Tom & Heidi 1/19/09 Italy WD/WP/Narcoossee's/Sago Cay...Sprint to the Finish!!!

[tiggerrifficheidi]

We did the standard 4x6 package, but we liked all the pictures so much, we splurged for the image CD. I have no patience. I couldn't have waited 3 years!!

 

[PrincessShea]

Love the vendor reviews Heidi, I appreciate the honesty Can't wait to read more.

 

[c1nd3r311a52010]

Great Reviews Heidi clear and concise.

 

[tiggerrifficheidi]

Love the vendor reviews Heidi, I appreciate the honesty Can't wait to read more.

Great Reviews Heidi clear and concise.

Thanks for the compliments! Sorry I don't have more to add yet! But, we are up on the Roots' blog!!!

http://rootphotography.blogspot.com/2009/03/heidi-tom-wedding.html

 

[WithDisneySpirit]

I think your vendor reviews were awesome in their honesty Most people reading about themselves would feel good in how you tried to give credit where it was due!!

Your roots blog spread is seriously wonderful too - WOW!!!!!!!

 

[chrisw127]

Your photographs are beautiful and I don't think the two of you could be any cuter. Best of luck and I hope these deployments slow down.

Take care.

 

[imadisneygrl]

Longtime lurker here........... Your negative Roots review convinced me to go with Randy for my beach wedding. Thanks for your honesty!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[tiggerrifficheidi]

I think your vendor reviews were awesome in their honesty Most people reading about themselves would feel good in how you tried to give credit where it was due!!

Your roots blog spread is seriously wonderful too - WOW!!!!!!!

Thank you. I hope you're right. Yeah, I hadn't even noticed the funny picture of the horse! I love that they pointed it out.

Your photographs are beautiful and I don't think the two of you could be any cuter. Best of luck and I hope these deployments slow down.

Take care.

Me, too! It's getting old!

Longtime lurker here........... Your negative Roots review convinced me to go with Randy for my beach wedding. Thanks for your honesty!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, thanks for your honesty, but I find it odd you called them "negative" reviews. Particularly since I said I love my pics and would choose the Roots again. Misinterpretation was my fear of grading with honesty instead of A+++'s on this board. Particularly since not once did I criticize their photos...only my lack of preparedness in making sure they knew which photos were important. I think this is a pitfall ALL brides can fall into, because your photographer WILL miss shots unless you communicate to him/her what is important.

 

[Princess_K]

Hi, Heidi! I am usually a lurker on the wedding boards, but I just had to take a minute and tell you how beautiful your wedding was! I absolutely loved the colors, and your photos are beautiful. I thought it was really cute how Minnie's dress matched your bridesmaids!

 

[AbbyPan]

Heidi, you looked gorgeous...thank you so much for sharing with us!

Wow, Roots did such an amazing job- great photos!! And I'm glad you were able to get your money's worth from the mani & pedi

Your TR is straight to the point, yet informative...its perfect!!

Everything looked just beautiful...

 

[princess_momma]

Hey I'm a lurker as well! Just found your whole report and read it!! I love everything so far!! I hope to one day be a DFTW bride!! My guy actually just joined the army...so I loved your whole fairy tale that much more.

 

[tiggerrifficheidi]

Hi, Heidi! I am usually a lurker on the wedding boards, but I just had to take a minute and tell you how beautiful your wedding was! I absolutely loved the colors, and your photos are beautiful. I thought it was really cute how Minnie's dress matched your bridesmaids!

I'm so glad you've been lurking Everyone asks if we planned the mice to match. Yes, because I knew they had a purple outfit. But...that was an option already, so it wasn't that hard!

Heidi, you looked gorgeous...thank you so much for sharing with us!

Wow, Roots did such an amazing job- great photos!! And I'm glad you were able to get your money's worth from the mani & pedi

Your TR is straight to the point, yet informative...its perfect!!

Everything looked just beautiful...

What a nice pick-me-up! It was a rough day, so thank you so much!!

Hey I'm a lurker as well! Just found your whole report and read it!! I love everything so far!! I hope to one day be a DFTW bride!! My guy actually just joined the army...so I loved your whole fairy tale that much more.

Best of luck to your Soldier! I hope he's doing well. You'll be a great encouragement to him!

 

[Pirate's Princess]

Heidi, your wedding looks like it was truly a time to remember. The pictures are gorgeous! You look like a model. The pics on the roots blog are wonderful.

I never like strapless dresses, but wow. Yours is so detailed and beautiful and you wear it so well.

I can't wait to read the detailed report.

 

[adisneygal]

Longtime lurker here........... Your negative Roots review convinced me to go with Randy for my beach wedding. Thanks for your honesty!!!!!!!!!!!

