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. 

We're traveling in a party of six.  Two adults, four kids.  We're planning to stay at Art of Animation in one of the theme-y suites.  It should just be as easy as deciding whether we want to stay in Cars or in Nemo.  No biggie, right?  Well, normally we'd book our trip as a "Magic Your Way" deal, including park tickets and the Disney Dining Plan.  Well, as part of the wedding deal, Prince Charming and I get Disney Annual Passes.  So no tickets needed for us, but what do we do about the kids?  If we book our room just as a room and then buy park tickets for the kids, can we then use the dining plan? We really love the dining plan and have learned to manipulate it to our best advantage.  It's nice to not have to think about paying for meals and knowing that it's all just taken care of in advance.

I know all of these answers are as simple as contacting our travel agent or someone at DFTW but they didn't even occur to me until recently.  I just want the process and the booking to be as easy and as painless as possible.

Clearly not me and Prince Charming!

Then there's another key element I need to look into:  who is going to marry us? DFTW gave us a list of the most popular officiants and I have to spend some time looking at their websites and/or contacting them to see who is the best fit.  We're looking for a contemporary, custom ceremony with a Christian bent.  Basically, I want to write the ceremony and have the officiant basically say what I want him to say and not deviate too much. I want words that are meaningful to us, not just some standard script that came out of a book.  

We aren't a cookie cutter couple, why should we have a cookie cutter ceremony?

Yikes!  Speaking of cookie-cutters and custom things made me think of my engagement ring, which was custom made for me and that reminded me, OMG, I have to find and buy a ring for Charming! He loves the newish style titanium and tungsten rings.  He wants something with a little bling to it.  He loves this ring from David Yurman that I found online but the designer name sends the price skyrocketing and it has stones that go all the way around.  Prince Charming doesn't want that.  So, off to the internet I go in search of a cool, semi-blingy ring with some black metal to it.  (I think finding/creating my ring was easier!)

There are lots of things left in the air.  We have to make decisions, at some point, about flowers and decorations and food and clothing and music.

I think I kind of forgot about how many details go into the planning of a wedding.  It goes beyond looking at pretty pictures on Pinterest.  (By the way, my Pinterest boards are awesome, go see!) Disney has so many rules about what we can and can't do in our reception space that before I get my heart too set on anything, I need to check the rules. 

Actually, I'd really like to see photos of other events at the Whitehall Patio and see how it's been decorated before. That's actually a fabulous idea- note to me: ask the planner for pictures.

I guess the point of this post is pointing out that I'm aware that we have a lot of decisions to start making.  So look forward to a lot more posts saying things like "Hey, check out what we decided for our linens!" and "We picked the most amazing flowers!" You know, all that stuff that is extremely exciting to me and doesn't really interest anyone else. Except maybe the menu.  Maybe I should tackle that next?