Our Disney Fairy Tale Wedding: Morocco/The Attic/Lower UK About This Page:

[Elastigirl]

I thought it might be fun to post the trip report of our Epcot wedding in honor of PassPorter’s forthcoming Disney Weddings & Honeymoons e-book.

The short version: We were married last February 4 in Morocco at Epcot. After the ceremony we took a Friendship Boat to the BoardWalk Inn and had a brunch reception at the Attic, which is the former DVC Member Lounge, upstairs from Jellyrolls. In the evening we all got back together again for an IllumiNations dessert party on the lower patio in the UK. It was amazing! (Long version to follow....)

I've tried to tone down the bride-y jargon in this trip report, but please forgive me if my report lingers a little too long on such scintillating topics as tux fittings and the cost of chartering buses....

To see a 5-minute version of our wedding video, click here Wedding Demo

To see a slideshow of some additional wedding photos, click here: Carrie & Patrick


And here are some preview pictures...

[Elastigirl]

OK - really quickly, here's the story of how we met, because Disneyland brought us together!

I was in line at Big Thunder Mountain and made a wish on a nickel at the pond. I wished to meet a guy who liked Disneyland and was straight. That night I got talked into going to the birthday party of a childhood friend I hadn't seen in a while, and I met Patrick.

On our first date, as the lights were about to go down on our second movie of the night, he casually mentioned that he had a Disneyland Annual Pass. I was like, "Wait - wha...?!!" and then had to wait two hours to talk about it!

...Next time I go on Big Thunder Mountain, I'm wishing for a Ferrari!


The Fateful Waterfall... Nickels Only!

[Elastigirl]

OK, so, we live in Disneyland - why did we get married at Disney World?

We investigated possibilities in Los Angeles and in my tiny hometown in Northern California. At first we were really leaning toward using the Jim Henson Studios in Hollywood, where DF teaches puppeteering to improv actors. Henson is in Charlie Chaplin's old studios, a neat Tudor-style collection of buildings.



But I started to become overwhelmed by all the stuff we'd need to bring in: tables, chairs, dishes, heat lamps, waitstaff, catering - everything! Plus, for even a modest gathering of 50 people with paper plates and box lunches plus cupcakes, we were looking at more than $15,000. The site fee alone would have paid for an entire Escape wedding at Walt Disney World! (There are basically two kinds of WDW weddings: the inexpensive Escape package wedding and the not-necessarily-expensive customizable Wishes wedding.)

I started stressing out. DF asked me what I really wanted. I said I wanted to get married in the Court d' Anges at Disneyland, but when I'd called a year before to ask, I was told Disneyland weddings cost $60,000. He told me to call again. This time when the snarky receptionist at Disneyland's weddings department said, "You do know that a Disneyland wedding costs $60,000, right?" I said, "Yes - please connect me with a wedding planner."

Court d'Anges


I explained to the planner that I didn't want a 150-person spectacle in the shadow of Sleeping Beauty Castle, I just wanted a simple ceremony in the Court D' Anges before the park opened and a reception at the Blue Bayou. She said, "Well, they won't let us use the Blue Bayou, but we are developing a range of lower-priced in-park weddings and you could have your reception on a balcony at the Grand Californian."

I was ecstatic. She said I had to wait a few weeks because they were only starting to figure this all out. Well, when I finally heard back from her, it turned out these "lower-priced" weddings are going to have a $25,000 minimum for just the ceremony portion, and they would top out at 25 guests! At least in Florida you can have 50 guests at a Magic Kingdom wedding for that price! I was devastated - it was so far out of our price range. I called DF from work sobbing about how now some other bride was going to get to be married in Court d' Anges when I was the one who'd thought it up, etc., etc.

So we went back to the drawing board, and I tentatively began pitching the idea of a WDW wedding. He liked the idea that we could get so much service and so many cool options for a third of the price of a Los Angeles wedding. He didn't like the fact that it was so far away - many of my relatives live in the Midwest and on the East Coast, but almost all of his are in Northern California.

