To get married at Disney or not?

[ladyleopard1106]

I got engaged to my fiance in 2012, but after trying to plan a wedding in NJ, I feel like I'm at the end of my rope. I've been throwing around the idea of getting married at a Disney property (being 1/2 Native Hawai'ian, I've been contemplating the Polynesian over the last few days) in the fall/winter of 2015.

Does anyone have any major pros/cons to doing it Disney?

I already checked with my bridal party and many said they would try as long as we give them enough notice. I don't even know how to go about checking about wedding stuff at the different properties (and then there's the photos, video, etc.). I am just very confused.

 

[purplegirl1818]

Planning a wedding at Disney doesn't make wedding planning any easier. You might get away with not inviting all your 2nd cousins, but you have to worry about planning a wedding from far away and worrying about travel for everyone.

For my fiance and I it worked out perfectly. It's one of my two dream venues - I would have never thought I would be able to have a Disney wedding. My other dream venue (Michigan Stadium - which is literately walking distance from my house) cost as much as my entire wedding just to rent the ceremony and reception spaces. For my fiance, it meant we would have a small wedding. If we had it here, we would have to invite 100+ people, whereas we are only having 30 in Disney. Also, our budget remained the same! We did go a little over with lodging and flights and such, but we would have had to do that too anyway for our honeymoon.

It's what works best for you and your fiance. If it would make you both happy - I say go for it. But if it just sounds fun and a stress relief, I wouldn't do it. The stress evens out to be about the same.

Good luck!

 

[Simba07]

We considered a Disney wedding for similar reasons... Until we saw the prices. Even avoiding some of the headaches weren't worth that.

 

[lurkyloo]

From what I've seen, the family drama aspect of planning does not get any easier (and may get harder) with a Disney wedding, but the actual event planning does. Most traditional at-home wedding venues are just the venue, nothing else. Unless you're looking at a hotel wedding, you have to figure out how to get all the tables, chairs, dishes, linens, heat lamps, etc. to the site or hire a wedding coordinator to do that for you. When we switched from planning a local wedding to planning a Disney wedding, things got exponentially less complicated—even though we were planning from 3,000+ miles away! All we had to do was pick fun stuff like flowers and colors. Our planner did all the heavy lifting with logistics.

If you do decide to go for a Disney wedding, there's really nothing for you to check at each individual property—it's all managed by the free wedding planner provided as part of Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings' service. You don't have to look for individual vendors either, unless you want a certain style of photography or to save money on floral or decor. Disney provides all the basic services you need.

 

[loyal2mouse]

Would love to have a Disney wedding. But I am afraid of the cost being way too high

 

[justlook3]

The prices do seem high but you really need to price out how much it's all going to cost in your alternative site. And like Carrie said, you also have to worry about catering, tables, etc.
For example, I volunteer at a museum/heritage site in suburban Dallas. We rent out our historic buildings for weddings. They are very popular sites for small weddings (they can only hold 100 people) and have a reputation for being less expensive than other small venues. I just looked up what we charged, $3100 for renting the chapel and the reception site on a Sat. And that is all you get. A historic church and what is basically a barn. Then ad in floral, catering, DJ or a band, photography . . .
It's actually rather insane how much weddings cost really. Now, I do think that the Memories package is a little pricey for what you get, but I think if you really look into a comparable wedding in many markets then Escape, Wishes or the Swan & Dolphin are pretty much similar in price. I remember hearing back when I was planning my VR that it was actually a cost savings on New York City weddings.
My simple cheap original wedding was so much work. My Disney VR really, my coordinator did it all. Rose petals were sprinkled down aisles, drinks menus were put into frames, tables were set, transportation was arranged.
I'm sure too with a wedding it would be less difficult to get people to actually come!
But it really boils down to you and your fiance, what is your vision for your wedding? What would make you happy? That's your major thing to think about.
[Honestly if I'd known in 1995 that Disney even did weddings, we would have eloped there!]

 

[andeesings]

I see you're from NJ. I'm from NY. I'm not a bride, but I'm ALWAYS a bridesmaid. I've helped a number of my friends plan their weddings here. A wedding in the NY metropolitan area costs a small fortune! We do have the advantage of having a number of catering halls around here ranging from horrifically tacky to actually quite nice- those CAN be a one stop shop for brides- they take care of linens, catering, chairs, tables, etc, but you can't necessarily customize the way you want, they tend to be wedding factories. I'm not saying you'll SAVE money by going with Disney, but I'd imagine it might be comparable.

 

[disneemama]

You will still have the stress of planning a wedding, but if you love Disney...it will be the most magical day of your life. I do agree having a Disney wedding planner made things so much easier. Yes it is very expensive but I suggest if you do use this Dis-boards for weddings. The brides were so helpful to me while I was helping my daughter plan her Disney wedding. Good Luck whatever you decide

 

[Chilly]

I'm afraid the Poly doesn't have any wedding locations so that wouldn't be an option.

 

[Erzengel]

I got engaged to my fiance in 2012, but after trying to plan a wedding in NJ, I feel like I'm at the end of my rope. I've been throwing around the idea of getting married at a Disney property (being 1/2 Native Hawai'ian, I've been contemplating the Polynesian over the last few days) in the fall/winter of 2015.

Does anyone have any major pros/cons to doing it Disney?

I already checked with my bridal party and many said they would try as long as we give them enough notice. I don't even know how to go about checking about wedding stuff at the different properties (and then there's the photos, video, etc.). I am just very confused.

Hi.

We got married last month in WDW and we're both from Central New Jersey. We looked at a bunch of places in NJ, Liberty House, Long Branch, Atlantic City.

We have family who live near Jacksonville so we looked near Amelia Island, Jacksonville and St. Augustine. We love Disney and thought it'd be less expensive than NJ.

We knew if we had a wedding in NJ, we'd be looking at probably over 150 - 200 people easily. Then unless it was at a place like the Liberty House it was going to be some banquet hall. We probably saved 10k-20k by not having it NJ just in the amount of people who wouldn't come and how expensive NJ is.

It still wasn't inexpensive. We have 87 people including us. We had some minimal decorations because we had the reception at Atlantic Dance Hall. So just the table linens and simple flowers on each table with covered seats.

Aisle runner with petals at the Ceremony. We brought in a lot of stuff, candles, cake cutter, topper, etc. to offset the price.

We spent a little extra on photography because we thought that was one of the most important aspects. We got Mickey and Minnie to show up. They were the hit of the party.

Our wedding probably looked a lot more expensive than it was but that wasn't on purpose.

I'll be honest, if you have the money, it's a wonderful experience. If you have to use your life savings, that's something you might want to think about. We could of had a small wedding in Hawaii and honeymoon and had a nice down payment on a new car. Others would have a nice little down payment for a house.

 

[MrsHappilyEverAfter]

Wedding in August 2012 - Also from New Jersey

Pros - Don't have to invite random people that you don't particularly like anyway. Since it's a destination wedding, you can cut out all the extra family you never speak to. Also, our wedding was absolutely amazing. I've wanted to get married here for as long as I can remember and it was just as great as I ever imagined. I got Cinderella's Coach as a wedding gift, it made our wedding extra special in a way that wouldn't have happened at home.

Cons - Many of your family members that you do like won't be able/willing to make the trip. Also, you may get a speech from an older family member about not being married in a particular church or by a particular person.

It is expensive, but they were very willing to work within our limited budget and still give us a great day.