New member - HELP!!!!!

[osxgirl]

I've been trying desperately all day to post some questions. First the boards were down. Of course, I had written an extremely long message and had NOT saved it anywhere, and it got lost when the bloards when down!

So once the boards came back up, I re-typed in my whole message, and I saved it this time, but STILL I can't post.

I'm trying this thread now under the theory that I had a couple of URLs in my message. I tried posting under the wedding dress thread, thinking it didn't like a new member starting a new thread, but THAT wasn't it.

And I can see that others have been posting.

Why don't the boards like me?
-----

Ok, I figured it out. The boards being messed up have evidently made all messages, including error messages, non-existant. But the error message ABOUT the error message I should have been getting was evidently something to the effect that I haven't posted enough to post links yet, or even URLS. I suspected this at one point, and tried taking out all the HTML code, and even took the h!!p stuff off the front of the URLS I was giving, but it was of no use! Sigh. None of it worked until I took the www off as well.

And I do understand what they are doing - they are just trying to keep the spammers off the boards, and given that I have my own domain name running my own (very small) e-mail server, I sympathize. I'm waging my own spam battle right now too. But this was still frustrating!!!

 

[osxgirl]

Ok, that one worked.... so obviously, it's something in the message I was trying to post that's the problem.

Now that I've got the thread started, I'll try posting my saved message again...

 

[osxgirl]

Hi there everyone! I've been lurking for a while, but I finally registered on here to ask a few questions. I've been able to get a lot answered just by reading everyone else's posts, but now I have a few I still don't have answers for. Probably, the real answer is - wait and ask your coordinator, but... like everyone else, I'm anxious, and getting impatient! So, I thought I'd use the resource here, pick some brains, and see what you all could tell me!

First of all - my fiance and I did get our contract and deposit in about 2 1/2 or 3 weeks ago. About a week ago, we got an e-mail from a Disney intern telling us our website was up. And that's all we've heard so far. We haven't been assigned a wedding coordinator yet or anything. So the first question is this - what should happen next? And when? Should we be getting something else in the mail from Disney? And if so, when should we expect to see it? When should we expect to be assigned a WC, and how/when will we hear from them? I'm already starting to panic a little, and I do know from reading on here that they tend to wait until fairly late with the Intimate details, but.... I have people that need to know details now. I need to find an officiant, and I'm probably not using one from their list, so I need to try and do that soon. I have family that needs to get things figured out. So I really want to get things going soon.

Oh, our wedding is set for 10 a.m., October 29th in the WP.

Another reason is I am trying to figure out food arrangements. We want to try and have some sort of a lunch for everyone after the wedding, so we are trying to figure out where to have that, and then we'll need to make those arrangements. And that's another set of questions I have: can anyone give me recommendations based on my requirements. We are planning on having it outside the park, so no one has to use a day of tickets if they don't want to that day. And we have several family members who definately do NOT have adventurous palates. Finally, we had originally planned on trying to keep it to around $30 per person (I know, that's low, but we figured since it's lunch...) If we have to go over, we will, but we are trying to have it be nice but still keep the cost down.

My first thought after reading some of the recommendations on here was Ohana's, until I realized they are only open for dinner. Which is unfortunate - that would probably be about perfect. Does anyone know if they would do a mid-afternoon seating, say around 2, for a large group (could be about 22, since I have a couple of people in-town that I want to come to lunch even if there isn't room at the wedding, but it could be as few as 15 if not everyone can come.)

My next thought was Fulton's Crab House. Based on what I saw of the dinner menu and prices, I was guessing a lunch menu would probably come in about right. But, that was based on something I saw that someone posted which I think was a set menu for a reception. Do they do something similar for a large party like this, which means we could be pretty sure of the cost? Or would it just be everyone ordering off the regular menu? That still may be ok, but... it just leaves a lot more uncertainty.

Other than that, does anyone have any other recommendations?

 

[osxgirl]

Another question I have - is the Mickey and Minnie cake topper the only keepsake topper Disney offers? I ask because we are going with sort of a Cinderella theme, and I'm wondering if they have any sort of Cinderella topper they could substitute.

 

[osxgirl]

Next - invitations. We were amazed at what printing of invitations cost. Especially to get a small run. We are planning to have an at-home reception afterwards, so we'll need a larger amount for that, but the wording for the actual wedding and for the at-home invitation need to be different. So we are looking at needing one large run and one small run of about 20 invitations. Getting 25 printed costs almost as much as getting 100 printed. So, we decided that for the at-home reception, we'll do something very simple, and we may have it printed for us, but we'll do what we have to do to save money on those. It's going to be a very casual reception anyway.