But the more we looked at the alternatives - and their attendant hassles - the more we both began to think that a WDW wedding might actually work. We knew we didn't want the usual hotel wedding, but we didn't want to elope. (Well, he didn't want to elope )

We started looking at an Escape wedding. I wanted to be married at Sunrise Terrace at Wilderness Lodge (it's the fourth-floor balcony overlooking the pool and Bay Lake), but there's a 10-person limit (including bride and groom), and DF's immediate family is seven people, so that was out. Then we ran into all the hassles of fitting a meal into the rigid and inconvenient Escape Wedding timeslots. 5:30 and 9pm are the only times you can make large-group reservations at nearly all Disney restaurants, and neither works great with the ceremony times. Plus, we wanted to have a dessert party. On top of all that, DF really felt strongly that if we were going all the way out to Florida to be married, we should at least be getting married in one of the parks.

We really liked the idea of Epcot - reasonable minimum expenditure requirements (on weekdays... in winter...) and a wide variety of ceremony locations. Our favorites were Japan and Morocco, but neither of us had been to WDW in 14 years, so we needed to go back out there to decide.

We flew to WDW for three days to have what they call a Planning Session. We visited the sites at Epcot, tasted food at the BoardWalk Inn, and spent 4 1/2 hours with our wedding planner at Franck's (adjacent to the Wedding Pavilion) hashing out all the details. Oh, and we got to try four flavors of cake and eight fillings! (burp!)

Cake-tasting Tray!


When we were done, we'd chosen Morocco, the Attic, and UK Lochside (that's the high-falutin' name for the lower patio on the lake at the UK pavilion).

We didn't have park admission, so we spent the rest of our trip at Downtown Disney and in the Pop Century food court and marveling at how blue the Florida sky is and how green the trees are. I also met with my hair and makeup artist and we did an engagement photo session with one of our wedding photographers, Nathan Root, at Wilderness Lodge and the Poly:










OK, so now I'll skip straight to the wedding trip!

[Elastigirl]

Unfortunately, Day One is very boring because we spent almost all of it traveling.

I got up early but blew half an hour posting my farewells to my buddies on the message boards, like a NERD! Still, I had enough time to get everything together and out the door relatively smoothly.

Here is a picture of Dr. J attempting to come along for Mommy & Uncle Daddy’s wedding... He's winking at you...



And here is a picture of all the luggage we took for a wedding and 2-week honeymoon: 1 suitcase, 1 carry-on and 1 backpack apiece. Not too shabby, but more than I’ve ever taken on a trip anywhere except my three-week high school choir trip to Europe (when I brought along a pair of cheap undies for every single day so I wouldn’t have to do laundry...)



Not shown is a ginormous box we shipped to our first hotel, containing:

- 130 announcement/reception invites to be mailed the day after our wedding
- our custom-made bride & groom ears
- ceremony programs
- CD of ceremony music
- personalized mouse ear favors for our guests
- alligator cake knife
- cake topper, which DF made
- my two fascinators
- fake bouquet for Magic Kindom photo shoot
- Blurb photo guest book and two Slickwriter pens

I became a huge fan of shipping stuff on this trip. It was so convenient, and it enabled us to take along the comforts of home. I shipped my dress and shrug to Carolyn Allen's Bridal & Tuxedo, where they were stored, steamed, and delivered to me on the wedding day and then picked up and packed up to be shipped back home.

The dress and shrug get ready for their big trip!



Thanks to a message board tip, I also had two cases of bottled water from Costco.com – about $7.50 apiece (including shipping!) – delivered to the Beach Club Villas, and it saved us a ton on water in the parks.

Going through security and checking our bags at LAX went smoothly. We got our first wedding congratulations from the ticket agent, which was nice. We had a nonstop flight and got in to MCO a few minutes early. Our bags arrived safe and sound (my big worry).

When we saw the line at Alamo to pick up our rental car, I was SO glad I had prepaid online (which got us a discount on top of the great rate we found through a code on Mousesavers.com). All we had to do was put a credit card in the kiosk, press the “No” button six bazillion times to refuse various additional services, then take the printout to the garage. I had never seen car pick-up the way Alamo does it: All the cars are just parked in the garage, and people go to the section for the class of car they rented and pick one out.

