Feelings...nothing more than feelings

Today is 24 days to until the wedding.  There are still a lot of loose ends for me to tie up but as we get closer and closer I find that I'm not worried about the wedding at all.  We have an amazing wedding planner who has held our hands throughout this whole crazy process.  We're getting married in the beautiful place that we dreamed about and our kids and family will be with us.

 And the marriage itself?  Not a doubt in my mind.  These feet are toasty.  We've been living together for five years, including seven months of double unemployment and rather than wanting to kill each other, we came out the other side closer than ever.

For the wedding and the week of vacation itself, our family will be with us.  I think that's the source of most of my stress and tension.  We've never gone on vacation with all four of the kids before.  We've taken them to Disney two at a time and both of those trips had their issues.  Now we're taking them where they outnumber us and there's more pressure for the trip to be magical and happy.  The logistics of trying to work out spending our wedding night alone has been difficult but I think we have it all worked out except how we're getting the kids back to us from the family members we have watching them that night.

I am a little worried that despite shelling out for a DJ that it will be me and my sister dancing and no one else.  I want people to dance.  Can I force them?  Is that legit?  ;)  I worry that people won't like the food.  I'm fairly sure my dad will complain.  At this point though, all of that is out of my hands.

And there's the blog.  I had intended to use it to monitor my weight loss but that didn't really happen.  So what if I didn't lose 50 pounds leading up to this event?  You know what? This is who I am and while I'm not giving up, I am okay.  Happy even.  No matter how much I weigh, I get to marry my Prince Charming and live happily ever after.

I still have outstanding crafts to complete- including our cake topper.  I don't know why I am so nervous about it but I keep putting it off.  Now time is running out.  I have to finish our welcome bags and the kids goodie bags.  I have to pack all of our wedding stuff into a box to be dropped off at Franck's 3 days before the wedding.  I have to figure out how I'm getting the welcome bags to the various resorts.

What I've been doing...what's left to do?

Escort cards/favors:  done

Names smeared to protect the innocent!  

Keeping the Kids Busy

I'm starting to tie up all of the little loose ends!

Today my munchkins had the day off from school (why?!?!?!?) so I was limited in what I could do with my day.  So I sat down at the computer to put together a little activity book for all of the kids who will be at the wedding.  While I am dreaming of dancing like a crazy person with all of our munchkins, doing every silly participation dance out there, I know that they will likely want some time at their table too.  So here's what I did.

I created this little beauty in PowerPoint, figuring that of the programs I have at home, it would be the easiest in which to manipulate images. There are a slew of Disney coloring pages out there on the web.  I was looking specifically for wedding images but I also included some that are just couples.  I also threw in some wedding themed games and puzzles.

The cover is in a font that Disney used to use in the 80s.  It's free and available to download.  It's called Florida Project.  On the back, I put the date and location of the wedding. The finished book will be a folded, stapled 4.5 x 8.5 booklet.  You know, half of a standard sheet of paper.  I was thinking I'd have the cover printed on red cardstock, but then the kids couldn't color the castle.


Click for a sneak preview (black and white line drawings!  Such exciting graphics!)

The Other Dress

On Saturday, I finally did something I'd been putting off for awhile.  I took Munchkin #2 shopping for a dress for the wedding and a day of hanging out together.  I'd wanted to hold off as long as possible so that we didn't have an issue where we bought a dress and by the time of the wedding, it didn't fit her.  I knew that finding a dress that fit, was flattering, age appropriate and also not too expensive was going to be an issue.

We woke up bright and early and drove to a large David's Bridal store just outside Philly.  I had a list of dresses that I wanted her to try on and asked the saleswoman for assistance with any dresses she thought would work. Ignore the Teva sandals, she'll be wearing Chucks for the actual wedding. She was a little confused when our sales associate brought over dresses in a rainbow of colors because I'd already told her that her dress was going to be red and no, she couldn't have the iridescent purple, ruffled, sparkly, short cocktail dress that was displayed at the front of the store.

Table Name Signs!

I spent most of yesterday in my basement craft room working on these four little signs for the dining tables at the wedding.  I always feel kinda bad when I go to a wedding and the tables are numbered and I'm at like Table 17.  The head table is usually table 1 and the parents of the couple are at 2 and 3... and then there's me, the cousin or the friend or whatever and I'm like the way afterthought.  I didn't want anyone to feel that way so instead of numbering our tables (we only have four so far!) so I'm naming them after Disney characters.

Prince Charming, the munchkins and I will be sitting at Mickey.  Duh.

There's also Minnie, Donald and Goofy.  I have Pluto and Daisy on reserve if we need them!

