Barbara Smith
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2018
My daughter and her fiancé got engaged in March 2018. We have been planning her wedding long before she ever even met Sean. She had always said she wanted a Disney wedding and I even joked with her that that would be the only way I would pay for it. Haha. Little did I know she would actually take me up on it. Now I know I’m probably the first mom to be writing a diary about my daughter’s wedding but I just wanted to share our process and my daughter is so busy she would never get it done. We did so much research before and during this process that I feel the more information that’s out there the better. To give you a little bit of background on our family is we are Disney addicts. We usually visit the parks at least once a year. Bianca’s fiancé is not an addict but is a good sport about everything and I actually think we are starting to sway him..( he would never admit it).
So our process started shortly after she got engaged. We started calling Disney Fairytale weddings in April but we couldn’t do anything until we were 16 months out. So on her birthday, May 4 we were able get the ball rolling. We were initially put in touch with a sales person named Heather. We had a few phone conversations with her just giving us the basics and she sent us several informational brochures. We decided after speaking with her that it would be best to plan a visit in July to do a site visit. Sean had never been to Disney and Bianca wanted him to get an idea of what he was getting into. We tried to find any and all information that we could about Disney weddings. We read different blogs, discussion boards and bought Carrie’s book “Fairytale Weddings Guide.”
Our site visit was scheduled for July 14th at 9 AM. Heather called to confirm our appointment a few days before and told us we would be meeting Joe at Franck’s. We flew in the day before and were beyond excited. We felt we were so prepared, or so we thought. We had made a 2 page list of questions. We had breakfast at Chef Mickey, one of our favorites and took the monorail over to The Grand Floridian. We had never actually been in The Wedding Pavilion. My daughter really wanted to get married in front of the castle but there was absolutely no way we could afford that. She had to settle for the beautiful picture window inside the pavilion. We went and peeked inside while we were waiting for Joe to get there. It’s absolutely beautiful. If you ever get a chance to see it you should. We met Joe and went into Franck’s for our meeting. We had initially wanted September 1, 2019 as the wedding date. It would be Labor Day weekend and we felt like it would be easier for the guests to attend that weekend. We live in the Midwest and everyone would be traveling to attend. We thought our guest could fly in on Saturday, attend the wedding on Sunday, and fly home on Monday if they didn’t want to take extra days off work. She knew there were certain things she wanted. She wanted The Wedding Pavilion, Italy Isola with Illuminations and Mickey and Minnie at the reception. She wanted to do her first dance and father/daughter dance at the reception. We hit a few road blocks. First was the date. In order to have the reception in Epcot we would have to choose a different date. Epcot has the Food and Wine Festival starting in August and every Friday and Saturday are blacked out but since that is Labor Day weekend Sunday was blacked out as well. They had to decide whether they wanted to change dates or change locations. That was tough because she wanted to make it convenient for the guest but she also had a vision of what she wanted. She decided to change dates to the following weekend on Sunday the 8th. Second road block was you can’t have amplified music or Mickey and Minnie in the park while there are any park guest still in the park. Joe explained that it could be as late as 11 PM before the park cleared. He suggested maybe we could do a prereception at the Grand Floridian in one of the ballrooms. We could have a cocktail hour with appetizers and drinks, we could have a DJ (or play our own music on an IPod) so she could have her dances and Mickey and Minnie could make their appearance there. This sounded perfect. He recommended the Whitehall and patio. We didn’t know anything about the Whitehall because it had never been on our radar. We were planning a 5 PM wedding with prereception immediately following and then the reception with dinner in Epcot and Illuminations. A few weeks before our site visit Disney announced that Illuminations would be ended the end of the summer 2019. Joe assured us that even if they weren’t doing Illuminations there would be some sort of fireworks evening show. Joe went over timelines, enhancements, the lottery for dates and venues, and explained minimum expenditures to us. If you can do a site visit meeting I highly recommend it because you do it so early in the process that if you have any hang up you can work through them then. After we finished our meeting we went with Joe to actually see the sites. We got to actually go inside the pavilion and the bride and groom rooms. Then we went over to the Whitehall and patio. We decided it would be perfect for our needs. Next was visiting the Italy Isola. It was really interesting to see the behind the scenes of Epcot and going in the backdoor by the American pavilion. We were super excited after we left Joe and now we just had to wait for the 12 month mark before the wedding to see if we got our dates and locations.
