Our wedding/honeymoon PRE-trip report

[Mary626]

Well we leave for our wedding this Thursday, (April 20th)!! I’m so excited, I thought I would start a “Pre-trip report”, hope no-one minds . I hope to continue it after we get back from our honeymoon, thought it would be fun to get a head start, and maybe the planning information might help some people just starting out know what kind of things to expect, etc.


Some background info:
Me: the bride, Mary. 25 years old (26 in a month), currently unemployed (and loving it). Grew up in Michigan, moved to Los Angeles 4 years ago to be with fiancé. Will be going to get my ph.d in Biology in the fall at Western Michigan University, can’t wait to be back in my home-state!!

The groom: Jim, 27, born and raised in LA, lived in seattle for a while, and fort worth texas occasionally (where his dad is from). Surprisingly normal for growing up in LA! Works for a company that restores movies digitally for DVD’s and HDTV broadcasts (he got to work restoring some of the Disney films actually, and his name is in the credits for the restored version of Cinderella – he is very proud!). Always makes me laugh. Nicest & sweetest guy I’ve ever met. Was an eagle scout, that about sums him up lol!

Since I mentioned it, I will shamelessly post the still pic of his name from Cinderella

Where we met:
We knew each other from a messageboard on the internet, though we weren’t trying to meet or “hook up” with anyone (not that there’s anything wrong with that – just not what happened). We both posted on the same messageboard for movies, (specifically “Star Wars” – we both really used to be into those movies, not so much anymore though).. anyway we knew each other as “online friends” for about a year before meeting “just as friends” (he flew to Michigan to meet me). Obviously we hit it off! The next summer, in between semesters, I decided to come out to California for the summer and see how things went. They went well enough - and he proposed to me at the end of the summer (more about that below). Then I moved back to finish up my undergrad degree. He came up and lived with me for a while in Michigan, so we never actually had a “long distance relationship” – just a month here, or a month there where we were apart.

At the airport the first time we met:

A picture later that same day

The proposal:

During the first summer I was out in California, we went to Disneyland at the end of July (2002). In California’s Disneyland there’s a restaurant called “The Blue Bayou” which overlooks the beginning part of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The restaurant makes you feel like you’re outside in the Bayou at twilight, the atmosphere is wonderful and very romantic. Earlier in the day at the park, Jim had told me he needed to use the bathroom. He didn’t come back for a while and he told me he couldn’t find the restrooms, I was like .. they were right there!! Anyway, apparently he was buying me a little Crystal Mickey figurine from the Arribas Bros. store in New Orleans Square. Back to the restaurant.. we ordered our food and Jim looked really nervous about something. He said he had a gift for me, and gave me a plastic Disney bag with a cardboard box with the crystal mickey in it. At first I thought he was proposing and got nervous,.. and then I thought.. “whew he just bought me a souvenir”… but then I opened it up, it was a Crystal figure of Sorcerer mickey… holding the engagement ring around his arm! =-o . I tease Jim now, because he never actually said “will you marry me”… When I saw the ring I looked at Jim and he said “so… will you?” I thought about it for a minute (probably seemed longer to Jim).. I hadn’t been dating him for THAT long, so I wasn’t honestly that sure.. still, in a weird way I knew I’d eventually want to marry him, I was convinced.. I thought he was proposing a little too early in our relationship,, but if I said no it would ruin a perfectly good proposal and I did know he was the one!! lol… I know that sounds horrible but that’s kind of how I reasoned it in my mind.. Anyway I smiled and said “okay!” We tease each other back and forth about our reactions I ask “will ya?” and he says “okay…” (it’s just kind of our thing..).. Anyway, I’m very glad I said yes at that time, because every day I’m with Jim I find new things I love about him, I’m just very glad he asked me and I’m very glad I said yes.

