Alyaki & Raist's Wishes Wedding - Italy/LSS/France 3/17/2015 - Mini Update 10/29 Food

[alyaki]

Hi!

So, I'm mostly just starting this as a way to keep everything organized in my head at this point, since I haven't really written out or started to track anything I've been figuring out at this point. It feels a little odd doing this since I can't even really call Disney to pencil in the date until December, but I've realized that I'm already having trouble remembering some things, so I figure better to start this now then repeat work I've already done later. I'll apologize ahead of time - I have a tendency to have long periods in between actually posting anything (hopefully this will help me get better about that), and when I post, I tend to ramble.

I'll be trying to organize this like several other of the PJs on here, with essentially a table of contents that has links to all the posts that people seem to look for.

Table of Contents
Info About Us/Proposal
Photography

 

[alyaki]

About Us
Alyaki
Age: 26
Occupation: Software Developer in test (I write code and hack to break applications so that developers know what they need to fix before it gets to clients!)
Hobbies: Reading, playing video games, playing with puppy, swimming, walking, figuring out ways to organize/decorate the house, playing rpgs/board games with friends, playing with new programming languages

Raist
Age: 26
Occupation: Retail supervisor position
Hobbies: Playing games, reading, playing with puppy, setting up private game servers, reddit, chainmailling, setting up/creating terrain for use with rpgs we play


Proposal
So, I know there are a lot of people with some really cool stories - we're not it. Essentially, all ours was is that we were getting ready for bed and he asked if I'd marry him, I said yes, and that's the end. We're generally pretty laid back though, so it works, it just feels like the most boring proposal story on the board. Anyways.......

Side topic ahead, we started actually planning to do a local wedding for about 50-70 people, and found several places that we really liked with reasonable prices. However, after we started meeting with a few venues, we found out that most had fairly high minimums, and a few of the places that didn't have high minimums either had reception spaces that looked a little run down and/or were very.... corporate feeling to me. I work in a corporate building day after day, I do not want to feel like I'm in that environment at my wedding.

At that point, Andrew had brought up the idea of having a Disney wedding. We had checked on them a couple years ago (I didn't believe him about Disney doing weddings) the price was the same or a little less than what we were being told for minimums by most of the venues we liked locally. We ended up revising our invite list into 2 lists - an ideal list for an escape size wedding, and one for a slightly bigger wishes (24-36 people, with the larger including all the people we would really want, and is what we're going with). So, now we can essentially only invite people we really want and not feel obligated to include more. Some days I love the fact that we've decided to pay completely on our own.

(this will be updated later - gotta work)

 

[LittleKittyMarie]

Congratulations and welcome! I started my PJ about as far out as you too, and times flies! You'll be making that call in no time! Looking forward to following along!

 

[alyaki]

Congratulations and welcome! I started my PJ about as far out as you too, and times flies! You'll be making that call in no time! Looking forward to following along!

Thanks for following I hope it flies as fast as you say. Venues near me are already starting to fill up for 2015, so it's a little nerve-wracking to think I can't do anything for months.

 

[bailey6887]

Congrats! Following along.

 

[Summer Daydream]

Congrats! I started my PJ way early too! Tine will fly

 

[alyaki]

It's really reassuring to hear that several others started them early. I just know that when it comes closer to time, I'm going to get lazy, so I'm trying to figure out some of the details now, so I can slack off later. Even if that probably won't work.

 

[alyaki]

Photography
So, I remember a couple months ago, when we first decided to just go with a Disney wedding, reading through several PJs. I'm sort of picky when it comes to photography, since I have a particular style I like. I know this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I personally just don't like the look of Randy, Misty Mioto's, or the Arndts photos (it's really the editing they do that drive me nuts). However, I really liked the photos someone posted in their PJ that they had Regina Hyman for (I think it was Mrs. Duck).

So, long story short, we're going with Regina. She's penciled us in for now, and we'll sign our contract and work through the package details in October. I think I know which we'll be using as our base option, as well as the mods we'll need to do, but won't actually know exact prices of things until October. I was thinking of cutting out the engagement session she includes, but really, after looking at the local photographer I like (who would cost $600 for just the session and the disk of images), I figure it'd probably be more cost effective to just do it with Regina during one of the trips we've planned over the next year.

 

[DVCAdrienne]

Congratulations. Looking forward to reading more. The time will fly by

 

[DVCAdrienne]

 

[LittleKittyMarie]

Wonderful photography choice, Regina's work is beautiful! Back when she still worked at Disney photography we desperately hoped we would get her for our wedding, and then we were very disappointed when she left last year, I think. And it's great that she does pencilling in, I suppose she knows first hand about the wait times for booking a DFTW. And engagement photos in Disney? Bonus!

 

[wiigirl]

Just wanted to say congratulations.

 

[alyaki]

Just wanted to say congratulations.

