Wishes in Catsablanca: 7.22.13 Epcot Wedding PJ&TR! Updated 03/09/15

[laurenvic1312959]

Your honeymoon plans are so great

 

[gelandnick]

You two are adorable! Reading through your PJ and will hopefully be caught up soon!

 

[LittleKittyMarie]

OMG, you are soooo imaginative! And great at DIY!......and patient. I wouldn't have the patience to do all of that, but you did a fantastic job!

I love the moments of dilerium....the laughing fits are priceless.

I can't believe you get to get married at WDW, go on a Disney cruise, AND go to DL!!! That is awesome!

Haha, thank you! I will probably never again DIY as much as I have for this wedding. Those projects were definitely a test of patience and we just barely passed!

Those little DIY crafts are so cute. 0__0. I want them, lol! They'll really help make the subtle them and the welcome party/meet n greet really spectacular!

Thank you! I am hoping so much it will work when everything is put together!

I absolutely love your Mary Poppins theme...it is fabulous. By far, one of my favorite movies. All of the decor you have bought/ made is so cute, especially the tiny umbrellas!

Thank you! I adore Mary Poppins too, and who doesn't! (Hopefully there are no Poppins haters on my guest list, )

Just replying to say that I'm SO dumb! I thought I'd subscribed to your thread....no wonder I wasn't getting notifications of new posts.

All subscribed now.

Yay!

Excellent welcome party! Wow!

Thank you!

Just joining in over the past two days and WOW!!!!

You're over all plans are AMAZING!!!! Love love love the Casablanca theme.

-You're save the dates are stunning, it looks like they were made for a Disney cartoon. We were thinking of going with a comic book invite but never found a good artist that wouldn't charge us crazy.

-Those costumes were awesome, great job.

-We too did the Disney movie rewards and ordered the knife set with figurine. They are beautiful. I saw flutes that has the same castle carving but don't remember where.

-YOUR INVITES ARE CRAZY AWESOME!!!! Really, I can't even describe how neat I think they are.

Overall I love how artistic you both are and that it truly shows in your wedding. Everything has you two written all over it. Congrats on booking the honeymoon, we are opposite of you bu having the DL wedding, then for the honeymoon going to wdw for the first time and a DCL first time cruise.

Thank you so much (and thank you for braving my PJ, I know it's becoming quite the monster! Haha!) I am always to so happy when I anyone says that the projects reflect us, it makes all the work and details worth it! And it just makes me that much more excited to see it all come together!

Wow I've just spent every free minute today catching up with your PJ... I'm in love with your ideas! Everything is gorgeous & so unique!

Your hair and makeup inspiration pics are so beautiful, I can't wait to see how it turns our! Looking forward to seeing more - I feel so inspired!

Thank you for making it through the PJ, I never thought it would become so huge! And I am so honoured to hear you say it inspired you! Thank you so much!

Your honeymoon plans sound crazy amazing! You are going to have a BLAST! Pleeease, do a trip report so I can live vicariously? We'll have WDW and a cruise on the Fantasy during our wedding trip too but no Disneyland, which is the number ONE destination on my bucket list!

I love your Mary Poppins theme for the welcome event! Mary Poppins is just the perfect combination of class and just a little bit of silliness. Love it!

Oh, I am definitely going to do a trip report! I still cannot believe our honeymoon plans, DF is just amazing for coming up with it. We probably won't be going anywhere for awhile after, but it is so completely worth it! Glad you like the Mary Poppins theme too, and I totally agree with how you described it! Since mixing families might be a little awkward, it'll be really nice to have something lighthearted happening to maybe break the ice? Well, I can hope!

I'm so jealous of your honeymoon!!! It sounds amazing. And Mary Poppins is my favorite non-animated Disney movie ever. I got to get a picture with her in Epcot once, and it was so sad that none of the little kids knew who she was! I don't blame you for going nuts after cutting shapes for hours...I'm sure you hand hurt too!

Thank you so much! Oh, I totally forgot but yes my hands were dead after them umbrella cutting - I had blisters on my fingers from the scissors.

 

[LittleKittyMarie]

Your honeymoon plans are so great

Thank you! I am so excited!

You two are adorable! Reading through your PJ and will hopefully be caught up soon!

Aww, thank you!

 

[LittleKittyMarie]

So this is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge of updates, hopefully I can cram a whole bunch of stuff in here! (I apologise in advance if some of these photos are large, I resized them, but it's taking longer than usual for some of the resizing to actually take effect.)