(i stole the first two images because the photos I took at the time really sucked)
The outside of the blue bayou

the inside of the blue bayou

So yes, that was July 20th, 2002. I originally wanted to get married soon after the proposal, but life kept getting in the way. First I wanted to graduate, then I wanted us to be settled in our own place, I just didn’t know where we were going to live or what we were going to do, so it took until May of 2005 before I finally picked a date! It was when my grandmother died and I realized she wouldn’t be at my wedding, and I wanted to get married before, heaven forbid, anything happened to anyone else in our family, so we finally picked a date – April 24th 2006. I figured that gave me almost a year to lose weight and to get my life “sorted out” a bit.

So I started Atkins May 1, 2005 and lost 80 pounds in 9 months, then I sort of fell off, regained 10 pounds and have been struggling with the same five pounds these last two months. I was feeling great and doing wonderfully when I was on atkins, but once I fell off I just couldn’t get back and have been trying everything from slim-fast to low-calorie to weight watchers , but this constant yo-yo dieting has really been driving me insane and I just can’t wait until the wedding when the pressure will be off. I’m mad at myself for not staying with it when I was doing so well to begin with, and not losing as much as I wanted to lose for my wedding, , but I’ve been REALLY hard on myself and I just really can’t wait till the wedding is over so I can stop being so hard on myself. I want to get back on track after the honeymoon, but it will be easier when I don’t feel like “time is running out”. Anyway, that’s a story unto itself!



So onto the planning…

In June of 2005 I got in touch with a Sales Manager at Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings. We emailed back and forth, but not too much communication was necessary. I kind of already knew the locations I wanted from perusing Disney’s Website and the “Unofficial guide to marrying at WDW”. I wanted to get married in a theme park – and since the Magic Kingdom was obviously out of the budget, I opted for Epcot – one of my favorites! (I worked in Epcot, at a store called “mousegears” for a few months when I was in the college program and I just love the world showcase!)

I thought the Isola in the Italy pavilion would be a good location – it seemed less like “italy” and more like “epcot” if that makes any sense. I also saw the option for “Fantasmic Dessert party!” and that sounded so cool to me! On Disney’s website, it was listed as having a minimum of $12,000, so I was bummed out. On a whim, I decided to ask my sales manager about the price, and she said it was a minimum of $1,200, and was surprised to hear about the typo. I was happy!! So I added that in thinking it would be a great way to start off the wedding as a “welcome party”. I LOVE fantasmic and can’t wait to have this party! Lesson here is - doesn’t hurt to ask even when something looks to expensive to afford, you never know J

Ever since I was a teenager – I thought staying at the Yacht Club with a husband/boyfriend would just be incredibly romantic . I’m not sure why I thought this, I’ve never even been to the Yacht club, but that’s what I thought. Even though my fiancé and I have been to Disneyland in California countless times – we’ve never actually been to WDW together. I knew we’d have to stay at the Yacht Club when we went! And since we were staying at the Yacht Club - Ariel’s sounded and looked perfect for a reception, and it’s called “Ariel’s” – sounds wonderful to me! So not a lot of “planning talk” was required between me and the sales manager. She had sent me a few pictures of our locations, we picked out a date, and a few weeks later we signed our contract and sent in the $1,000 deposit! My grandmother had left me this money in her will, specifically for the wedding, and using it for the deposit to our wedding felt like the perfect thing to do, in honor of her since she couldn’t be coming to the wedding, if that makes any sense.


Once I sent my contract off it actually took quite some time before I heard from anyone. They told me it would take about 2 weeks to get assigned to an Event Coordinator. 2 weeks came and went, and then at the end of 3 weeks I heard who my coordinator would be, but she happened to be on vacation at the time, so it was actually like another 2 weeks until I heard from her. Very frustrating since I couldn’t wait to begin planning! Eventually I heard from her, and she sent me a zip file with about 10 documents in it to start planning, including menu options, local vendor info, etc.. One document was called “Let the Planning Begin!” and was a worksheet /questionnaire with questions about what hotel you wanted to stay in, were you interested in a bridal suite, where and when to have the rehearsal, if you wanted cosmetology, questions about transportation, flowers, photography, musicians, decorations, entertainment options, etc. There were diagrams for what order your bridal party would be in, info about flowergirls/ring bearers, parents of the couple, what kind of menu you wanted, room block form, etc. It really did a good job of covering every aspect of the wedding. Also in the meantime, Disney sent out a “Save the Date” announcement to everyone I provided an address for.