I made these using my Cricut and the Mickey & Friends and the Accent Essentials cartridges. The frames were easy once I worked out the sizes.  All of my time investment came from piecing together the tiny components of the characters after getting them to cut out properly.  I think I need to replace the blade on my machine.

Anyway, here they are:

For the record, Goofy, was the hardest.  His pieces were the most complicated to cut and the smallest to handle.  My fingertips were covered with glue when I was done!

Happy Anniversary to the Disney's!

Eighty seven years ago today, Walt and Lillian Disney said I do. They were married at Lewiston's Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Idaho, where Lillian grew up. Lillian made her wedding dress herself and is reported to have giggled through the ceremony.

The Ever-Growing To-Do list...

Note:  I am not Patrick the Starfish.

I've been going through my notes for the wedding as we get closer and closer to the big day and my to-do list seems to be growing instead of shrinking!

Let's see, I've contacted and made deposits to the cosmetologist, the officiant, and the photographer.

Just in case you're interested, we're using
Beaute Speciale
Sensational Ceremonies
Jason Angelini Photography

I've contacted Kids' Nite Out for childcare assistance the day of the wedding. Kids' Nite Out is an AMAZING company that provides childcare services either in your resort room or as a mother's/father's helper.  Don't get me wrong, it's not a cheap service, but if you're on vacation and your little ones are going to conk out at 7 pm after a long day at the parks and you want to experience some of the possibilities of Disney night life, it's TOTALLY worth the price.  I recommend them to everyone planning a Disney trip with little kids.

Music! For the Ceremony! We picked some!

Time is running out and there are lots of little decisions being made every day it seems.  Today it was music.

Yesterday I had a phone conference with our wedding planner (the AMAZING Maxine!) to discuss our BEO- the Banquet Event Order- basically the entire script of the day from transportation pick-ups, to the ceremony order and music, to the meal, to everyone leaving and someone packing all the remnants up.  It's an intricate document that also spells out the prices we're going to pay for the elements of the wedding.

The BEO is a daunting, scary thing.

There was a big hole on our BEO: I still owed Maxine our chosen ceremony music.  Our ceremony is going to be very simple and very personal  to us. We've chosen to use all Disney music for our ceremony and it will all be played by the organist who comes with the Wedding Pavilion.

So while I won't reveal what song is being used for what, here's what we chose:

Candle on the Water from Pete's Dragon

Our Disney Wedding Planning Session, part 2: floral and cake

After returning to Franck's from our trip over to the Grand Floridian kitchen, we returned to Merriweather and met with Elizabeth from Disney Floral & Gifts, who handle all of the floral arrangements and decor elements of the wedding.  I sent her the link to my wedding board on Pinterest and partially filled out the floral planning form indicating what we were want ahead of our meeting.  I wasn't sure what to expect.  I've seen other Disney brides' floral bills and I think it's insane what Disney charges for flowers but, if you use outside floral, you get stuck with fees. So we plunged in...

For myself, I wasn't really sure if I wanted all of the floral elements to be matchy matchy or if we were going to go with personal floral that was different from the decor floral.  We decided not to do matchy-matchy. 

For myself, I requested a hand-tied, red rose bouquet in the bridesmaid size.  The stems will be wrapped with a black ribbon with white polka dots.  The ribbon will cover the entire stem.  No green sticking out the bottom. 

Our princess will carry a red rose wand.  I think that's three roses and a big bow of black ribbon with white polka dots.  She will totally love it. 

More pictures from the Tasting at the Grand Floridian



The sign... and a really clean, well-organized kitchen

 


Our Disney Wedding Planning Session, part 1: menu tasting

I can't believe that it's over and I had to come back to real life today.  We had a whirlwind weekend at Disney and I have the blisters on my feet to prove it!

We flew out of Philadelphia to Orlando on Thursday evening.  After the flight, the trek through Orlando's airport, waiting for the Magical Express bus and the trip to the property, we didn't get to the check in desk at Coronado Springs until midnight.  Still, we set up a wake-up call for 6 am, we set the alarm on my Kindle for 6:30 and the room's alarm clock for 6:45.  I figured if we were up by seven for our nine o'clock appointment, we'd be in good shape.  And we were.

We took a taxi to the Wedding Pavilion so that the trip over would take 15 minutes instead of an hour plus.  When we got to the Pavilion, there were security guards parked in the driveway, blocking the way.  Our driver tried to explain with his thick Haititan (I think!) accent that we had an appointment.  The security guard kept saying "Planner?  Planner?"  After a couple minutes of this I yelled from the backseat, "Yes, we have an appointment with a planner!"  And they finally let us through.

The construction at the Grand Floridian is still ugly.