It was a free-for-all – people were dashing all over trying to get the best cars. I watched as all the 4-doors were snatched out from under us, and we ended up with a 2-door Pontiac G6 with a rock in its tire (or something – it made a fwapping noise for our entire trip). We called it “the O Mobile” cuz it’s the car Oprah gave away on her show...



We drove straight to my hotel, the glamorous Sheraton Safari Inn. I am a total Disney hotel snob, but I had enough Starwood Preferred Guest points for two free nights here – nothing to sniff at when you’re taking a 16-day trip! So I stayed there our first two nights (DF stayed in his fambly’s cheapo condo rental in the boonies).

Feel the glamour!




This is what our room looked like, except without the sassy zebra-print bedspreads, the plant, or the charm….



The Command Center




From there, we headed over to Downtown Disney for our first ADR, at Raglan Road. On the way to dinner, we picked up our cards formerly known as the Disney Dining Experience (now Tables In Wonderland) at Downtown Disney Guest Relations. These don’t seem like that great a deal anymore now that using them adds an automatic 18% gratuity to the bill (the DDE discount is 20%), but I guess we were gonna have to tip anyway.... The cast member tried to tell us that we couldn’t purchase one without active Annual Passes (we had the Disney's Fairy Tale Wedding free AP vouchers), but I drew on my message board research to let her know it was OK - hee hee!

While we were eating dinner, we started to take pictures of our food for the boards and then realized that we’d forgotten our Gorillapod, an adjustable tripod I learned about on the message boards and bought especially for our trip. Argh!



We love the Gorillapod because we can take shots of the two of us together by affixing it just about anywhere. I was so disappointed, but then I got the idea to call our wedding photographers and see if they knew where we could get one. By this time it was about 9:30pm, but we knew they’re night owls, so we thought it was OK to call. They were so cool – they said they’d do some research and get back to us; when they called back, it turned out they’d gone to some random late-night camera store near their house and bought us the closest thing they could find.

So at 11pm we drove to their house in Celebration to pick it up, and we got to meet Jensey in person for the first time – she’s a huge WDW fan, and just as sweet and friendly as Nathan! It was really fun (but their cute little doggie was at Grandma’s house, so we didn’t get to meet him).

We got a leetle bit lost coming back from Celebration, which was to be a theme of our adventures in the O Mobile for at least a week. Is California the only state that gives you a highway on-ramp in the opposite direction to match every off-ramp...? It was verrrry late when we finally returned to the Sheraton....

...And that is the story of the first day of our trip!

[chezp]

Thanks so much for posting your photos of your special day - they really are stunning and a wonderful reminder of your wedding.

[Colexis Mom]

Wow Carrie!! Great start! Can't wit to hear about all the rest!

[MissMousey]

Thanks for sharing the pics and details of your wedding. Looks like it was magical and the pics are stunning. Congratulations

[MaryEL8775]

More please... I guess I had better tell DH to start the DD's future wedding account for a WDW wedding.

[KMB733]

Great start! I can't wait to read about your special day. Congratulations

[chris889]

I've seen your wedding trip report on the Dis but never got a chance to read the whole thing because it was soooo long. I'm so glad you're posting here. Gorgeous pictures.

Oh, and thanks for the heads up about Alamo. After a bad Hertz experience at MCO, I'm looking for an alternative.

[Disneymommyof2]

WOW...my dream a wedding in WDW, we did a Mickey/Minnie theme wedding at home, then WDW for our honeymoon.

Love the pictures, cant wait to hear more and see more

[Principessa_di_Fata]

Oh my gosh keep it coming! This is so great! What a wonderful trip report to read! And the pictures are just lovely!

[Elastigirl]

Originally Posted by chezp

Thanks so much for posting your photos of your special day - they really are stunning and a wonderful reminder of your wedding.

Hi Cheryl! Glad to see you here!

Originally Posted by Colexis Mom

Wow Carrie!! Great start! Can't wit to hear about all the rest!

Thank you – and thanks for the great pictures for the e-Book!