I filled it out as best as I could and emailed it to my coordinator. We communicated mostly through email, as the time difference between California and florida seemed to interfere with getting a hold of each other on the phone quite often. I did have one over-the-phone planning session with her in August and it was nice to get to know her personality a little better (she seemed very nice). In the beginning, I basically told her everything I wanted to have, and she’d make recommendations here and there. I also had a phone session with my floral designer/coordinator – who asked me what kind of wedding I envisioned, I didn’t have too many ideas but told her I liked simple but elegant, and my color scheme was a royal blue and a little bit of silver. She gave me some wonderful suggestions as well, I can’t wait to see what everything looks like!!

It was hard to gauge the budget in the beginning, since the coordinators didn’t always know the prices for things off hand. So when I did get my first budget estimate from them, it was a bit of sticker shock! My event manager did tell me know they had “lots of red ink” at Disney and we’d get to cutting the extraneous items out over the next few months. I went from an original estimate of $19,000 (and that wasn’t including photography & videography – another $5,000 altogether), down to a good $13,500 that I am very happy with (not including photography/videography).

One thing that pained me to get rid of though was the Magic Kingdom Photo Session. I didn’t really do it for financial reasons though – but because I was informed there would be big tresses/stages with lights up in front of the castle for grad night that week, like this:

Even though they told me they could do photo manips to make us look like nothing were there, after a while, I kind of thought.. I could do photo manips myself, it wouldn’t be the same! This was something I was really looking forward to doing, so it was kind of a bummer. It may have been nice, but it didn’t seem worth the $1,000 dollars (800 + hair and makeup + fresh flowers). If it wasn’t for the grad nite decorations, I’d have done it in a heartbeat, so it’s one of those things I’ll chalk up to fate and move on. Since that saved me over $1,000, Jim and I decided to do something extra for our honeymoon and spend the weekend when we get back in San Francisco, so I am excited about that and feel it is a good compromise J

For my room block, I chose “Yacht Club” (obviously my first choice), Port Orleans – French Quarter, and the Wilderness Lodge. I didn’t include a budget hotel because the discount really only took like ten dollars off of the All-Star hotels, while it took like $50.00 or so off of the more expensive places. But absolutely none of my guests are staying at the Wilderness Lodge, and quite a few opted to stay at an All-star, so in retrospect, it would have been better to book one of the budget hotels for the room block. Another hind-sight is 20/20 kind of thing.



Bridal Registry
In early November, Jim and I decided to start our registry at Bed, Bath, & Beyond. We figured it was too early for anyone to buy us anything, but it would be fun and we could get a head start on it. So we went in and signed up for their registry. They have you fill out your information, show you some of the catalogs of their china prints that aren’t on their shelves, and give you about 100 or so little cards that say you are registered there, along with some pamphlets & brochures… and then they give you a scanning gun!! If you haven’t done this before, it’s a ‘gun’ that scans the barcodes of the items you want to put on your registry. Before we went in, Jim was kind of ho-hum about wanting to register and didn’t think it would be much fun shopping around for “forks & spoons”, but when the sales lady handed Jim that gun….. It was hilarious seeing him run around the store just scanning anything, you’d think he was getting them for free! Since we could always delete things off the registry later, I didn’t care too much about what he registered for. Though some of the items he registered for crack me up.. Who knows, maybe that avocado slicer will come in handy!