For the wedding invitation for Disney, however, we are definately doing the print-it-yourself variety. The problem is, I REALLY wanted them to be Cinderella invites, since we are getting married at Disney with the castle in the background and doing the Cinderella theme. And I wanted to do programs to match. Boy, you would think to do 20 or so, it wouldn't cost so much, would you?

Anyway, so now we are looking for Cinderella and Prince Charming wedding clip art that we could use for invitations and programs. We've found a few images on-line, but nothing that's exactly what we want. If there's a Disney clip art package out there that has this that anyone knows of, please let me know. Buying that would still probably be a LOT cheaper than buying the invitations and programs, believe me!

We saw a really cool invitation where the image is printed on translucent vellum, and then tied on as an overlay to the back page that has the wording on it. If we can find a good image, we already have the overlay printing package, we just need to buy the invitations, and we'll be ready to go.

If you want to see the invitations that we are using as inspiration, go to:
paperelegance.com/disney/kjn5015-71.htm

 

[osxgirl]

And my last question is about photography. So far, we have planned to go with the Disney photography. We had just planned on what comes with the wedding, plus the MK package to get pictures in front of the castle. But that sounds like that might not give us a lot of pictures of the wedding itself - it's hard to tell from the descriptions on the website. I know you only get 12 pictures in an album... what happens to the rest of the pictures they take? Does Disney give you the digital copies? Or is there any way to get (i.e., buy) the digital copies, and if so, how much does it cost? Or do you have to upgrade to one of the other packages to get that, and if so, do digital copies automatically come with it, or do you still have to pay for them separately.

This is kind of important to us. My finace and I are both techies, and we really want to have digital copies of the wedding pictures. If that isn't an option with Disney photography, then we may want to think about switching to someone else. If that's the case, is there another photographer that DOES give you the digital copies?

And before I get off of here, I thought I would go ahead and post the picture of the dress I am considering getting. I haven't gone and found it in a store yet to be able to try it on and make sure I like it on, so I still have to do that, but I know what tends to look good on me, and I think this is going to be the dress. I really love the style. Though I don't know yet if I will actually buy this dress or not. If we can find patterns that are close enough that we can piece together a similar dress, my mom and I might make my dress. The one thing I don't like about this one is the embroidery on the colored parts.

So, here's the dress:

foreverbridals.com/gownpix.asp?Style=35102

Well, this has been REALLY long! If you got through all of it, thanks! And thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give us!

 

[aprincess72]

It sounds like the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath! Relax! Enjoy this time! DFTW planning is super fun!

I got engaged on Christmas Eve 2006 and my intimate wedding is April 27th. Disney has been phenomenal in answering all of my questions and taking care of everything. In other words, you have plenty of time!

I can't recall how long it took to get my WP. I think it was relatively quick but it's a bit of a blur to me now! My suggestion is write a list of question to have ready when your WP calls! I got so excited when mine first called me I couldn't think straight! There is great info on the boards but always get your bottom line answers from your WP.

Photography - I'm on the fence myself about Disney photography vs. an outside vendor. Mainly because I really want the high res CD. You can get a low res CD from Disney for $75 and the high res is $750 I believe. These things can always change though. You can also get the high res CD 3 years from your wedding for $100.

Wedding topper - you can get the Mickey and Minnie one or bring your own! There's a great Lenox Cinderella piece I see on eBay all the time! I'm mixing mine up because I love all things Disney. My cake topper is the Mickey & Minnie standard because it is too cute! However, I'm bringing my own Cinderella & Prince champagne glasses and my crystal slipper.

Food - (my favorite subject!) I highly recommend going over to the restaurant board. I got some great ideas there myself. Just be aware that the menus and pricing there are not particularly accurate. I think you are on the right track looking for something outside of the parks. Look at all your resort options and Downtown Disney. I visit disney about twice a month and I always eat there somewhere... for research purposes of course...
I would start calling restaurants in the next few months for a large party.
Just my personal opinion but I've been to Fulton's several times for business functions. I love seafood but I'm never really impressed there for the price.

Congratulations! I hope that helps you relax a bit!
Have a great time!!!

 

[Tiggerific04]

I am doing an Intimate, and it took 4 weeks after I sent in my contract to be contacted by my coordinator. I was told that it would take a while because it was around Christmas and New Year's and they were extremely busy. I did follow up with the person who helped me with my contract just to make sure I wasn't forgotten -- and my coordinator called me within a couple days of that.

We decided to go with outside photography (Randy Chapman) because we really wanted all of our photos on a high-res CD. Disney photo just didn't seem like a good value to us, and I didn't like not knowing what kind of photographer we would get until that very day. By booking an outside vendor, you know in advance what their style is and what you can expect.

Beautiful dress!!