Originally Posted by MissMousey

Thanks for sharing the pics and details of your wedding. Looks like it was magical and the pics are stunning. Congratulations

That is so sweet of you to say - thanks!

Originally Posted by MaryEL8775

More please... I guess I had better tell DH to start the DD's future wedding account for a WDW wedding.

Is that her in your signature? I love that picture!

Originally Posted by KMB733

Great start! I can't wait to read about your special day. Congratulations

Originally Posted by chris889

I've seen your wedding trip report on the Dis but never got a chance to read the whole thing because it was soooo long. I'm so glad you're posting here. Gorgeous pictures.

I’m afraid I have some bad news.... this report is going to be soooo long too!
But I’ll try to at least blaze through the wedding day before we leave for our anniversary trip tomorrow.

Originally Posted by Disneymommyof2

WOW...my dream a wedding in WDW, we did a Mickey/Minnie theme wedding at home, then WDW for our honeymoon.

Oh, then you know all about how fun it is to be honeymooners at WDW! I wish I could do it annually...

Originally Posted by Principessa_di_Fata

Oh my gosh keep it coming! This is so great! What a wonderful trip report to read! And the pictures are just lovely!

Thank you so much!

[Elastigirl]

Good news: Day Two was action-packed! Unfortunately, it was not picture-packed... I think I have one shot. I’ll try to fill in with nominally related images where I can.

We spent the day doing all those things I read about in wedding trip reports and vowed never to do – namely, driving off property on a million boring errands. OK, one boring errand, but it took FOREVER! We got our marriage license by mail so we wouldn’t have to go find a courthouse, and I shipped a drugstore’s worth of sunscreen, blister block, etc. so we wouldn’t need one of those. But the forgotten Gorillapod put a crimp in our plans...

I slept great on the ugly Sheraton bed and woke up with about two hours before everyone was to descend on the room for the tuxedo fitting. I opened the ginormous box we shipped and sorted the reception items from the ceremony items while nibbling on (OK, scarfing down) the Sheraton’s Kids’ Safari Breakfast – a steal at only $4.99!

This is what breakfast looks like!



At 10:30 the fellow from Carolyn Allen’s arrived with tuxes for DF and BM (Best Man – does anybody else giggle when they see that abbreviation?). The tuxes had turned out to be a big logistical hassle during the wedding-planning process because our wedding was early on a Monday and the tux warehouse is closed on the weekend – our only chance to try them on. When I first called Carolyn Allen, they said that if we had the fitting before noon on Saturday (the earliest we could all be in town to do it), they would still be able to exchange any wrong sizes at the warehouse before it closed on Saturday.

Based on this info, my dad and brother (the Man of Honor, henceforth known as MH) decided to rent their tuxes at home and schlep them on the plane so they wouldn’t have to spend Friday night in Orlando.

Well when I called Carolyn Allen back a few months later, they had switched their affiliation to the Jim’s Formalwear network, and the new warehouse is in Georgia and closed all weekend – GRRRR! So no matter when we tried on the tuxes – and it could have been on Sunday at that point – there was nothing we could do but change sleeve and pants hems if CA brought the wrong pieces or our fellas were measured wrong. CA does keep a few tuxedo pieces in stick, but ours were peak lapel jackets, and they only stock notch lapels. Can you imagine the horror if two of our guys had peak and two had notch?!!

Rare, elusive Peak-lapel Tuxedo in its natural habitat



Common Notch-lapel Tuxedo



I thought about using another vendor, but I’d heard recent horror stories about After Hours, and the only other provider who delivered couldn’t exchange tux pieces over the weekend either. Which is all to say that you can imagine my horror when BM tried on his tux and it looked like he was playing dress-up in his dad’s clothes. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

A tux that fits


A tux that doesn’t fit


Actually, I didn’t freak out too much, because at least DF’s tux fit great! Apparently the person who measured BM didn’t know that you can get jackets in different lengths - in this case we needed “short”... The size problem wasn’t Carolyn Allen’s fault – it just would have been nice to be able to exchange for the correct jacket. The only changes we made were to lengthen all the sleeves and swap out DF’s bowtie for a fuller, more James Bond-like model.