Yesterday my lovely Maids of Honour (and family) threw me an amazing surprise bridal shower! It was totally gorgeous, and they had so many wonderful details. I was so overwhelmed I didn't get any photos taken (typical! Haha!) but they put out disposable cameras on all the tables for my friends and family to take photos for me (and for me to make a scrapbook of the event later on), so I can't wait to get them developed! And of course I stole a couple off of facebook - that's what it's for, right?! Haha! My MoHs were too busy to get in the photos with me though...? There isn't one to be found yet!

Those clever girls had "Casablanca" playing in the background!

Adorable, perfect little guest favours!

Some cake cutting practice... the fondant was extremely difficult to cut in to! I was so surprised!

My cake topper is finally all settled. Well, it was settled before... but we made a slight modification. We got our cute little cat figures and were going to put them in one of the Casablanca champagne glasses perched on some flower petals or candies or something. Well, we came up with the idea of using resin in a champagne glass to simulate the actual look of champagne. If anyone isn't familiar with resin you can use the synthetic/craft kind to basically make plastic with the use of molds. I've used it before to make costume props. The clear kind that we typically use actual hardens with a subtle yellow tinge very similar to champagne, and it usually creates tons of tiny little bubbles if you pour it quickly -- usually that's not a good thing, but for fake champagne it is beyond perfect! And as an extra bonus we actually found a very similar champagne glass for $2 in a kitchen supply store so we didn't even need to break up our set of Casablanca glasses to make this happen!

I wasn't sure how well the bubbles would show in the full size image, so I tried for a close-up.

((I don't think I've posted about my cake inspiration yet, I'll make a dedicated post for that. LOL.))

And speaking of favours... Full disclosure, DF and I love Disney pin trading. We have quite a few pins. I mean, we aren't into the thousands or anything, but considering we've only been to Disney four times... we've got a sizable collection. A lot of disbrides give Disney pins as wedding favours, which I love. But I am uncomfortable buying pins from ebay and the pins at the parks were a little too expensive for us, especially back when we were doing the initial planning and our guest list was 85. So we did some research and decided to have our own custom "Disney pin" made. Obviously it's not tradeable or anything, but we hope that everyone will understand the intent and meaning of the idea.

We got a huge big bag of them in the mail:

And I made custom cards for them to go on. The pin goes over the small text and then when they take the pin off there's the little thank you underneath. I just need to get a thicker stock paper to print them on:

And speaking of ebay nightmares (the segues are getting out of hand today!) I decided to order two "Just Married" buttons off of ebay. I really wanted them, so I sucked up the $20 cost (shipping pricing to Canada is so unfair sometimes) and ordered two. They're Disneyland ones - I think I mentioned this earlier? - but since we are actually going to Disneyland too, I don't mind as much. Well two weeks later my package arrives annnnd there's only one button. And I ordered and paid for two. I really hate having to deal with confrontation, so I was actually more angry the guy was forcing me to demand my other button or my money back than the fact that the button was missing. Although, don't get me wrong, overall I was still very upset. I message him and he says he'll send one right away. Days pass, no word. I'm nervous because his account says he only has a couple left, and I'm afraid he'll sell the button I already paid for! So I message him again and request a tracking number - I am still be very civil, giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, it was a mistake, whatever. A few days later he sends one. The date stamp is from after my second message. Whatever, I have the number, right? A week and a half later and my package has been delivered? In Kentucky? What?! He sent a "fake" tracking number. I was about ready to have a meltdown. Still being waaay too kind I send him another message to inform him that the number was not for my package and, well basically, what's the deal? Luckily - that is, lucky for him - my button arrived in the mail the next day. Ugh. Just ugh. The whole thing wasn't that big of a deal, but it could have been handled so much better so that I wouldn't be total mess wondering if I would have to file some report with ebay or paypal or whatever. Did I say: Ugh yet?

In happier other updates, I got more items for my welcome bags. I found ponchos at the dollar store (I am so happy about this find!) and a couple more first aid type things. One of my MoHs gave me some clear craft bags for all the first aid stuff and I'm going to make a "Bare Necessities" sign for them. I love that idea and I've been hoping to make it happen ever since I saw in on these boards.

We finished all the paper work for our marriage license and we just need to send it all back, which we will do this week since we have passed the 60 day mark! Woohoo! Time is really flying now!

We have booked Trinity for our wedding videography. I love their work! We just need to take care of the outside vendor paperwork, transportation for them and the other details.