I would love to post pictures but I haven’t figured out how to do so. I’m still working on that.
So our process started shortly after she got engaged. We started calling Disney Fairytale weddings in April but we couldn’t do anything until we were 16 months out. So on her birthday, May 4 we were able get the ball rolling. We were initially put in touch with a sales person named Heather. We had a few phone conversations with her just giving us the basics and she sent us several informational brochures. We decided after speaking with her that it would be best to plan a visit in July to do a site visit. Sean had never been to Disney and Bianca wanted him to get an idea of what he was getting into. We tried to find any and all information that we could about Disney weddings. We read different blogs, discussion boards and bought Carrie’s book “Fairytale Weddings Guide.”
Our site visit was scheduled for July 14th at 9 AM. Heather called to confirm our appointment a few days before and told us we would be meeting Joe at Franck’s. We flew in the day before and were beyond excited. We felt we were so prepared, or so we thought. We had made a 2 page list of questions. We had breakfast at Chef Mickey, one of our favorites and took the monorail over to The Grand Floridian. We had never actually been in The Wedding Pavilion. My daughter really wanted to get married in front of the castle but there was absolutely no way we could afford that. She had to settle for the beautiful picture window inside the pavilion. We went and peeked inside while we were waiting for Joe to get there. It’s absolutely beautiful. If you ever get a chance to see it you should. We met Joe and went into Franck’s for our meeting. We had initially wanted September 1, 2019 as the wedding date. It would be Labor Day weekend and we felt like it would be easier for the guests to attend that weekend. We live in the Midwest and everyone would be traveling to attend. We thought our guest could fly in on Saturday, attend the wedding on Sunday, and fly home on Monday if they didn’t want to take extra days off work. She knew there were certain things she wanted. She wanted The Wedding Pavilion, Italy Isola with Illuminations and Mickey and Minnie at the reception. She wanted to do her first dance and father/daughter dance at the reception. We hit a few road blocks. First was the date. In order to have the reception in Epcot we would have to choose a different date. Epcot has the Food and Wine Festival starting in August and every Friday and Saturday are blacked out but since that is Labor Day weekend Sunday was blacked out as well. They had to decide whether they wanted to change dates or change locations. That was tough because she wanted to make it convenient for the guest but she also had a vision of what she wanted. She decided to change dates to the following weekend on Sunday the 8th. Second road block was you can’t have amplified music or Mickey and Minnie in the park while there are any park guest still in the park. Joe explained that it could be as late as 11 PM before the park cleared. He suggested maybe we could do a prereception at the Grand Floridian in one of the ballrooms. We could have a cocktail hour with appetizers and drinks, we could have a DJ (or play our own music on an IPod) so she could have her dances and Mickey and Minnie could make their appearance there. This sounded perfect. He recommended the Whitehall and patio. We didn’t know anything about the Whitehall because it had never been on our radar. We were planning a 5 PM wedding with prereception immediately following and then the reception with dinner in Epcot and Illuminations. A few weeks before our site visit Disney announced that Illuminations would be ended the end of the summer 2019. Joe assured us that even if they weren’t doing Illuminations there would be some sort of fireworks evening show. Joe went over timelines, enhancements, the lottery for dates and venues, and explained minimum expenditures to us. If you can do a site visit meeting I highly recommend it because you do it so early in the process that if you have any hang up you can work through them then. After we finished our meeting we went with Joe to actually see the sites. We got to actually go inside the pavilion and the bride and groom rooms. Then we went over to the Whitehall and patio. We decided it would be perfect for our needs. Next was visiting the Italy Isola. It was really interesting to see the behind the scenes of Epcot and going in the backdoor by the American pavilion. We were super excited after we left Joe and now we just had to wait for the 12 month mark before the wedding to see if we got our dates and locations.
I would love to post pictures but I haven’t figured out how to do so. I’m still working on that.
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