After we sent the tuxes off, we sat around for what seemed like an eternity talking about transportation logistics with BM for the bachelor party. Boooooooooriiiiiiing!!!!

When that was resolved, DF and I finally left the hotel to run errands before my 1pm spa appointment. (Sheesh! I’ve written this much and I’m only at 11am?!). We decided that we really wanted a Gorillapod, despite the cuteness of the table-top tripod our photographers found! So we set off in search of Best Buy, discovering along the way that taking a wrong exit from I-4 can send you miles out of your way. And also that Best Buy is not technically in the Florida Mall. DF did a lot of running in to restaurants/gas stations/etc. to ask for directions while I did a lot of sitting in the car and stewing that it was getting later and later and we were MILES from the spa. At least I remembered to take a picture!

Can you feel my frustration?



Finally we found Best Buy, which was out of Gorillapods except for the display model. DF asked to buy it, which set in motion a series of walkie-talkie calls and negotiations worthy of an FBI investigation. FINALLY we were allowed to buy it, jumped into the O Mobile, and went fwapping off to the Dolphin for my spa appointment. No lunch makes Elastigirl cranky!

This is what lunch might have looked like!



OK, the Mandara Spa at the Dolphin. I was not impressed. The prices are higher than an L.A. spa, the facility is tiny, the amenities ho-hum, and the services I got were lackluster. When I checked in, they told me I could only get the leg wax because the bikini waxer didn’t work Saturdays. If they had told me that when I booked, I would have had everything done at Bliss in L.A. before I left. The last thing I wanted was a painful bikini wax the day before my wedding! But there was nothing I could do, so I had to squeeze it in between the rehearsal brunch and my manicure the next day. The girl who did the wax was friendly and chatty, but I discovered afterward that she had missed big patches on my legs and left hard, sticky wax clumps all over. Those took about two days to wash off. Definitely not worth the $100 price tag. I cycled through every possible discount I could think of with the cashier – Annual Pass, Disney Visa Card, Automobile Association – and then hit on Starwood Preferred Guest for 20% off. She seemed annoyed that I’d actually succeeded in getting a discount!

Meanwhile, DF had dropped our ceremony and reception items off at Franck’s and gone to the barber shop at the Contemporary to get a haircut (which was another so-so job). He got lost coming to pick me up at the Dolphin, so I sat there filling out the postcards we sent to Disney’s Year of a Million Dreams giveaway every single day (which we did every day starting in September ‘06 and which scored us numerous sets of mouse ears and some pins!).

And then I got hit on by one of the valets. It took me a while to figure out what was going on because it’d been so long since anyone had. I’m think his attentions were possibly due to the sundress I was wearing, and definitely due to severe boredom. He asked me if I was in town for the convention, so I sweetly explained that I was there to get married. You should have seen him hightail it back to the valet stand! (For the rest of the trip DH would jokingly ask me, “So... are you in town for the convention...?”)

So finally DF found his way back to the Dolphin and took me to Gooding’s for an overpriced sandwich (well, everyone says they have high prices, but I live in L.A. so I couldn’t tell...). At the Sheraton we discovered free cookies and lemonade next to the gator cage in the lobby (score one for the Sheraton!), so we took those and the overpriced sandwich back to my room and ate on the balcony. I had a tiny slice of time before I needed to start tarting up (as I call it) for our dinner with my side of the family at Olivia’s at Old Key West. I wanted to use this time for a nap, but DF made me use it to write my vows.

Yes, I am a bad bride. I left my vows until two days before the wedding. I was feeling pressured to come up with something earth-shatteringly original and romantic because I knew it’d be captured on video, and the weeks leading up to the wedding were so busy that I never had time to get in the vow-writing mood. We tried to write them together a couple times and came up empty because we felt rushed and uninspired. Plus, I was worried about being original, and DF was worried about being grammatical...ly correct.

Finally we decided to write them separately, and he got his done about a week before. Our pastor sternly told us that they had to be ready for the rehearsal, and here it was the night before with no vows for the bride. So DF took his book and went to read by the pool, and I somehow managed my way through it. I don’t think they were terribly original, but at least they came straight from the heart.