 

[Kaylars]

OMG YOU'RE AMAZING!!!! I seriously could probably talk to you for hours about wedding ideas. I love the Pins, do you mind if I ask what company you used? Sorry about the ebay hassle, alway weary about buying stuff from people too. Your bridal shower looked like a lot of fun. I love love love the topper, it really does look like champagne

So was there any ideas you really wanted to use in your wedding but it just wouldn't fit? Like we really really wanted to do comic book invitations and have our love story drawn out but we stepped away from that

 

[Mel*Pie]

I love your pin favors! And the cake topper is adorable. How perfect does that "champagne" look?!

What a sweet bridal shower. How great that it was a surprise!

I'm sorry you had to deal with that stress on ebay. At least you have both buttons now though!

 

[1000HappyWishes]

Those pins are really, really, really, cute! It's an absolutely adorable idea! And I love the Cake Topper with the champagne glass, it'll really look good, I think, with the theme of your wedding and everything. You'll have to do a post later dedicated to favours, I'd love to see them! Also, I know tons of other brides have done this before, but fore the Bare Necessities you could stylize it as Bear Necessities and incorporate Pooh Bear or Baloo in some way. I think it'd be really cute! Anyway, great post!

 

[rrali33tt]

Those pins are so cool and your cake topper is adorable!

Ponchos at the dollar store? Who would have guessed. You def scored big on that one. I'm going to keep my eye out for them now.

Looking forward to reading more.

 

[Kaylars]

Those pins are so cool and your cake topper is adorable!

Ponchos at the dollar store? Who would have guessed. You def scored big on that one. I'm going to keep my eye out for them now.

Looking forward to reading more.

At our Dollar Tree here they come in a two pack. One yellow & one clear all for $1

 

[charliegirl76]

Just when I think it can't get any better......personalized pins. I love them. And the cake topper.

How lucky to have such wonderful friends! A surprise shower! Looks like you had fun.

 

[JessieGlitter]

I'm so glad you found my PJ so that I could find yours!! I'm slightly obsessed and in a hopefully non creepy way with all the fantastic details of your wedding!!

AND THAT ENGAGEMENT RING...WOWZA!


Your Save the dates (I still cant bring myself to call them STDs) are increiable! You and Your DF are some creative and talented people!!

I have no words to describe my love and complete adoration of your wedding invites, Mary Poppins theme, Bridal shower and Bridesmaid dresses.

I may or may not be trying to figure out how to get my DF to let me go and watch your wedding from a distance haha!!

 

[bigr3ddog]

And then Marie showed up. While waiting in line none of the people ahead of us actually knew who Marie was or what movie she was from. One kid declared knowingly it was the cat from Strawberry Shortcake. Sigh, oh well.

Too funny. My fiancée heard someone say it was the bunny from aristocats. And she even got the aristocats part right.

 

[bigr3ddog]

I have to say, I unfortunately agree with everything I've ever heard about Tony's Town Square. The food is not great, the service is rushed and it's clear they are doing everything in their power to turn over tables as fast as possible. (DF's take: "Calling it boilerplate Italian food is insulting to Italians, food and boilerplates.") Also the dessert was terrible. I don't really think that I was eating in the restaurant from Lady and the Tramp either. I felt like I was eating in a shrine to Lady and the Tramp. I was quite disappointed. Lady and the Tramp is my dad's favourite movie - the first (and probably only) Disney movie he saw with his mom before she passed away when he was nine - and I reeeeally wanted to recommend this place to my parents. I'm not so sure I can do that without a lot of disclaimers. I wanted to like it, but I didn't. I doubt we'll go back unless they do some kind of overhaul, but why should they bother really.

Ewwww. Tony's.

 

[bigr3ddog]

Thank you! I always thought I wasn't very crafty... until this wedding. Now, if there's a will, there's a way!

Thank you so much for your very sweet comment! I'm blushing all over!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Just a belated Happy Halloween to everyone before I carry on with the PJ. I dream of the day when I can spend Halloween in Disney and attend Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, but until then, I like to add a little (or a lot) of Disney to my celebrations at home!

Managed to pull together my Merida costume, which my parents really seemed to love even though neither of them have seen Brave yet. They're looking forward to it now. Haha.

DF as Dr. Doof from Phineas and Ferb. Unsurprisingly, when the kids were coming around for candy Perry the Platypus was the most recognized character. One particular little girl told us a very long (and incomprehensible, though cute) story about how much she loved the show (I think...) and when DF agreed and said he loved the show, her dad asked if he was some kind of promoter. Um... can't adults just be fans too?

