halloween12
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 3, 2012
It has been nearly a month since our special day and for several reasons it has taken me a while to pop on here and do an update/review.
Can I start by saying thank you not only to the people who responded to my questions on here but also to those who had already posted so much knowledge on previous threads which were a great source of information for me.
I few of you may know bits about my story but I am not a prevalent poster, my day may have passed you by so I will start by telling you a bit about me and my silly little family.
We are quite an alternative family of 4, myself and my hubby are old school rockers and my 2 daughters have been raised quite bohemian and accept everyone and very situation with wide open hearts.
When Ash proposed it was pretty much a given that we would get married at Halloween, we LOVE all things spooky and take it to quite an extreme.
If I am being totally honest Disney wasnt the first or even second venue that we thought of being based over in the UK and having Whitbys gothic town just an hour away we tried there but they were booked up for many years for Halloween weddings. So we thought outside the box and tried theme parks and even caves but for many reasons (travel, family with disabilities, our Halloween weather) nothing quite fit.
I jokingly said to Ash one day you know we will end up eloping at this rate, how is the weather in Transylvania in Oct haha
Suddenly a destination wedding seemed like the perfect solution and for reasons known only to the universe we both said DISNEY
Nowhere quite does Halloween like America and WDW was always THE holiday to go on, Id certainly never been and in all honestly never thought that I would be able to afford to go I am just a part time receptionist (slave to my kids and many animals the rest of the time) and Ash is just in retail. But we had set a budget for a big wedding day in the UK and realised that we might just be able to combine our holiday of a life time, small intimate wedding and honey moon into the same budget so we quite selfishly reallocated what we would have spent on family and friends and went ahead and booked our very own fairytale we did say that if anyone wanted to come with us that they would be more than welcome but no-one could afford it so we planned a big party for them all when we got back.
At this stage we didnt even know if you could get married at Disney hahaha so a few phone calls and emails later and we were all set up - Disney holiday booked, flights booked and in wedding limbo as I couldnt book the memories wedding until 6mths before the date that we wanted.
It was all so easy, in fact the wedding was the easiest part hahahah I had dining reservations and other park tickets to organise, exchange rates and car hire and I was quite dizzy with it all.
Once we had chosen the officiant, and decided to opt for a third party photographer and videographer all we really needed to do was turn up in our wedding gear.
Wedding gear: My little dress drama played out on here, Id had a dress in mind from a shop called Fairy Goth Mother but then my Mum won a radio station competition for £500 off a dress from a local shop long story short, I wasnt holding out much hope, even when I saw the dress that the lady thought might suit me on the hanger but I tried it on and loved it!!! It was quite a shock to me to be in a traditional ivory dress and be happy about it but I opened my mind and bought it I managed to pick the dress up a week later and then got itchy fingers hahahaha I needed to goth the dress up so I got my fabulous friend on board and we halloweend my dress, we cut sections out and it look quite butchered for a while hahaha but I dont scare easily, I had a vision and I was truly thrilled with the result which was totally unique and quirky but still very classy. I was covered in bats and cobweb design lace and still felt like a bride.
Disney fairy tale weddings: 8/10
They were very relaxed about everything which is just my style, I called exactly 6 months out (at opening time) and they were very accommodating about me wanting a Halloween wedding even though it fell on a Wednesday which is out of usual operation days for memories weddings.
We opted for the limo which was bang on time and with a lovely driver
I chose a lovely pumpkin orange Bouquet which was given to me when we arrived at the venue and was beautiful
The coordinator was there and she was charming
The violinist was great and played music from nightmare before xmas.
It was all very hassle free and rather 'Vegas style' We wed at the conch key marina and the grand floridian was just beautiful.
The only thing that we opted out of with Disney was the photographer - more about that in a bit.
Wedding officiant: 8/10
Disney sent through a useful pack with different contacts on - i checked out a few officiant's websites and we chose Rev. Tim Herring based on the fact that he can do a family ceremony - it seemed like such a cute idea. So we bought the girls a Thomas Sabo bracelet and a disney charm each and they got those during the ceremony just after we exchanged rings - it was beautiful ceremony and Tim really listened to us about wanting a civil ceremony - a very nice guy.