Say, I actually have a picture for this part of the story!

My vows


After that I started the lengthy tarting process for our dinner with my family.

DF has a huge family – 7 aunts and uncles and 20 cousins on his mom’s side alone. The only family I had at the wedding was my dad, my brother and SIL, my two aunts, and my dad’s cousin. My other aunt and uncle had to cancel at the last minute, so it was a very small group who met at Olivia’s that night.

After dinner I took DF to Downtown Disney for his swinging bachelor party at… Rainforest Café?! This was his BM’s idea of a good time. I, on the other hand, got to go to the Adventurer’s Club to meet another Disney bride I’d met on a message board who was getting married on the same day. Whohoo!

I used the Disney Dining Experience card to get half off admission – glad I read the list of benefits, cuz I didn’t know about that one! I’d never been to the AC before, so I was kind of overwhelmed, but I loved the theming. MistressOfAllEvil (that’s her screen name, not her real name!) spotted me from downstairs and waved me over to where she was hanging out with her Glamorous Amazon Entourage. I am just under 6 feet tall, so I had never known what it was like to feel short til I met MistressOfAllEvil and her sister! I think we’re all the same height, but they wear HEELS! It was the weirdest feeling, but I also felt really comfortable because she and I had the message board connection and knew so much about each other. Her DF got dragged into a skit by the Maid, who had a field day with the jokes when she found out he was there with two brides (and my DF was nowhere in sight!). Good times!

The Groom's Two Brides…



I finally pooped out and went back to my room to pack for my move to Beach Club Villas. I listened to our samba-packed reception playlist as I worked, which was so romantic that I decided to write DF a wedding-eve-eve letter and give it to him during our Valentine’s Day dinner at Jiko the following week. And then I went to bed!

[Elastigirl]

Another long day.

I got up at 6am to check out of the Glamorous Sheraton Safari and go pick up my dad, brother, and SIL for the rehearsal in Epcot. I didn’t mind getting up that early because I wanted to practice for getting up at 4am for the wedding the next day. I know that the early ceremony times required for an Epcot wedding (9am, usually) are a deterrent to some people, but the way I see it, surely I can manage to get myself out of bed early on just one day in my entire life in order to experience something that special! (Make that two days if you wanna do the Magic Kingdom bridal portrait session...).

The O Mobile’s windshield kept fogging up on the outside (??) and this was the first time I noticed the tire fwapping, so I crept down the highway. As usual, I got lost, this time on my way to get MH and SIL at All-Star Sports. Once I found them, we went over to Port Orleans French Quarter to get my dad. Meanwhile, DF’s parents were taking him to pick up our officiant at All-Star Music (we flew DF’s childhood pastor out from California to officiate – it was one the best decisions we made!). We were all to meet in the lobby of the Beach Club for our walk to Epcot.

It was so weird to see DF’s parents walk out to meet us in front of the hotel. I got that wonderful comforting feeling you get when you recognize someone familiar in a strange place. It was the first of many times over the trip that my mind boggled to see friends and relatives at WDW. (I know lots of brides go there with their families all the time, but DF and I had only ever been there for our planning session and on one trip apiece when we were in high school.)

Before we set off for the rehearsal, I checked into my room at the Beach Club Villas and checked my luggage with Bell Services. It was so cute – the two women at the check-in desk just beamed when they found out I was getting married in Epcot the next day. I said I knew that check-in for DVC resorts isn’t until 4pm, but if there was any way they could get me a room earlier, I’d be so grateful because I could start setting up my base of wedding operations. They said they’d see what they could do, and they handed me two WDW “Just Married” buttons (I saved them for later).

REHEARSAL

Because we didn’t have any attendants, readers, ushers, etc. for our ceremony, the rehearsal group was small: me & DF, the officiant, the Best Man, the Man of Honor (& SIL), and my dad. We were joined by our videographers, Sage and Wheat (really!!) from Starfruit Productions, at the International Gateway.