I agree with aprincess72 about food: check out the restaurants board here. I've also found this site very helpful: http://www.allearsnet.com/menu/menus.htm

Good luck!

 

[CarolinaGirl453]

I sent you a PM....or maybe 2 (I wasn't sure if the first one went through ) about the invitations. I came up with a couple of designs that would be cute in translucent vellum. I'd be happy to email them to anyone interested in a cinderella/castle theme who is wanting to print their own invitations.

I didn't get married at Disney (just honeymooned there), so I'm afraid I can't be any help with your other questions. But wishing you good luck and pixie dust!

Michelle

 

[happylalagirl]

Another question I have - is the Mickey and Minnie cake topper the only keepsake topper Disney offers? I ask because we are going with sort of a Cinderella theme, and I'm wondering if they have any sort of Cinderella topper they could substitute.

In the big store in Downtown Disney (I always forget the name of it, but it's the biggest one there) they have ceramic Cinderella and Prince Charming that we were actually going to buy and use as our cake topper, but then we decided on the white chocolate castle instead. But it is beautiful. It kind of looks like a Lenox type of ceramic. You might be able to find them online too, I'm not sure.

Next - invitations. We were amazed at what printing of invitations cost. Especially to get a small run. We are planning to have an at-home reception afterwards, so we'll need a larger amount for that, but the wording for the actual wedding and for the at-home invitation need to be different. So we are looking at needing one large run and one small run of about 20 invitations. Getting 25 printed costs almost as much as getting 100 printed. So, we decided that for the at-home reception, we'll do something very simple, and we may have it printed for us, but we'll do what we have to do to save money on those. It's going to be a very casual reception anyway.

For the wedding invitation for Disney, however, we are definately doing the print-it-yourself variety. The problem is, I REALLY wanted them to be Cinderella invites, since we are getting married at Disney with the castle in the background and doing the Cinderella theme. And I wanted to do programs to match. Boy, you would think to do 20 or so, it wouldn't cost so much, would you?

Anyway, so now we are looking for Cinderella and Prince Charming wedding clip art that we could use for invitations and programs. We've found a few images on-line, but nothing that's exactly what we want. If there's a Disney clip art package out there that has this that anyone knows of, please let me know. Buying that would still probably be a LOT cheaper than buying the invitations and programs, believe me!

We saw a really cool invitation where the image is printed on translucent vellum, and then tied on as an overlay to the back page that has the wording on it. If we can find a good image, we already have the overlay printing package, we just need to buy the invitations, and we'll be ready to go.

If you want to see the invitations that we are using as inspiration, go to:
paperelegance.com/disney/kjn5015-71.htm

As far as invites go, we used a girl from Ebay. We had Cinderella invites and we got to choose the pic we wanted on the invites as well as the RSVP cards and place cards. We also got return address labels. They were beautiful. For 100 we only paid $85. I would highly recommend her. If you want her info, let me know.

Hi there everyone! I've been lurking for a while, but I finally registered on here to ask a few questions. I've been able to get a lot answered just by reading everyone else's posts, but now I have a few I still don't have answers for. Probably, the real answer is - wait and ask your coordinator, but... like everyone else, I'm anxious, and getting impatient! So, I thought I'd use the resource here, pick some brains, and see what you all could tell me!

First of all - my fiance and I did get our contract and deposit in about 2 1/2 or 3 weeks ago. About a week ago, we got an e-mail from a Disney intern telling us our website was up. And that's all we've heard so far. We haven't been assigned a wedding coordinator yet or anything. So the first question is this - what should happen next? And when? Should we be getting something else in the mail from Disney? And if so, when should we expect to see it? When should we expect to be assigned a WC, and how/when will we hear from them? I'm already starting to panic a little, and I do know from reading on here that they tend to wait until fairly late with the Intimate details, but.... I have people that need to know details now. I need to find an officiant, and I'm probably not using one from their list, so I need to try and do that soon. I have family that needs to get things figured out. So I really want to get things going soon.

Oh, our wedding is set for 10 a.m., October 29th in the WP.

Another reason is I am trying to figure out food arrangements. We want to try and have some sort of a lunch for everyone after the wedding, so we are trying to figure out where to have that, and then we'll need to make those arrangements. And that's another set of questions I have: can anyone give me recommendations based on my requirements. We are planning on having it outside the park, so no one has to use a day of tickets if they don't want to that day. And we have several family members who definately do NOT have adventurous palates. Finally, we had originally planned on trying to keep it to around $30 per person (I know, that's low, but we figured since it's lunch...) If we have to go over, we will, but we are trying to have it be nice but still keep the cost down.

