Trip report - "Dreams do come true" (video complete - pg 45)

[Mary626]

We're back and I'm married!!! Everything was absolutely wonderful and I'm still trying to process everything that happened. There were a few hiccups along the way, but in the end everything worked out better then I could have imagined it! There were so many magical moments along the way, it was really a dream come true!! If anyone is thinking about getting married in WDW but you aren't sure about it or feel silly - do it!! I think everyone ended up having a wonderful time and even the people that thought I was crazy ended up being impressed!

So on to the trip report.. We were in WDW from April 20th to May 1st, then I surprised Jim by staying an extra day at universal from may 1st to May 2nd, and then we stopped at home for a day, and headed to San francisco from May 4th to May 6th. I tend to write in detail, so I hope it doesn't bore everyone too much. We ended up taking over 3,500 pictures between the two of us, so I of course have to sort through the pictures to choose which ones to upload, so it might take a while to finish. Hopefully some of you may enjoy the report. If you have any questions let me know : )

Here's the general outline of the wedding:
April 20, 2006: arrive in WDW... dinner at 'ohana!
april 21st - decide where to have the ceremony (read the story for more details)
april 22nd - rehearsal in the morning, FANTASMIC dessert party at night!
april 23rd - disneyquest
april 24th - wedding day!!! Ceremony at the little island called the "isola" in the Italy pavilion at EPCOT, reception at Ariel's at the Beach club.
4/20 - 5/6th - honeymoon!!

Here's a link to a PRE-trip report, with some details about how we met, the proposal, the bridal shower, and some of the planning details
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=12347457#post12347457

((((Edited to add 6/18/207) - UPDATE - added links to our VIDEOS - including more video of the wedding day - uploaded on youtube, a complete index can be found on page 45 - or click here http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=19471837&postcount=668 )))


On to the trip report!
***************

April 20th, Thursday

The morning we leave for WDW! Me (the bride) and Jim (the groom) would be flying from the los angeles airport to orlando with some of jim's family from california. My family was flying in at the same time, but since they all live in michigan, obviously they would be on a different flight! I hadn't seen most of my family in months, so I was doubly excited!

I had fallen asleep at a normal time Wednesday night (the night before we left) – around 11 pm or so, but had woken up 2 hours later and was too excited to fall back asleep. I got out of bed and saw that Sue (Jim’s mother) was awake and packing, I went to say hi to her. As I was talking to her she mentioned that I should pack some umbrellas and a rain coat. I had checked the weather the day before, and it had looked like there was going to be clear skies the whole time. I had checked that once and promised myself I wouldn’t check again because I didn’t want to get obsessed with it, when I had absolutely no control over what the weather would be. But since Sue mentioned it, I told her what the weather report said. Then she said “really? Janiece called and said it looked like it would be non-stop rain for the next four days”. I think my heart stopped beating for a few seconds there. I went online and looked up the weather again, and sure enough there were scheduled thunder storms here and there for what looked like the whole week. I was devastated. I tried to reason and be rational and tell myself that this is Florida, and the weather was really unpredictable, and the weather channel has been wrong before, but nothing I could tell myself was making me feel any better about it. I didn’t care so much about if it rained on the wedding day, but if it rained and cancelled my fantasmic dessert party I was going to be so angry. I didn’t want to pay over $1,500 for some desserts in a room somewhere!! And I wanted all my guests to see the Fantasmic show, I just knew they would love it and weren’t likely to watch it on their own. Most of my guests barely knew there were more then one theme park in florida, I wanted it to kind of introduce them to Disney and maybe get them excited about it.

Anyway, I was a mixture of really excited about the trip and worried about the rain. I only got a half an hour asleep before the alarm woke us up.

The night before I had made a music CD with some wedding songs to put in my alarm clock. I thought it would be fun to wake up to “going to the chapel” or something. At 2:30 am, the alarm went off and it was “the game of love” by Michelle branch. That wasn’t the song I was thinking would play, so I hit snooze thinking it wasn’t time to wake up yet. I did that twice more before finally realizing it was playing the wrong CD. Oops. I was so tired but was so excited that it was FINALLY the day we were leaving!!!

I cooked some breakfast for me and Jim, cheese omelettes and bacon, but was getting ready while making them, so I ended up burning the omelettes which left a lovely cloud of smoke in the kitchen. We both quickly got ready and packed our last minute stuff and I went over everything in my head to make sure I had the important stuff. We were ready by 3:45 so we still had a while before the towncar got to our house. I had a pair of Winnie-the-pooh- ears that I sometimes wear to Disneyland, I decided to put them on my head that morning to get me in Disney mood. I forgot to take them off until we were in the car on the way to the airport.