Photographer: 10/10
Disney were going to include the price of the photographer in our memories package, but it isnt possible to choose which photographer you want and their were some real mixed reviews on here about the results of disney photography. They were also going to charge me an extra $500 for the Cd of images with copyright release... so i went researching and i found a really good offer by a fabulous photographer. Randy Chapman would do the photoshoot, give us all the images in colour and black and white (with copyright release), he would get the CD's of these to me before we left Florida for $250 if we also used his friend as videographer (to include 3 DVD's of our day) for a further $250!!
I was getting a heck of a lot more there for my $500 and i loved Randys photography work too!!
Randy was very generous with his time and even offered to spend extra time with us free of charge as it was a gothic themed wedding. The images were fabulous, he delivered the CDs in person to our villa the day before we flew home - can't thank him enough, this meant that we could still share our special day with our family and friends at our wedding reception.
Videographer: 7/10
Stan Severance, was so reasonably priced as part of the deal with Randy - we had 2 videographers filming the ceremony from different angles - the results were fabulous and just arrived through the post today
Dress steaming:
Not necessary, the dress travelled so well
Hair and makeup :
me hahahaha
After the ceremony and photos we went back to the villa in the limo and we zombied up a little bit, but stayed in our wedding clothes and headed off, tickets in hand for MNSSHP!
The most ridiculously lavish, yet totally intimate wedding reception ever!
We had dinner reservations at Cinderella's Royal Table at 4:20 and when we came out we just blended straight in with the amazing halloween costumes - we looked positively under dressed!
I was told that if i could get on the rides then i could ride them... so we had an amazing evening of rides, eating candy, and then fireworks and parade! It was a whirlwind, fairy tale day - every part of it was perfect, i wouldn't change a single thing.
When we got home, we had the mother of all parties... everyone in fancy dress and with a massive inside adult bouncy castle and a rodeobull - our wedding pictures playing on a projector and our wedding was then complete - I've just ordered a photo book of our wedding/holiday - here is a link if anyone would like to see it:
https://as.photoprintit.com/web/850...166426708f40addd2da0f570bd&skipSessionTimeout
Can I start by saying thank you not only to the people who responded to my questions on here but also to those who had already posted so much knowledge on previous threads which were a great source of information for me.
I few of you may know bits about my story but I am not a prevalent poster, my day may have passed you by so I will start by telling you a bit about me and my silly little family.
We are quite an alternative family of 4, myself and my hubby are old school rockers and my 2 daughters have been raised quite bohemian and accept everyone and very situation with wide open hearts.
When Ash proposed it was pretty much a given that we would get married at Halloween, we LOVE all things spooky and take it to quite an extreme.
If I am being totally honest Disney wasnt the first or even second venue that we thought of being based over in the UK and having Whitbys gothic town just an hour away we tried there but they were booked up for many years for Halloween weddings. So we thought outside the box and tried theme parks and even caves but for many reasons (travel, family with disabilities, our Halloween weather) nothing quite fit.
I jokingly said to Ash one day you know we will end up eloping at this rate, how is the weather in Transylvania in Oct haha
Suddenly a destination wedding seemed like the perfect solution and for reasons known only to the universe we both said DISNEY
Nowhere quite does Halloween like America and WDW was always THE holiday to go on, Id certainly never been and in all honestly never thought that I would be able to afford to go I am just a part time receptionist (slave to my kids and many animals the rest of the time) and Ash is just in retail. But we had set a budget for a big wedding day in the UK and realised that we might just be able to combine our holiday of a life time, small intimate wedding and honey moon into the same budget so we quite selfishly reallocated what we would have spent on family and friends and went ahead and booked our very own fairytale we did say that if anyone wanted to come with us that they would be more than welcome but no-one could afford it so we planned a big party for them all when we got back.
At this stage we didnt even know if you could get married at Disney hahaha so a few phone calls and emails later and we were all set up - Disney holiday booked, flights booked and in wedding limbo as I couldnt book the memories wedding until 6mths before the date that we wanted.
It was all so easy, in fact the wedding was the easiest part hahahah I had dining reservations and other park tickets to organise, exchange rates and car hire and I was quite dizzy with it all.
