time of year to visit. Enjoy Universal and LA

 

[Gracefulskinny]

Safe travels!!! Any word on the Dans?

 

[Seia]

I love that you've added Donald and Goofy -- now you'll have the entire gang! That dance floor is absolutely gorgeous as well.

I think the constant business of actually planning the wedding keeps the realization of how big the moment is at bay. On the day of, I'm sure you'll be able to relax and take in everything you've been anticipating for so long now!

 

[edeneye]

Well I'm currently sitting in our hotel room in LA so I guess you can say that begun this trip report has. Today has been a VERY long day, as I mentioned Jess put herself to bed early on Saturday night while I stayed up tidying and making sure everything I could think of that we'd need was in or around our suitcases (the one thing we've realised we left behind so far is my GPS for driving around WDW/Orlando but Jess' parents don't leave for another week and a half so we'll get them to bring that). It was a good thing that we got so prepared last night because we slept right through the 4am alarm! Jess woke with a start and sat bolt upright when she noticed it was far too bright outside to possibly be that early. It was 5:55am - Jess' parents would be arriving in 5 minutes to pick us up!

That worked out fine though, Jess did practically all the packing the night before so we were able to scramble and get out with plenty of time to get to the airport. No major hitches there, in fact the flight went *so* smoothly that our plane got held back on the LAX runway for 30mins because we landed so far ahead of schedule!

Here's our "we're here!" face, some enthusiasm added based on time of day and amount of stress both before and after this moment. Yes, we are trying to look a little bit crazy.

After getting through the airport and onto our hotel shuttle, we left our bags with the Bell Services (our room was nowhere near ready that early, we were here about 8:30am having landed just before 6) and headed over to Universal Citywalk because Jess needed some coffee ASAP. In a small world scenario that is pretty commonplace for us, we bumped into some friends there who are coming to our wedding. Repeatedly! You'd think LA is a pretty big place but we were here for just under 4 hours - two of which at the airport - and we ran into people we know.

The view from our eventual hotel room - that's Universal Studios down below!

After that, we went in to Universal Studios for a couple of hours. It's my first serious visit to LA (my only previous one was a 5 hour stopover where we visited Hollywood blvd ever so briefly) so it's my first time at Universal so that was fun. I'm not a huge fan of their parks but I love Jurassic Park so just getting to do that is usually enough for me.

Riding one of the MANY Universal escalators. We tried a flight of stairs and I'm sure our calves will thank us for that tomorrow - it has been far too long a day for that much walking.

And that basically takes us up to right now, 4:30pm on the first day of our pre-honeymoon. Jess is currently taking a nap and I've finally showered etc and am feeling much fresher but SO SLEEPY. Tonight we're off back down to Citywalk to probably have dinner at Johnny Rockets (Jess LOVES Johnny Rockets) and then we have tickets to Halloween Horror Nights. It probably won't be a long night for us in our current state but Jess mainly just wants to do the Halloween House, the Walking Dead Terror Tram and Jurassic Park After Dark so we might even just get those done and come back here for an early night. It is awesome having a hotel in short walking distance to a park.

Safe travels!!! Any word on the Dans?

Funny you should ask... When I first got to a wifi hotspot today at Universal I checked my emails and our planner had sent us one only 15 minutes before confirming it. The Dapper Dans are a go! Repeat, The Dapper Dans are confirmed. Jess is way, way, way too tired to be as excited as that news deserves but it's one more thing confirmed and one that we really really wanted so now it's time to ask about what songs they can sing for us and if we can request particular costume.

I think the constant business of actually planning the wedding keeps the realization of how big the moment is at bay. On the day of, I'm sure you'll be able to relax and take in everything you've been anticipating for so long now!

Yep I hope so! I hope I've had the moment I was always expecting where there'd be the sadness and disappointment that my parents couldn't be there but now knowing I have their and all my familiy's support and how excited everyone is I think I can carry on now and hopefully just enjoy the occasion and look forward to reliving it with them when I get home.

How exciting!! Everything is coming together beautifully! I can't wait to see your programs. The weather in California is gorgeous right now. Great time of year to visit. Enjoy Universal and LA

It's such a nice day today! Absolutely beautiful outside, our friends are so jealous because there are massive storms happening at home right now and I'm here in sunny California enjoying perfect weather. We might even go for a swim a bit later in the hotel pool, we really couldn't have asked for better!