Our flight was for 7:30 am at the los angeles airport, which was usually 30-60 minutes away depending on traffic. I hired a towncar to come pick us up at 4:30 am. I was so ready to be on our way that I went outside and was kind of pacing around waiting for the guy to come. It was 4:45 am and still no driver. Finally I call the company and they tell me he’s just a few minutes away. In the meantime, Jim and Sue are watching a Tivo’d episode of the Daily show while I am pacing around outside waiting for the driver. My dog was looking really depressed, I think he knows what having a bunch of suitcases in the hallway means (we had a house/pet sitter for while we were gone). I gave him a new shiny bone to chew on, and after that he pretty much forgot about us. At 4:50 the driver comes, apologizes for being late, we pack up our plethora of bags, and we are on our way to LAX!

My dog looking depressed:

Our luggage (actually this isn't even all that we took - there were 2 more carryons, and Sue was carrying something on for us as well)

It was too early in the morning

Packing our bags into the towncar

Traffic wasn't bad that early in the morning so we got to the airport fairly quickly. The driver turned the radio on to the news and they were talking about finding dead bodies from 9-11, me and jim looked at each other like "great thing to listen to when going to the airport..." The driver got the hint and turned it to an easy lisstening music channel instead. Much better. They played a strange selection of music though, and there was one song, I forget how it goes but it has a "cha cha cha cha" in there somewhere, and that was in our head for the next few hours.

A few people from Jim’s family were actually going to be on the same flight as us, but we were all driving separately, and since Jim and I had upgraded our tickets to first class, we barely saw them the whole time.

I was still a little worried about the weather but was trying not to think about it. We get to the airport, check our bags, and go to security. I had set aside our disposable cameras so I could ask them to handcheck them. We watched the security guy checking them over doing some really technical looking stuff. Me and Jim were impressed and were making jokes about CSI and stuff, and the security guy seemed to be pretty amused by it. He smiled and told us to have a great day.

We went to our gate and played tetris on Jim’s gameboy to pass the time. I called my mother's cell phone and she was with my family driving to the airport over in michigan. My mom said "I don't remember the last time i've been this excited!" I thought that was so cute.

Five minutes till boarding and Jim’s family still wasn’t at the gate. Jim was worried, but I know his family well enough to know that they’d be there one minute before they needed to be, no earlier and no later, and it would be fine. And sure enough I was right. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to go to the airport by ourselves, I like being there with time to spare so I’m not rushed or worried. Jim was watching over his mom’s bag while she was going to use the bathroom, and right then they started to board first class. I wanted to get on, so Jim asked Josh (one of the groomsmen that was there) if he could watch the bag. He said something like “you said you’d watch it, it’s your responsibility”. I kind of rolled my eyes a little, but Jim told me he was kidding and he took the bag and Jim and I got on board.

I was sooo grateful that Jim’s mother had upgraded our tickets to first class, we had soooo much leg space and it was the most comfortable 5 hour trip I’ve had! Their food was actually really good and the service was great. The brunch they gave us also included a bagel which was the first time in a year I had anything with bread in it. It took a while to get used to and to not feel guilty about it. It was weird. I didn’t have any such problems with the warm chocolate chip cookies they gave us though.


In between the meal services, I managed to fall asleep on and off for 2 hours, which I desperately needed. Jim watched X-men on our laptop while I slept.

Pretty sunrise over LA

Brunch:

Jim eating a bagel

Jim trying to make me laugh:

Fluffy clouds, we must be over florida!

We landed a short while later and I turn my cell phone on. I call my mom, who was on a flight from Michigan with my dad, sister, and brother-in-law, they landed the exact same time we did and they said they were still on the tarmac. I was on such an adrenaline buzz to finally be in Orlando, I was so excited!! After I hung up, my phone beeped that I had a voice mail message. I assumed it was my mother saying they landed, so I play back the message and it was my coordinator.

She had a serious voice and said something like “mary, this is your coordinator, when you get this message please call me as soon as you can, thank you”. I was like, well that doesn’t sound too good! Immediately I lose that excitement buzz and enter the “oh great I just touched down in Orlando and already something is wrong” mode. I tried calling her back but she wasn’t there, her assistant said she would call me back as soon as she got back. Which gave me just enough time to imagine all sorts of things that might be wrong.