Im sorry to be OT on your TR Heidi, but this just seems kind of fishy. You weren't negative at all, just honest and the above just seems like a commercial for Randy. I'm just sayin.....

 

[tiggerrifficheidi]

Heidi, your wedding looks like it was truly a time to remember. The pictures are gorgeous! You look like a model. The pics on the roots blog are wonderful.

I never like strapless dresses, but wow. Yours is so detailed and beautiful and you wear it so well.

I can't wait to read the detailed report.

I never thought I wanted a strapless dress either, but I loved it. You never know till you try things on! Thanks for reading!

Im sorry to be OT on your TR Heidi, but this just seems kind of fishy. You weren't negative at all, just honest and the above just seems like a commercial for Randy. I'm just sayin.....

Kinda thought the same thing...hence my somewhat "cheeky" retort I'm glad you thought it too!

 

[29apr00]

Sorry to say that you have a troll on your TR! Your roots pictures were amazing and you gave them a wonderful review! you just have to wonder about the agenda some people have around here.

 

[LittleStinkerbelle]

I'm late to the party but I just read your entire report. First and foremost, I want to say THANK YOU to you and your DH for all that you do for our country!

Your wedding was stunning from start to finish--every little detail was just amazing. You are a beautiful couple and I just love your pictures--breathtaking! You make me wish I could go back in time and do a Disney Wedding!

 

[tiggerrifficheidi]

Oh, thank you so much!! You are too sweet!

 

[tiggerrifficheidi]

To stay on track, and because I’m a history geek AND in the Army, I’m going to refer to the Wedding as W-Day. Sorry. It helps me remember where I am

W-5 (Wednesday, Jan 14th)

The weeks leading up to the wedding were pretty hectic and stressful. Right before Christmas, I moved from Ansbach, Germany to Hohenfels, Germany, and I was desperate to get the house settled before the wedding. I didn’t want to come home after the wedding all bummed (with post-wedding and post R&R blues) and have to do a lot of work around the house. So, even though my mom came to help, we ended up working, working, working on the house stuff. It was really frustrating, and I started getting fever blisters!!! Not the way I wanted to spend my time getting ready for everything!

To add insult to injury, I found out the day before I flew to Florida that Tom was going to beat me there! He had picked his R&R date in order to make sure he was there for the wedding events, but we did not figure on him being early! We were worried he might be late, but never thought about him being early. I was pretty bummed that he had just spent 6 months in Iraq and was going to get off the plane with no one to greet him. I thought that was pretty depressing. I actually emailed the Roots to see if they were free to meet him, but they had a photo shoot and couldn’t make it!

I flew from Nuernberg to Frankfurt, and there was bad icing in Frankfurt and it took them HOURS to de-ice the plane. We took off about 2 hours late, and I was worried the whole flight that I wouldn’t make my connection to Orlando. Shortly before we landed, though, they announced that they were holding the flight to Orlando!!! I couldn’t believe it. So, all in all, I landed about 6 hours after Tom. As soon as I saw him, it was all better! Sorry...no pics!

We took the DME (which always gets me excited about being at WDW) and got to the GF to check-in. We drew a lot of attention because Tom was still in his uniform (hadn’t been able to change yet), so most folks kinda figured he was just off the plane from Iraq. The lady that checked us in noticed that, too, and started talking to us and figured out we were here to get married and hadn’t seen each other in six months. She then told us to wait a moment while she “went and checked on something.”

I was certain we were going to get upgraded! We had a Honeymoon Concierge room starting on the 18th, but had booked a Garden View room for the first few days to save money. I figured with it being mid-Jan and all, AND us having a concierge reservation later anyway, that’s what she’d be doing. Well, APPARENTLY, Jan is high conference time at WDW, and people on business trips must spend their businesses’ money on concierge rooms, because she came back and apologized and said they tried but there was no way to link the two reservations. Oh well...we were just happy to be in the same place!

We were checked into Boca Chica and found the bell services folks to be extremely helpful and friendly. We got settled around midnight, and were able to order a ribeye dinner, crab cakes, french onion soup and a nice bottle of wine from room services! One more thing to love about the GF!

And again...sorry but I forgot to take pics of this room!

At this point, I’ll opine about the GF. We wanted to stay here because it made it convenient for our wedding. It is definitely not my “dream theme” resort, so I honestly didn’t expect to like it that much. There are definitely things that were less than great, but overall, it was a great place to stay for the wedding. It made everything so much more convenient. It had a true all-in-one feel, and now we want to go back there!