And a cameo from one of the Brave bears and our Expedition Everest Yeti kitten dressed as R2D2 (aka the popcorn bucket we got at DHS this past summer).
They were part of my Halloween dinner table centerpiece.

Happy Disney Halloween!

We went as Candace and Jeremy and brought perry with us. I don't think anyone recognized us, but they all recognized perry.

 

[bigr3ddog]

Finally I have a spare moment to post the invitations contents images. I started these pages pretty much as soon as the Save the Dates were out of the way back in December 2011. I spent a lot of my weekends (when I was away at school) writing the text and thinking of ideas and then making the initial layouts. DF also started work on the images around... February or so. Once I got back from school we really started pushing to get it all done. Anyway, without any more exposition here are the contents.

* * *

Here is the front cover. I tried my best to take a picture that actually shows the pearl on white design, hopefully it's visible in the image.

The inside cover. Each one has a little "book label" with the guests' names on handwritten on them. I can thank the Martha Stewart collection for these little details.

This is an addition made after we printed our first mock-up/test of the invitation. I think it's was DF's mom who suggested we add something to the page. It's from the lyrics of "As Time Goes By".

Our little attempt at a "how we met" story. I wanted to make something kind of fun to read and interesting to look at. I wrote the text (with some ideas from DF) and laid out the first couple frames, and then he took over once he knew what I was going for.

The formal invitation part of our invitation. I wrote the text, DF drew the picture and laid it all out.

Our wedding day schedule, as far as we know at this point. Mostly this is so guests can get an idea of the plans and the hint that they'll need to be waking up early. The design for this page took probably the longest of all, and we went through a bunch of rejected ideas before finally settling on this one.

Other events. Text and design were done by me.

RSVP. The envelope and RSVP card are held in place by the black photo corners and underneath it reads "Merci". My idea, I designed the RSVP based on some wording I found on the internet, hand labeled the envelopes and these were assembled by me. DF did the image and layout in the actual book.

Transportation information. Text by me (with help from the DIS). I laid out the text and DF added the images.

Some Disney World information for those guests who have never been. Text by me (with help from the DIS and various other sources). I'm pretty sure I did the layout on this, but by the end DF had messed around with all the layouts so it's hard to keep it straight.

Park Tickets, lest anyone think we're giving those away for free. DF did the design for this one, and I think it's probably my favourite of all the pages.

We suspect there may be a few people who are uninterested in buying park tickets (...crazy people...) so this was for them.

Last of the content pages was our resources. Planning resources, our favourite websites, and our own wedding email and website.

And that is our invitation! I think you'll all believe me when I say it was a labour of love.

These invites are astounding. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

 

[LittleKittyMarie]

OMG YOU'RE AMAZING!!!! I seriously could probably talk to you for hours about wedding ideas. I love the Pins, do you mind if I ask what company you used? Sorry about the ebay hassle, alway weary about buying stuff from people too. Your bridal shower looked like a lot of fun. I love love love the topper, it really does look like champagne

So was there any ideas you really wanted to use in your wedding but it just wouldn't fit? Like we really really wanted to do comic book invitations and have our love story drawn out but we stepped away from that

Thank you so much! For the pins we ended up going with a company called Awards Canada. Mostly because of their location (we wanted to reduce possible shipping/customs charges) and because they allowed us to order a smaller quantity at a still reasonable per pin price. That being said I did a bunch of searches on google for "custom lapel pins" and contacted a bunch of places for quotes until we found the right place (er... price ).

There have been a bunch of ideas that have not really worked out. I went through tons of ideas for table numbers/names and how to present them. And I went through a bunch of ideas for guestbook (my initial idea completely falling through). I really wanted to incorporate some kind of Disneyland/Disney World thing into the wedding (like Fastpass escort cards, old ticket book invites) but it just wasn't going to work with the theme and DF convinced me that a lot of our guests probably wouldn't understand (and therefore appreciate) those ideas, which is true. Right now I want to make t-shirts for our honeymoon and door magnets for our cruise, but whether those work out still remains to be seen. I'm suddenly running our of time! Anyway, I will post about those table name and guestbook failures soon.

I love your pin favors! And the cake topper is adorable. How perfect does that "champagne" look?!

What a sweet bridal shower. How great that it was a surprise!

I'm sorry you had to deal with that stress on ebay. At least you have both buttons now though!

Thank you! I'm so happy with the pins and topper. And at the end of the day I am very happy that the buttons worked out without me needing to do more than I had to.

