To Escape or to Wish?

[puente0629]

I'm debating on having an Escape or Wishes Wedding....

We wanted to have a small wedding but with a reception following the ceremony, meaning having a small reception area for dinner and then doing the cake cutting. I also wanted to have a small centerpieces on the tables and theme. Is this at all possible with an Escape Wedding?

We are on a budget so a wishes wedding for us looks out of our grasps but my dream has always been to be married at Disney. Is it at all possible to have a wishes wedding for 15K?

Thanks,

 

[PrincessShea]

Yes to your first set of questions. All those things are possible for an escape.

And the second question; oh my god yes it is absolutely possible to do a wishes wedding for 15k. Most people here stick close to the minimum and have had awesome weddings. The minimums depend on the time of year you are having a wedding and range (I think) from around $12,000-$25k.

One of the girls here (lurkyloo) wrote a book about Disney weddings, and it's only a few bucks, so you should definitely get it because it provides a good overview on your choices.

http://www.passporter.com/weddings.asp

 

[honey2741]

I'm debating on having an Escape or Wishes Wedding....

We wanted to have a small wedding but with a reception following the ceremony, meaning having a small reception area for dinner and then doing the cake cutting. I also wanted to have a small centerpieces on the tables and theme. Is this at all possible with an Escape Wedding?

Congrats on getting married! I am unable to speak about a Wishes wedding, but can relate to the same dilemma. With an Escape you can have a reception type of event. However, if you do it the way you are describing, Disney limits you to 2 hours for a private dining event. Others choose to do something at a restaurant. PrincessShea did hers at Bluezoo and possibly her reception was longer than 2 hours?? Boardwalk Bride and I are doing ours at the Flying Fish, but are limited to 2 hours. So it can be done with all the pizzazz you are looking for. HTH

 

[MainStMandy]

We went back and forth about a wishes vs escape wedding too. We finally met with our planner to do a site visit and I think she worded it best when she said to think of an Escape as more of a fancy elopement. It is more difficult to have the “reception”. She also kind of made it sound like Escape brides get less time…you basically show up at the venue, have a ceremony then you leave. We were going to do an Escape with a home reception but then discovered that the Wishes wedding would be the same price and we switched. We are definitely sticking to our $12k minimum and the only other expenses will be attired, honeymoon and photography/videography.

 

[Wish on a Star]

Congrats! Welcome to the boards! Like the other girls said, both options are possible! How many people are you thinking about having? That might determine if you need to have an Escape. Or what locations were you thinking of, because that might play a part as well!

 

[PrincessShea]

PrincessShea did hers at Bluezoo and possibly her reception was longer than 2 hours?? Boardwalk Bride and I are doing ours at the Flying Fish, but are limited to 2 hours. So it can be done with all the pizzazz you are looking for. HTH

Yes mine was 3 hours, and they never told me there was a limit. Honestly though, 2 hours is plenty. We had to kill a lot of time with 3.

 

[girli565]

I was facing the same dilemma last week when I contacted Disney. I wanted a full reception with dancing and all and I wouldn't be able to do that with an Escape wedding. I'll be doing a site this coming Thursday and I am completely decided that we will be doing a Wishes wedding. The 12k minimum seems ENORMOUS but when you add all the little things you would want for your Escape you see how much it actually costs.

When I called DFTW and got my call back we spoke about the cost differences. She emailed me a breakdown of all costs associated with both an Escape and a Wishes wedding. When I saw that an escape wedding would end up costing us close to 10k I knew we would be changing to a wishes wedding and sticking as close as possible to the 12k minimum.

I'll have more info when I get back from my site visit I hope to have more info.

 

[missy0107]

I was facing the same dilemma last week when I contacted Disney. I wanted a full reception with dancing and all and I wouldn't be able to do that with an Escape wedding. I'll be doing a site this coming Thursday and I am completely decided that we will be doing a Wishes wedding. The 12k minimum seems ENORMOUS but when you add all the little things you would want for your Escape you see how much it actually costs.