Next post: The surprise Bridal Shower

 

[Mary626]

My Bridal Shower;
Like I mentioned, I have been living out here in California for the last 4 years and only occasionally visit my family in Michigan. I decided to visit them really spur-of-the-moment in November 2005… bought my plane ticket and left a few days later. Very spontaneous trip. Since it was so last minute, I certainly didn’t expect my family to do anything special for me, but I was really shocked when I went over to my brother’s house and everyone was there to throw me a surprise bridal shower!! I went in to their house and everyone yelled “Surprise!” At first I was really confused because I didn’t know what the surprise was. Was it my birthday? Was someone pregnant? Was *I* pregnant?? (I was confused!) I then figured the surprise must be that everyone was there to see me. I certainly thought it was sweet that everyone showed up, so I was happy just for that fact alone. But then my mind slowly started taking in the details around me, like the big pile of presents and the cake and the decorations, etc… Oooooooh they’re throwing me a bridal shower!!!! (I’m a little slow sometimes!).

My mom & sister both really wanted to get me the Mad Hatter Tea Party at the Grand Floridian for my wedding – but when we found out how much it cost to throw one, we all decided we’d rather spend that money elsewhere. So since we couldn’t do that – the theme of the bridal shower was “mad hatter tea party”, and I think my mother did an amazing job with the decorations!! ESPECIALLY considering that she only had 4 days to plan it!! She amazes me sometimes. And my brother and his wife wanted to help make it special as well, since they wouldn’t be able to make it to my wedding (my sister in law is pregnant and her due date is the day after my wedding!!)

I think she did such a great job, she bought a variety of different colored paper plates, and bought a quaint little tea set. My sister Jenny found the design for a “mad hatter cake” and took it to a local bakery, her husband Kevin made the little plastic tea cups with our names on it. They bought a stuffed white rabbit, they couldn’t find a Cheshire cat, so bought me something that looked like an art-deco cat.. Since they couldn’t find those big novelty mad hatter hats, they bought me a light up Jester hat to wear, etc. My mother made the favor bags and the mickey candle votive holders, and bought all the food. My brother and his wife helped put up the decorations and prepare the food and let my mom hold it at their house. It was such a sweet gesture on everyone’s part and I just really wasn’t expecting it. I felt so lucky to have such a wonderful family!! Also, it was serendipitous that Jim and I had decided to register early for gifts!!

Here are some pictures:
The table settings:

A blurry picture of me as everyone yelled “surprise”

The tea set:

Some of the details – flowers in a Mad Hatter hat and white rabbit stuffed toy

Some of the food:

Some favors:

me cutting the cake (even though I didn’t eat any – not even a taste.. me and this cake have unfinished business after the wedding!)

Some of my presents:

(I got a whole set of these with different characters on each set, too cute!)

me in front of some wrapped gifts

a shirt someone bought for me – I can’t wait to wear it in WDW!

 

[Mary626]

The next few months were pretty uneventful. I continued to plan, worked some temp jobs here and there to save up some money, and tried my hardest to keep losing weight (though in February I faltered and haven’t really “recovered” since then, even though I kept trying my hardest). At the end of December I found out my sister Jenny was pregnant. She had been trying for the past 3 years to get pregnant and was having a hard time of it, so she was really happy. I was happy too, but the selfish part of me was really worried. My brother and sister in law already couldn’t make it because they were pregnant, and now Jenny, my maid of honor, was pregnant. There were three people that I absolutely wanted to have at my wedding no matter what – my mother and my two sisters. I just had this bad feeling that something would happen and jenny wouldn’t make it to my wedding. Luckily nothing bad has happened, although she has had the worst “morning” sickness ever. She’s been throwing up like three or four times every single day since January, and she’s still really sick even though it’s tapered off a bit. I just hope she feels okay when she’s down there. I’m still very happy for her that she is pregnant though, just kind of wished she had waited till after the wedding

Here’s some pictures of our invitations, we sent out in January:

Beginning of April, Jim’s friend’s threw him a “Bachelor Party”. They all decided it was easier to have a party in California a few weeks before we left so everyone could attend. I only have a handful of friends, and they all live in different parts of the country, so I didn’t particularly want or need a bachelorette party. Jim’s “bachelor party” involved him and about 20 friends going to “Speedzone”, and they played go-carts, arcade, and dance-dance revolution. I bought him a baseball hat that said “Groom” that he wore the whole time, just to be silly. He put some pictures up on his flickr account, sadly I don’t think anyone took any pictures of HIM, they’re all pics of his friends, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmary/sets/72057594097066073/