The Man o’ Honor transports the bride’s wedding shower bow-quet


A guide escorted us to Morocco to meet our wedding planner and her entourage of assistants. As expected, the rehearsal was run very efficiently. The WP told everyone where to stand and what to do. There were chairs set up between the fountain and the arch, and we all started out standing in the altar area.

The WP had the pastor explain how the service would go, and then I made a little spiel to the BM and Mo’H about one of my huge pet peeves: I hate it when the groomsmen stand up at the altar facing the audience with their hands clasped below their waists – it looks like they have to go to the bathroom! So I tried to make it abundantly clear that Bridezilla wanted their hands at their sides at all times. (Later I found out that the BM was feeling ill during the ceremony and kept repeating to himself, “Don’t throw up, don’t clasp your hands!”)

Next we got to practice walking in. I had been worried about how the songs I picked for the processional would time out, since the distance from the edge of Morocco to the altar area at the arch was about 30 seconds at a normal walking pace. For a while I considered editing the songs down, but I couldn’t cut enough from them. So what we did was start the processional from further back and, in some cases, hold people a bit while the music started. I brought my iPod Shuffle to the rehearsal so I could listen to the songs and figure out where and when we needed to start walking for each one. I got kind of flustered because everyone had to stand around while I found the playlist – you can only go forward or backward, you can’t select songs on a screen – and I’d forgotten to cue it up. But no one seemed to mind waiting, even my WP. It was the first time I had someone tell me, “It’s OK – you’re the bride!”

The road to Morocco – deserted and underexposed...


We decided to time my entrance song with my dad by starting at the altar and walking back out of Morocco to see where we would end up as a starting place. Well, it turned out to be practically to Japan! So we decided to pick a line in the pavement closer to Morocco and just hold me and my dad back until about 30 seconds into the song.

The line!


That was about it for the rehearsal. Sage & Wheat took off and the wedding party walked over to the BoardWalk for brunch at Spoodles with the rest of DF’s family.

REHEARSAL BRUNCH

We did not plan to have any kind of welcome/rehearsal dinner the night before our wedding. This was partly because we’d originally thought doing this kind of event through Disney would count toward our minimum expenditure amount and, when we found out that wasn’t the case, it was an easy thing to cut. But it was mostly because I had an absolute phobia of over-scheduling our guests. Most people were only coming out for 3 or 4 days, and I didn’t want them to feel pressured to attend a bazillion different wedding events when they’d rather be enjoying the parks. (See “No-Pressure, Come-if-You-Want-to Meet ‘n’ Greet,” below.) DF and I planned to have brunch at Spoodles on the BoardWalk after the rehearsal, and when I asked his parents if they’d like to come along, suddenly we had 12 people attending (did I mention DF has a big family?).

It was really nice, though, and an opportunity for my dad, brother and sister-in-law to meet DF’s immediate family. And the food was really good! I’d heard mixed reviews of Spoodles’ food, but it was very tasty (perhaps proving my theory that it’s impossible to screw up breakfast). Spoodles has one big table that seats something like 15 people, and I didn’t have to call WDW Group Dining to reserve it – I just made a regular ADR. We were ready at 9:30am, and though originally they hadn’t been able to give me a reservation til 9:50am, the table was ready within minutes of our checking in. They also had no trouble splitting the checks up among the group members – at Olivia’s the night before we had to do the thing where everyone throws in more money than they prolly owe ‘cuz no one has change... ugh!

After brunch, I had a message from the room assigner at Beach Club Villas saying they’d found me a room – at 10am! – and it was a really nice one that lots of people request. I was so happy. After brunch, while I was at my appointment, DF went over to the hotel, had my luggage delivered to the room, and set everything up for me – what a sweetie! I took a Friendship boat from the BoardWalk to the Dolphin for Round Two at Mandara Spa. I’ll spare you the gory details on that one...

Afterward DF picked me up at the Dolphin and took me to the Yacht and Beach Club for my manicure at Perriwig’s. He was so cute – he insisted on going with me, even though I warned him he’d be bored. The girl who did my nails (Xiomara, I think), was very sweet and did a thorough job. I loved the first color I picked out, but my nails were practically fluorescent, so she went over them with another color and got the perfect shade. We talked about her wedding in Cuba – apparently they invited about 200 people, but so many party crashers showed up they had close to 300 guests! Yikes!

