First things first: Ceremony

The Walt Disney World Resort is a big place.  It's pretty much it's own city, right there in the swamps of central Florida.  There are a whole slew of places where you can choose to have your wedding ceremony within the magical sprawl that is WDW. It's not an easy choice to make and there are lots of factors to consider in making a location choice,  including cost and scheduling and transportation.

Everyone I've mentioned our plans to wants to know if it's happening in THE SPOT.  Yes, you can get married in the Magic Kingdom, in front of the castle, but it costs close to $30K to do it.  That's just the ceremony site fee- that's not including anything else.  All that money, just to use that location. That's not the route we're taking, just for the record! 

Prince Charming and I are fairly certain that we want at least one aspect of our soiree to be INSIDE one of the theme parks but the ceremony in the MK isn't going to be it.  Having something else inside one of the parks is totally do-able but there are lots of things to consider and I'll get to that later.

Here's the kicker- if you want an in-park ceremony, in one of the other parks like Epcot or Animal Kingdom, it has to be before the park opens for the day or after it closes.  That means a 9 a.m. ceremony, which doesn't sound so bad, right?  Then you factor in prep time, like hair and makeup and dressing.  Add in time for professional photography.  Breakfast.  Transportation.  Now I'm looking at a 5 a.m. wake-up call on a day when I really don't want to have huge bags under my eyes.

But there's other drawbacks as well.  Like, if any of your events are in a theme park, you cannot bring in an outside photographer.  You have to use Disney Fine Art Photography services. You also have to use Disney florists and in some cases, you can't have amplified music.

So I think we've ruled out actually getting married in a park.

Prince Charming and I sat in front of our computer and looked at all the options and came up with what we think are our plans.  (Keep in mind we can't actually book or confirm anything until that 16-month mark!)

For our ceremony, we really want the Wedding Pavilion. It's beautiful, built specifically for this purpose and is really just amazing.  The window behind the altar actually frames Cinderella's Castle perfectly and is fitted with magnifying glass so it looks closer than it actually is. Another benefit of the WP is that it's next to the Grand Floridian on the monorail track.  So our guests could hop a bus at their own resort over to the Magic Kingdom and then get on a monorail to the Grand Floridian.  It would save us the expense of having to pay for a bus for everyone but it also means that some of our guests will have to allot enough time to get there.

I think it's really cool that the WP is pre-wired with hidden cameras. There are three built-in video cameras as well an editing or "switch" booth that allows the camera operators to capture everything that is going on during the ceremony. All without having some random guy in a cheap tux standing in the middle of everything with a giant tripod that everyone has to step around or pretend isn't there!  No garish theatrical light fixtures ruining the beauty of the chapel!

The Wedding Pavilion can hold up to 300 people!  But people with even the tiniest of weddings can use the site and in all the pictures I've seen (and I've seen A LOT) even a handful of guests look great. Maybe it's just that the photogs know how to frame the photos.  I just love it.