Those pins are really, really, really, cute! It's an absolutely adorable idea! And I love the Cake Topper with the champagne glass, it'll really look good, I think, with the theme of your wedding and everything. You'll have to do a post later dedicated to favours, I'd love to see them! Also, I know tons of other brides have done this before, but fore the Bare Necessities you could stylize it as Bear Necessities and incorporate Pooh Bear or Baloo in some way. I think it'd be really cute! Anyway, great post!

Thank you! Oh I love those Bear Necessities packs that feature Disney bears, I'm definitely going to get to work on that!

Those pins are so cool and your cake topper is adorable!

Ponchos at the dollar store? Who would have guessed. You def scored big on that one. I'm going to keep my eye out for them now.

Looking forward to reading more.

Thank you! The ponchos were a great find. As soon as I saw them I didn't even hesitate. I was with one of my MoHs so I turned to her and was like "can you go get me a cart, I have a lot of ponchos to buy."

At our Dollar Tree here they come in a two pack. One yellow & one clear all for $1

A two pack?! Now I'm jealous!

Just when I think it can't get any better......personalized pins. I love them. And the cake topper.

How lucky to have such wonderful friends! A surprise shower! Looks like you had fun.

Aww, thank you! I'm pretty amazed at how all these abstract sounding plans are coming together now towards the end.

I'm so glad you found my PJ so that I could find yours!! I'm slightly obsessed and in a hopefully non creepy way with all the fantastic details of your wedding!!

AND THAT ENGAGEMENT RING...WOWZA!


Your Save the dates (I still cant bring myself to call them STDs) are increiable! You and Your DF are some creative and talented people!!

I have no words to describe my love and complete adoration of your wedding invites, Mary Poppins theme, Bridal shower and Bridesmaid dresses.

I may or may not be trying to figure out how to get my DF to let me go and watch your wedding from a distance haha!!

Thank you so much for your incredible compliments! And ooh my first potential wedding stalker, now that is a serious compliment! I love it!

Too funny. My fiancée heard someone say it was the bunny from aristocats. And she even got the aristocats part right.

That is hilarious!

Ewwww. Tony's.

Now you tell me!

We went as Candace and Jeremy and brought perry with us. I don't think anyone recognized us, but they all recognized perry.

Did anyone say: "Oh, there you are Perry!" Yay for more Phineas and Ferb fans.

These invites are astounding. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Thank you so much!

 

[LittleKittyMarie]

This past weekend I turned to DF and said, "we're getting married next month." Unfortunately I am now getting a panicked feeling that I need to pick up the pace on a few outstanding projects!

For now though, I want to talk about...

CAKE!

I hope I can keep this picture heavy. I always end up blabbing way too much in my posts.

Here is my dream cake. I saw this and sighed with joy, or something. Unfortunately I didn't want to even ask how much Disney would charge. So I just kept the photo to look at wistfully.

Siiigh.

Anyway, with that out of the running I decided to start looking for cakes I could realistically afford.

So after I saw that gorgeous cake, finding another cake that I liked was proving a little impossible. I think I can safely say I looked at more photos of cakes than wedding dresses. Of all the things! So after ages and ages of searching I decided on this:

But I want it like this, because I like to be difficult.

Basically I want the cake itself to look like champagne. The actual cake is going to be a peachy-pink colour - I brought paint chips - and the "bubbles" will be white fondant/icing. And I want the bubbles to be more dense at the bottom. (That being said if I show to the reception and the bubbles are dense at the top instead, I don't think I'm going to sweat it too much.)

I also asked for this:

A "branch" of raspberries on the middle tier. To be honest, given the price we were quoted I'm not sure if the raspberries were included or not. I'm debating whether to follow up or wait and be surprised on the day? I think I'd be happy either way? Maybe I'd better follow up.

And our champagne kitties will go on top. Yay!

 

[charliegirl76]

Love the cakes. The darker one is actually my favorite. And if they make it dense at the top instead of the bottom, I don't think that would be too terrible. I feel like it would kind of look like the champagne is spilling out onto the cake...and I think that looks cool. I can totally see your topper on that cake with the lighter color.

For someone who is supposed to be a virgo and like things orderly, I certainly do enjoy purposefully messy and unorganized things.

Anyway, I love the first photo, but agree that it would probably be pretty expensive for Disney to recreate.

 

[ariel_]

I love your champagne bubbles idea! I think it will look great either way

All of the cakes look great - the first cake is AMAZING! I wouldn't want to cut into that thing!