When my nails had cooked in the little, uh, nail oven, DF escorted me up to my room in the Villas wing at the Beach Club. It was SO cool! It was in its own alcove off the elevator lobby, so it was both quiet and convenient. It had lots of drawers and closet space, and a huge balcony overlooking the not-so “quiet” pool. But the best part we didn’t find out about until a few nights into our honeymoon: We were sitting on the balcony eating leftover wedding cake when all of a sudden we discovered we could see the Magic Kingdom’s Pirate & Princess fireworks from our balcony! Very cool...

Note the boxes of Costco waters...










Looking off toward MK



NO-PRESSURE, COME-IF-YOU-WANT-TO MEET ‘N’ GREET

A few weeks before the wedding, we began to agree that – even though we didn’t want to over-schedule them - some of our guests, especially family members, would want to meet and catch up before the wedding. At that point, we didn’t have room in the budget to host a dinner, and we didn’t want to put people through the Dance of a Million Separate Checks, so we settled on a late-afternoon/early-evening meet ‘n’ greet between lunch and dinner. We encouraged people to drop in when they wanted or not drop in at all, if they had plans already. As it turns out, several groups made their own dinner plans for after the meet ‘n’ greet, so it worked out really nicely.

What we didn’t know was where to hold it. I got the idea from another bride to have everyone meet in the Solarium at Beach Club Villas. It looked great in pictures and seemed large enough to host our event.

The Solarium






However, two weeks before the wedding, I found out that the Beach Club was probably going to show the Super Bowl in the Solarium on the day of our meet ‘n’ greet – imagine the nerve, scheduling the Super Bowl for the day of our meet ‘n’ greet!

In the end, because I was cracked on the idea of meeting at the Beach Club, we used its other common room, the Drawing Room, and it turned out to be PERFECT! Unlike the Solarium, it is enclosed and has only one door, so it was like we had our own private room. We must’ve had 15-20 people there – mostly just family members – and we ended up rearranging all the furniture in a big circle as more people showed up. DF got a little twitchy about this. He kept saying, “Maybe we should arrange conversational groupings!” It did look a little like an AA meeting, I guess...

That’s OK, I got twitchy when my FMIL announced she was going to be taking pictures at the reception. She is a shutterbug and has her camera going constantly at every gathering. We’d had a conversation with her months before about how we were hiring professional photographers and we wanted her to just enjoy our wedding from in *front* of a camera. So when she said that I got kinda worked up and made a fool of myself, pouting that I was the bride and I wanted to control the photos of our wedding day and I didn’t care if it made me Bridezilla! (Imagine my dismay when, on the wedding day, I found that FMIL was the only guest who didn’t have a camera – d’oh!)

The Drawing Room








After the meet ‘n’ greet, our pastor suggested we all go to Cape May for dinner. I felt guilty about bowing out, but DF and I each wanted to have a mellow, early night, and I still had lots to unpack. We went up to my room and tried to order room service, but the wait was like 90 minutes – prolly cuz of the Super Bowl. Curses – foiled again! We decided to hit Beaches & Cream, which meant walking right by the open seating area at Cape May where our family and friends were eating – we tried to sneak past so no one would see us.

Beaches & Cream hit the spot! I made a half-hearted attempt to eat light by ordering the chicken sandwich, but it was pretty greasy… greasily delicious! And I felt like a rebel for ordering a (kids’) sundae the night before my wedding – take that, BRIDES magazine!

Yes, that’s extra peanut butter sauce in the background


After dinner DF said goodnight and went off to bunk with his cousin (the one who introduced us!) at the Contemporary, and I began a lengthy series of beauty preparations. I washed and straightened my hair with the blow dryer so I wouldn't have to do that in the morning. I gave myself a crappy pedicure (meh – I hadn’t brought any sandals) and hit the rack around 11:30 – not good when you have a 4 am wake-up call!