When I called DFTW and got my call back we spoke about the cost differences. She emailed me a breakdown of all costs associated with both an Escape and a Wishes wedding. When I saw that an escape wedding would end up costing us close to 10k I knew we would be changing to a wishes wedding and sticking as close as possible to the 12k minimum.

I'll have more info when I get back from my site visit I hope to have more info.

I almost did the same thing, but I struggled to come up with the minimum + tax and gratuity.

I started to explore my options and found that I could have a Wishes-like wedding at the Swan for much less (about 4k savings). I explored my options further and found that Fulton's at Downtown Disney allows you to use their third deck exterior for ceremonies, saving me more than half off the Wishes minimum.

There's many, many options to getting married at Disney, depending on the elements you have your heart set on (Cindy's carriage, characters, etc.).

 

[puente0629]

It's great to hear that we have options becuz I almost freaked if we couldn't do a Disney wedding.

If we do the Escape I know it's a minimum of 18 guests, which is fine with us as long as we can do a dinner reception with some pretty centerpieces, etc. But if we were to do a Wishes then we would want to have max 50 guests and just do a really cool Tim Burton "Alice in Wonderland wedding." Our budget is 15K but we are hoping to keep it at 13k and us the other 2K for the honeymoon.

Has anyone done a 15k or less wedding at Disney and has a breakdown of everything and pics to show me? I would love to see how it turned out. Also, their's a photographer I want to use in the Orlando area (Domenico Castaldo) is there anyway Disney would let me bring him in?

Thanks for the information and sorry for all the questions.

 

[CharacterFan]

We were also in the Escape vs Wishes at first.

We were going to have an Escpae wedding and a dinner after, but I really wanted a lot more custimization then seemed possible. Also, I found out that the Escape locations we weould have loved wouldn't fit our family and couldn't be used when we wanted to use it.
We also did all the math. With all the add-ons we were spending close to the 10k min at the time. So after a lot of talking with our consutant we decided to do a Wishes wedding.

 

[honey2741]

It's great to hear that we have options becuz I almost freaked if we couldn't do a Disney wedding.

If we do the Escape I know it's a minimum of 18 guests

For an extra $500 you can have 5 more guests with an Escape.

 

[puente0629]

Wow, I didn't know that...thanks!

My thing is how much of a difference is it really in price to do an escape wedding with a ceremony, reception, dessert party and decorations compared to a wishes wedding?

Do they only have dessert parties at Epcot or can you have one in Magic Kingdom in a nice location and how much does it cost?

Thanks again!

 

[MainStMandy]

You can use an outside photographer if you aren't having any elements in the Disney parks.

Reception choices are a bit more limited with the Escape because they aren't designed to have a reception. That's not to say it's impossible.

I also recommend you get Lurkyloo's passporter book. I reference it all the time.

 

[puente0629]

Is there anything included into the wishes package? Cake, invites?

 

[daveyc150]

Just want to echo the other posters, we originally planned for and Escape but then when we started adding thing up we were alomst at a Wishes anyway. A Wishes gives you so much more flexibility. We had a 10K minimum and we're only $125 over and i'm sure we could pull that back if we wanted too!

 

[pezaddict231]

There's nothing included in a Wishes package since it's all based on minimums you need to meet. Well Disney does send out Save the Dates for you, so I guess that's included. Basically you can get whatever you want, you just need to meet the overall minimum and the food and beverage minimum. There are plenty of brides that have stayed close to their minimum so it's not impossible and I've heard that Disney is good with working with you to stay within your budget.

I would also recommend Carrie's book, it explains everything and all the information is all in one place.

 

[Chilly]

Don't forget on top of the $12K min is tax and service charge for Wishes.

 

[girli565]

I really would recommend Carrie's book when it comes to figuring out what get's taxed and service charged because somethings do and some don't so you would have good idea. She has a chart that is great!

 

[BecBennett]

How hard is it to go from Wishes to Escape both before and after your contract is signed?

 

[CharacterFan]

How hard is it to go from Wishes to Escape both before and after your contract is signed?

I'm not sure about after, but before it's easy. They only tricky I found about switching was that I had to change consultants.