+ All of our wedding events were centered around here (except WD at Italy)
+ There were many places to eat and options at all hours, so we didn’t have to spend a lot of time hunting not only food...but good food. On a regular vacation, this is not a big deal, because you’re in the parks, etc., but we didn’t get into the parks for more than 5 minutes in the first 6 days we were there. Because we were at the GF, we could have a variety of great WDW food and still stay on schedule with all the last minute things. And if the GF got old, there’s always a monorail ride to CR or Poly.
+ I could walk to my mani/pedi at the GF Spa. Again, I think it’s really easy to underestimate how busy you will be right before the wedding, so it was great to be able to leave Tom in the room working on welcome bags with MOH and walk quickly to my appt.!
+ Bell Services made our lives SOO easy. We forgot to drop off penguins for the tea party, so Michelle told us to have bell services get them. We changed rooms twice (to concierge at GF and then to SSR) and we didn’t have to lift a finger. MOH brought the “fillings” for the Welcome Bags and they carted them up to the room. This reduced so much stress.

- They must get too many honeymooners here, because they did NOTHING special in the room for us. At VWL in June for our Escape wedding, we had a surprise every day, but nothing this time. Considering this was a much grander affair and a “fancier” hotel, this was somewhat of a disappointment. Just sayin’, that’s all

W-4 (Thursday, Jan 15th)

AHH! Our first day at WDW!! Still two days away from our first event! It felt like we had all the time in the world (false sense of serenity!) We enjoyed breakfast at Gasparilla Grill and wandered around the GF before meeting my Mom at CR.

MICKEY WAFFLES!!! My favorite!

Sorry if you like these, but I think they look SO silly. We went with the ol’ standby top hat ones.




We made our way to the CR, where Mom was staying in a Garden Wing room until my Dad got there (then they were moving to a GF Concierge). She was skeptical about the Garden Wing and missing out on the “ambience” of the CR, but the room was really nicely done and comfy, and I really liked the overall feel of the resort (even though I like the exotic feel of WL, Poly or AKL much better).

Actually, this day the plan was to buy DVC. Now you may wonder how we would start out the day planning on spending major $$$. I had done the DVC Open House with MOH at the PS in Nov. I love Disney. I’ve travelled all over Europe, and have figured out I have the best trips at Disney. We were going to spend Tom’s entire 18 day R&R at WDW, so that is a lot of cash for a honeymoon. And because he’d been in Iraq for 6 months, we weren’t willing to go budget on lodging. He’s in a tin can the rest of the year...I wanted him to be comfy for these two weeks. In June, he had made the mistake of booking us at VWL and we fell in love with the concept of the 1BR DVC. I loved the spa tub and the kitchen. He loved the Washer/Dryer. Gotta love a practical man! Anywho...because the BLT wasn’t built yet, they were offering Developer’s Points to stay SSR, so it was basically “bonus” points. Because of that, we ended up staying the last 11 nights of our 18 day vacation for “free” (or at least the bonus kind of free since we still get our points for the year). Honestly, this saved us over $3K since we liked the idea of DVC anyway. I’m not advocating spending money to save money, but for us, this worked out really well.

So, we took my Mom with us to DVC, toured the open house (because they hadn’t seen it) and made the sale. This took MUCH longer than we figured, because I also wanted to cancel the SSR reservation I had made and switch it to use Developer’s points. But, at the end of the day, we were proud owners of BLT and a nifty tote bag! YAY!

Horrible picture of BLT in progress from the monorail

Since I’ve already said I like VWL and AKL better, you may ask why we bought BLT. Well, I did the math on the resales of VWL and the difference in # of years (2042 vs. 2060) was enough to make a resale less of a deal. The ending year was somewhat of a factor with AKL, as well. The deciding factor for us was that we LOVE the MK area most of all, so even though it’s not our #1 fave resort, it still puts us in the heart of the action. And we figured that BLT could be more of a challenge for reservations, so it was better to be an owner. Time will tell where we end up spending most of our time, but I can’t wait to try out our “home” soon!

The three of us then ate at Citrico’s (our first time). I liked the restaurant overall. We had a goat cheese salad and a cheese sampler appetizer and they were both AMAZING! The bread and butter were great too and the steak was quite decent (although I have really high standards for Disney food). We had a Key Lime Pie Cheesecake that was part of the new “What are You Celebrating” promotion. I was super excited to see the Mickey balloons on the dessert, as that’s the design on our invitations (and everything else for that matter). It made it feel “special” for us!

See the resemblance? Okay, maybe it’s not obvious, but we were way excited about it!

So, that brings us to W-3, which is the day MOH and FOB showed up and the day that The Great Sickness of 2009 was contracted! Things started to pick up...more to follow!

 

[vettechick99]

Just stumbled on your pictures and by the end of the Root slideshow I was tearing up. Congrats!