Thank you

 

[alyaki]

Thank you

Wonderful photography choice, Regina's work is beautiful! Back when she still worked at Disney photography we desperately hoped we would get her for our wedding, and then we were very disappointed when she left last year, I think. And it's great that she does pencilling in, I suppose she knows first hand about the wait times for booking a DFTW. And engagement photos in Disney? Bonus!

How Regina does it right now is she can pencil you in whenever you call (if you have a specific date in mind) and then she'll set up your contract at 18 months. If, at the 12 month mark, you don't get the date, I think you can see if she is open for whatever your alternate is, and if so (and you get that date) the contract is updated with that one, if she isn't open for that date then the contract is considered void and she returns your deposit. While I'm looking forward to Disney engagement photos, I'm a little sad that I won't get to bring our puppy.

Btw, read through your PJ, I really need to subscribe to it

 

[alyaki]

Stationary/Paper Supplies
So, I think we have an idea of who we're going with for our invitations and Save-the-Dates. For some reason I've been obsessing over paper products since we got engage, but I think that's mostly because I really like good stationary. I've been getting samples from several companies, and I think I've just given up and decided to go with the invitations I like, versus trying to go as cheap as possible. Here's a quick look at my thought process about each of the companies I ended up getting samples from (note, these are my personal opinions). The odd thing is, I know people who like all of these companies.

Vistaprint: Great prices, especially since you can get groupons for them. However, most of their paper offerings feel fairly flimsy, with the exception of their recycled paper option. Also, their colors are quite as vivid as I like, and the text isn't very sharp looking (sort of blurry).

Minted: I actually really liked all of the paper options, except for the standard paper. The only problem is that we didn't like any of the designs we saw. Seems fairly limited compared to some of the other options.

Magnetstreet: Really not a fan of their invitations. This is another company that seems to have a fairly limited set of designs, and the printing quality was no better than Vistaprint on the samples we received. However, their magnets are really nice.

Wedding Paper Divas: All I'm going to say about this one is: bleh. I was not a fan of the paper samples, nor of their colors.

Invitations by Dawn: Great quality and a lot of options. It's also really cool that they do a version of letterpress and embossing. Good colors, and everything looked very sharp on the 7 samples we ended up with.

Shine Wedding Invitations: So, this is a printer I found on etsy when browsing wedding invitations there. Every single invitation I'd look at ended up being theirs, so I ended up paying for a few samples. They use a really nice, heavy cardstock, the colors on the samples are lovely and saturated, and the text is quite sharp looking. Also, they have some really nice designs, though most of them are on the simple side.

All that to say... we're going with Shine. Right now, we're leaning towards the "Confetti" design, but the colors from their "Addition of Love" sample. DF wants to look at the rest of the designs though, since he has only seen the 4 samples I bought. Not sure that we'll go with them for our Save-the-Dates (probably will go with Invitations by Dawn or someone else for those), but I really like their invitations.

Design we're leaning towards:


Colors:


By the way, sorry for the size, wanted to get these up, but I haven't had a chance to edit the size in photobucket.

 

[charliegirl76]

Congratulations and welcome! I'll be following along. We used Magnetstreet for our save the date magnets and we love them. They were a huge hit with everyone!

 

[alyaki]

Congratulations and welcome! I'll be following along. We used Magnetstreet for our save the date magnets and we love them. They were a huge hit with everyone!

Everyone who has used them (that I've talked to) have said the same thing. The only thing that might keep us from using them is if we don't find a design we like, but the price is really good!

 

[LittleKittyMarie]

I love your stationary reviews. Funny, it never even occurred to me to order samples, but that makes so much sense! Well, I guess I chose my printers based solely on pricing and convenience, but it really makes sense to get those samples. I love the confetti design (and it's going to look even better in the other colours), I always love designs with little dots.

 

[alyaki]

I love your stationary reviews. Funny, it never even occurred to me to order samples, but that makes so much sense! Well, I guess I chose my printers based solely on pricing and convenience, but it really makes sense to get those samples. I love the confetti design (and it's going to look even better in the other colours), I always love designs with little dots.

I'm pretty sure Andrew just thought I was nuts We were actually going to go with Vistaprint, but someone mentioned the samples, and when I got them I found I wasn't thrilled with it.

 

[alyaki]

I got my first contract! Since we decided to do our engagement photos in Disney (provided in one of the packages we liked) with Regina, she decided we should do our photography contract early so that we didn't have to do two separate contracts for our photography. Sadly, I meant to have it with me today to fill out, but... I forgot it at home. Since I have access to a printer at work, I'll probably just print it off here, but I wish I hadn't forgotten the copy we had at home. Right now, I'm actually sort of excited to be doing my first contract/deposit for the wedding, even if I think that may not be the case when it comes to the Disney one (so much money).


Anyways, yay for progress! And yay for engagement photos in October at Disney!