Even though I wasn’t worried Jim would do anything stupid or anything, I did feel a little jealous that he was having a good time and I really had nothing to do that night. So Jim’s mother, Sue, took me to Burke & Williams and treated me to a full body massage, it was so nice of her! The spa was the best one I’ve been to – it’s like a mini-retreat… it has lounges with books and fireplaces, saunas, jacuzzi’s, steam-rooms, free fruit and juices, make-up, hair & face product samples, etc.. It was just really nice!! If you have one near you, I highly recommend the place: http://www.burkewilliamsspa.com/home.htm

I was so relaxed afterwards. Jim ended up staying out till 3 am, so Sue stayed up with me and we watched “Howl’s Moving Castle”, so I ended up having a really nice day, I enjoyed it much better then going somewhere and being rowdy or something.

Next post: a million "small things" to do for the wedding..

 

[Mary626]

This past month I’ve been working on my programs, favors, and things like that. Sometimes the stress of doing it all by myself kind of gets to me, other times I have a lot of fun and enjoy trying to be creative. It’s been kind of fun, I’ll put some Disney music on or something and just sing to the music while I put everything together. I am glad that I didn't have to work the past few weeks though, or I don't know where I would have found the time to do everything by myself!! There’s still a few loose ends, but it is all mostly taken care of. Here are some pictures of things we’ve put together so far:


Guestbook:

a bunch of pens I put together to sign the guestbook (didn’t turn out that great though)

A photoframe for the guestbook table – on the left are pictures from my parents wedding, my grandparent’s wedding, and a family picture, on the right side the same kind of pictures for Jim’s side of the family:

Some favors:

Back of the home-made CD

What I put around Hershey bars:

I’ve done other things to, but I will save the pictures of them for after the wedding



So that leads up to where I am now. We leave Thursday, April 20th, at 7:15 am from LAX (los angeles airport) and arrive in Orlando Airport at 3:20 pm EST. I have quite a few activities planned, but am very curious to see how everything will play out. I am very nervous about trying to “hang out” a little bit with everyone when I want to just have time with Jim. I’m nervous about getting along with everyone, not getting annoyed by anyone, and about any drama that might occur. The day itself I’m not so worried about – if something isn’t the way it should be, I won’t really care, I just want everyone to have a good time. I just hope I feel good about myself on my wedding day. After all the effort I put into losing weight for my wedding, I’m glad I lost as much as I did but I’m mad at myself that I didn’t lose more, but I just hope when everything comes together I can look in the mirror and feel good about myself – that’s the only thing I really wish for myself on that day. I know everything else will be okay – I’m marrying my best friend, in the end nothing else really matters.. I just have to keep remembering that J


Can’t wait to continue this thread when I get back!!! We will be in Disney until May 2nd, and then we are going to San Francisco from May 4th to May 6th – so it will be a while before I give any updates, but I will be doing a trip report with pictures!

Thank you to everyone here for all your help and support and advice for the past 8 months – it made the wait and the planning so much more fun and bearable!!! I admit to stealing more then one idea from this board!! Everyone here is so creative, I don’t’ know what I would have done without reading this site!

 

[Mary626]

Sorry about the size of a lot of those pictures - I thought I made them small enough when I uploaded them.. I will be much more careful before I upload my pictures from now on!!

Anyway, Thanks again if you actually read any of that, and thanks again to everyone on this messageboard for all your help!!


-Mary

 

[hmgolden]

Mary - everything looks fantastic. I can't wait to hear all about your trip when you return. Congratulations, and I hope your wedding is very magical!

 

[Cinderella Fan]

Mary, everything looks and sounds wonderful. Have a safe trip and a WONDERFUL wedding and honeymoon!! Can't wait to hear all about it when you return as a MRS.!!!!

 

[nkkilala]

I loved reading your pre-wedding report! It was so nice to hear how you and your fiance met. Have agreat time in WDW and enjoy every minute. We will all be here waiting to hear how everything went!
Good luck!