Once we had chosen the officiant, and decided to opt for a third party photographer and videographer all we really needed to do was turn up in our wedding gear.
Wedding gear: My little dress drama played out on here, Id had a dress in mind from a shop called Fairy Goth Mother but then my Mum won a radio station competition for £500 off a dress from a local shop long story short, I wasnt holding out much hope, even when I saw the dress that the lady thought might suit me on the hanger but I tried it on and loved it!!! It was quite a shock to me to be in a traditional ivory dress and be happy about it but I opened my mind and bought it I managed to pick the dress up a week later and then got itchy fingers hahahaha I needed to goth the dress up so I got my fabulous friend on board and we halloweend my dress, we cut sections out and it look quite butchered for a while hahaha but I dont scare easily, I had a vision and I was truly thrilled with the result which was totally unique and quirky but still very classy. I was covered in bats and cobweb design lace and still felt like a bride.
Disney fairy tale weddings: 8/10
They were very relaxed about everything which is just my style, I called exactly 6 months out (at opening time) and they were very accommodating about me wanting a Halloween wedding even though it fell on a Wednesday which is out of usual operation days for memories weddings.
We opted for the limo which was bang on time and with a lovely driver
I chose a lovely pumpkin orange Bouquet which was given to me when we arrived at the venue and was beautiful
The coordinator was there and she was charming
The violinist was great and played music from nightmare before xmas.
It was all very hassle free and rather 'Vegas style' We wed at the conch key marina and the grand floridian was just beautiful.
The only thing that we opted out of with Disney was the photographer - more about that in a bit.
Wedding officiant: 8/10
Disney sent through a useful pack with different contacts on - i checked out a few officiant's websites and we chose Rev. Tim Herring based on the fact that he can do a family ceremony - it seemed like such a cute idea. So we bought the girls a Thomas Sabo bracelet and a disney charm each and they got those during the ceremony just after we exchanged rings - it was beautiful ceremony and Tim really listened to us about wanting a civil ceremony - a very nice guy.
Photographer: 10/10
Disney were going to include the price of the photographer in our memories package, but it isnt possible to choose which photographer you want and their were some real mixed reviews on here about the results of disney photography. They were also going to charge me an extra $500 for the Cd of images with copyright release... so i went researching and i found a really good offer by a fabulous photographer. Randy Chapman would do the photoshoot, give us all the images in colour and black and white (with copyright release), he would get the CD's of these to me before we left Florida for $250 if we also used his friend as videographer (to include 3 DVD's of our day) for a further $250!!
I was getting a heck of a lot more there for my $500 and i loved Randys photography work too!!
Randy was very generous with his time and even offered to spend extra time with us free of charge as it was a gothic themed wedding. The images were fabulous, he delivered the CDs in person to our villa the day before we flew home - can't thank him enough, this meant that we could still share our special day with our family and friends at our wedding reception.
Videographer: 7/10
Stan Severance, was so reasonably priced as part of the deal with Randy - we had 2 videographers filming the ceremony from different angles - the results were fabulous and just arrived through the post today
Dress steaming:
Not necessary, the dress travelled so well
Hair and makeup :
me hahahaha
After the ceremony and photos we went back to the villa in the limo and we zombied up a little bit, but stayed in our wedding clothes and headed off, tickets in hand for MNSSHP!
The most ridiculously lavish, yet totally intimate wedding reception ever!
We had dinner reservations at Cinderella's Royal Table at 4:20 and when we came out we just blended straight in with the amazing halloween costumes - we looked positively under dressed!
I was told that if i could get on the rides then i could ride them... so we had an amazing evening of rides, eating candy, and then fireworks and parade! It was a whirlwind, fairy tale day - every part of it was perfect, i wouldn't change a single thing.
When we got home, we had the mother of all parties... everyone in fancy dress and with a massive inside adult bouncy castle and a rodeobull - our wedding pictures playing on a projector and our wedding was then complete - I've just ordered a photo book of our wedding/holiday - here is a link if anyone would like to see it:
https://as.photoprintit.com/web/850...166426708f40addd2da0f570bd&skipSessionTimeout
we got sooo many