Those aren't the types of cranes I'm used to seeing at Disney.

 We were actually quite early for our appointment so we got to hang around Franck's and look around before being ushered into the Merriwether room to discuss stuff with our Wedding Planner, Maxine.  It seemed like five minutes went by before her Blackberry beeped that it was time to head over to the Grand Floridian for our menu tasting!!! We were both totally giddy with excitement.

Food photos are after the jump!

Inviting the people

Here's what the finals look like...

Pile of pieces in a box on my crafting table.

Picking an Officiant!

This is one of those wedding planning tasks that I've put off for awhile. I know that I want to customize a ceremony for us and that I want it to have a vague Christian-y flavor.  That's pretty much where I was stuck.  In our packet of planning materials DFTW provided us a list of officiants they've worked with and that was my starting point.

The list has 12 names on it.  I immediately crossed out the ones who don't have websites.  Do they think I'm actually going to call people and talk to them?  Euuh!  I will seriously avoid making an actual phone call and having to talk to someone for as long as I possibly can.

Booked at the Art of Animation Resort!

Happy New Year!

Wedding stuff was totally on hold until the holidays were over and the first munchkin's birthday.  Now that's done and I am in hardcore bridal insanity mode.

The first step was to book our wedding trip.  Kind of an essential element, right? Can't get married in Florida if we're in Pennsylvania.

I knew that our particular circumstances were going to make this one of the more difficult issues of wedding planning because of our family size and what we wanted. There are six of us so we either needed two adjoining rooms or a suite.  We want to use the Disney Dining plan.  Then there's the issue of park tickets which just throws everything off.

See, one of the perks of being a Disney bride is that you get a pair of Disney Parks annual passes.  So Prince Charming and I do not need park tickets; however, in order to get the Disney Dining Plan, you have to buy park tickets.  Then factor in the need to get the best price possible and it's all a mess.

Now it's ON, baby!!!!`

Not actually our planner!

I just got a call from DFTW!!!!  We've been assigned our planner!!!!  It's the amazing Maxine. 

First thing I did was go to the Dis Boards and see what the other brides had to say and everyone loves her!  And then I googled her and found her on Twitter.  Followed!  

Oh, I am so excited.  I am literally bouncing up and down in my seat.  I went squealing down the hall to my co-worker's office just to share the excitement!

So now we get to see if we can swing a planning session sometime in the late spring, early summer.

You gotta have a PLAN!

Not my actual planner. 
Our wedding is on a Thursday!

Our check has been in Disney's hands for a little over a week and I keep watching our checking account to see when it clears. Once it clears I can await the assignment of our planner and a bunch more stuff to look through.  In getting ready to make the deposit and wondering whether or not we were going to have to go into a lottery for our venues or date I kind of forgot about, or put off, some of the smaller details about the wedding.

Like planning the actual trip for the wedding.

It just kind of hit me this weekend that the hotel and airfare and spending money for the wedding trip aren't included in the minimums we need to spend with Disney for the wedding. Ouch!  Aside from that, I think that our wedding trip involves some logistical issues that perhaps other Disney Brides don't really face. 

Big Fat Check!!!

We received our THIRTEEN page contract for the wedding from DFTW and, whew, we signed it and the check is going out via Priority Mail today.

It's really going to happen!  Now the real planning starts.

OMG!!!

It's a year away.  Only a year away.

365 days.


525,600 minutes. 

We can finally sign our contract with DFTW and send them a big check and start making decisions and making it REAL.

I'm hyperventilating.

No expectations or anything

Prince Charming and I have been living together for a little over four years now.  We have a toaster.  We actually have two toasters.  So we weren't planning on doing a registry.

I mean, we're asking people to travel to Florida to come to our wedding so we certainly don't expect gifts on top of that.  So I've been spreading the news that "your presence is your present," but still I'm told that some people might want to get us something.

In light of that, we set up a Disney Honeymoon Registry.  So if someone were all inclined to want to give us something in celebration of our marriage, they could pick something off the list for our wedding trip.

Overdue Trip Recap, pt 1: The Site Visit!

Franck's Bridal Salon, home of Disney Fairy Tale Weddings

It's over a month since our trip to Disney World and our site visit with DFTW.

How'd it go?  Hmm.  That's tough to answer.  We were in Florida for almost a week and our appointment at Franck's was the last morning of our trip.  While we were in Disney we did not have email access and my phone was destroyed on the first day in the parks by a sudden rainstorm.  At one point I checked my voicemail from Prince Charming's phone and there was a slightly frantic message from a guy at DFTW saying that someone else wanted our appointment time and would we be okay giving it up and he needed us to call back immediately.