My first thought after reading some of the recommendations on here was Ohana's, until I realized they are only open for dinner. Which is unfortunate - that would probably be about perfect. Does anyone know if they would do a mid-afternoon seating, say around 2, for a large group (could be about 22, since I have a couple of people in-town that I want to come to lunch even if there isn't room at the wedding, but it could be as few as 15 if not everyone can come.)

My next thought was Fulton's Crab House. Based on what I saw of the dinner menu and prices, I was guessing a lunch menu would probably come in about right. But, that was based on something I saw that someone posted which I think was a set menu for a reception. Do they do something similar for a large party like this, which means we could be pretty sure of the cost? Or would it just be everyone ordering off the regular menu? That still may be ok, but... it just leaves a lot more uncertainty.

Other than that, does anyone have any other recommendations?

As far as the wedding coordinator goes, you can call and see if they've assigned you one or not, but you are right, they do take longer to do things with Intimate weddings.

As far as food goes, I LOVE the Fulton Crab House. I think it was JonetteA who had her rehearsal dinner there. I think you just have to call them and they can mail/fax you a menu to choose from. Just tell them the price per person you're looking to spend. You definitely won't be disappointed with the food. Plus, because it's not a Disney park, you can wear your wedding dress to the lunch - if that's something you're interested in. Good luck and keep us posted!!! Glad you got the whole posting thing figured out!! Welcome to the Disboards!!!

 

[osxgirl]

Thanks everyone for all the help so far!

Yes, I'm very anxious about it all. I'm trying to calm down a little, but I just get worried that if we don't get it all arranged NOW then we won't get what we want, and it will all cost WAY too much. It already seems like things are going over what we had originally planned.

It's hard to tell though - we really don't have any idea on the cost of the wedding itself yet, since we haven't talked to our planner or gotten the floral and such taken care of yet. I'm hoping the flowers will end up being a little cheaper than I'd originally planned, especially since I'm beginning to think we are going to want to go with outside photography. Which means I need to try and call Randy soon, since that's probably who we'd want to go with.

My fiance and I are going to sit down this weekend and draw up a real plan for all this - he's a project manager, so he's going to come up with a project plan for it and everything. Geeky, huh? But I probably will feel better if we have everything down on paper that needs done and we can just check it off as we get it done.

The good news is we did get assigned a planner today. We haven't been contacted directly yet, but our Wishbook has been unlocked now, and it shows Julianna as our planner.

So do we also get another pack of info in the mail now, or is the next planning session based on what we fill out in our wishbook?

I think that's one thing I would change about the process if I could - I would make it a lot clearer about what to expect at what point during the process.

Oh, and in particular - thanks, happylalagirl, for the info about Fulton's and about the invites on ebay. So far, we're still looking at printing them ourselves, but I'll be back if I need the info!

And Tiggerific - thank you about the dress, once I saw it, it just seemed like the perfect one for a Disney wedding! I especially like that it doesn't have a train, but still manages to look like a wedding dress. And thanks too for the info about allears...great site! I got a couple of recipes that look really good from there too.

aprincess - thanks for the info and advice, especially about the photography. Between what you said and what I read on a few other threads, it's looking more and more like we're better off with Randy or another outside photographer. I was just hoping to stay with Disney because it would have been one less thing to deal with myself, but... oh well. Plus, since it's included, it seems a shame to have to pay for pictures separately, but it sounds like what you get included isn't what we really want.

I'm sure I'm going to have more questions, just give me a chance to think of them.

 

[lurkyloo]

You probably know this from reading the boards, but you don't totally waste the Disney photography included with your package if you use an outside photographer - you can swap it for a photo session (regular clothes) in one of the parks. So you kinda still get your money's worth!

 

[osxgirl]

Oh yeah, I know. In fact, one of the things I'm wondering now is how flexible they are with that. One of the things we're planning on doing is the Dolphin Discovery Tour (or whatever it's called) at the Living Seas. I'm halfway wondering if we do get outside photography, then would they be flexible enough to include our visit with the dolphins in our honeymoon photography?

Ah, more questions.... I'm probably going to drive my planner nuts!

 

[CarolinaGirl453]

I got a couple of PM's about the Cinderella clip art. Here are the ones I have finished so far. If anyone likes them and wants a photoshop elements version I will be happy to email it to you.

Michelle

 

[Swmhc]

No, they aren't that flexible with the photo shoots. They have designated photo areas, with some discretion, but not much. We wanted to have them shoot a luncheon at CRT and were told they could not do that. Check with event planning, but don't get your hopes up !

 

[Maggimus]

Check out the newest Randy threads for more information on him (there have been 2 going within the last 3 days or so-- so just take a look back- you can get more info on his photography there)

 

[mermaidbride1108]

Randy should add a tagline to his website - preferred vendor of DIS Disney Brides!