The most likely scenario I thought was that she was going to say Fantasmic was cancelled, that’s the only thing I could really think of. We get off the plan and are waiting at the gate for Jim’s family to de-board (they were in the back). Finally the coordinator calls me back, it was hard to hear her as they kept making boarding announcements at the gate, but from what I could hear she was telling me that one of the bridges at the Italy Isola – where my ceremony was to take place – had been under refurbishment, and was scheduled to be completed that day, but it didn’t pass inspection. Me, with my jaw dropping, asked “You mean we can’t have the ceremony at the Isola??” Hopefully it didn’t sound rude, I was just a little shocked and confused. Jim, who could only hear my side of the conversation, was looking worried too. The coordinator tried to sound optimistic and said there was still a chance we could have it there, but there was an ugly construction wall blocking off one of the bridges, so Jim and I would have to come by the Isola to take a look at it. If we didn’t want to use the Isola then we could use the Italy courtyard, she said.

Well that left me with a bit of a shock. Honestly though, I was just glad she didn’t’ say fantasmic was cancelled. I had a feeling we’d figure something out for the ceremony. But there I was, having just landed in Orlando, not sure about our dessert party and all of a sudden, after one year of planning the ceremony at the Isola, I had no idea where our ceremony would be.

From the time we landed till the time we got to the baggage claim things got a little stressful. Jim’s family were going to a different hotel then us and they were taking Magic Express, so we kind of said “hi and bye” to them as my phone kept ringing and some of our guests and family kept calling me to ask me questions, and my mom kept calling me and asking where we were, finally I snapped at my mom to just hang on and I would call her when we got to baggage claim!! We finally got to the train that takes you to the center of the airport where baggage claim is, and I decided to put my Winnie-the-pooh ears back on to help me de-stress. People were looking at me like I was crazy and I didn’t care! I love those ears!

My family was at carousal 23 and we were at 5. I called and told them and it took them a while to make it down. Meanwhile we waited for our luggage which wasn’t coming. I turn around and see my mom walk by in a different direction. I almost didn’t recognize her, I was stunned! I hadn’t seen her in a few months and I knew she was dieting, but she’d always tell me she wasn’t losing anything, but man did she look a lot thinner!! I don’t know where she was headed though, then Jenny and Kevin (jenny = sister, maid of honor.. Kevin = her husband) sneak up behind us. I knew Jenny was pregnant, but I hadn’t seen her since in so long, so I was like “oh my god you’re pregnant!!” Like I didn’t know, I couldn’t believe it!! And was surprised to see Kevin too, even he had lost a weight. Everyone looked so different!! Jenny and Kevin looked pretty stressed out from traveling with my parents. She said dad was having a hard time walking/breathing when they got off the plane so had to wait for a wheelchair and said he was embarrassed and they were both being stressful about everything. I could sympathize. It was so nice to see everyone.

It’s jenny & Kevin, omg!

My mom was by the exit talking to a luggage porter and I could tell by the look on her face that she was in a “crucial moment” stage. (Ever since we were little, me and my sisters called it a “crucial moment” – that time when there’s no time for silliness or jokes, because she’s trying to figure something out and gets really stressed out). So I go over and say hi, she says something like “hi! Hang on a few minutes…” and goes back to talking with the porter, I go back to the carousal and we wait for our luggage. It is taking forever to come out. Meanwhile, to the side of us we see a guy sitting by his luggage which obviously has a lot of musical instruments in it, and his bags say “matthew nelson” we all think it sounds familiar but we can’t figure it out. Jim jokingly says “maybe he’s one of the nelson brothers”, but we kind of laugh it off and forget about it.

It literally took an hour for all of our bags to come out, it really set my schedule behind darnit!! We get our bags and go outside. My mom had hired a limo from happylimo and they came with a huge Limo navigator, it was really cool looking!!! My dad elects to sit upfront with the driver, and everyone else piles into the back. Inside the limo they had free cold drinks for us and started playing spongebob square pants on their LCD screens. It took me a little while to figure out how to turn off the TV’s. We all try to catch up while in the limo and I was in a complete daze. It was so weird finally being there, seeing my family for the first time in a long time and seeing how different everyone looked, it was just so much to take in and process!!

My dad sitting up front in the limo

My mother being attacked by the luggage:

me with my crazy eyes that I had in all the pictures that day from lack of sleep & excitement

We start to see the Disney buses and the purple signs, and I’m frantically trying to get everything on video and am just so excited! What feels like two minutes after getting into the limo, we pull into the yacht club, jenny says “wow it looks really small”, and I had to tell her that that was the convention center. Then we pull up in front of the lobby and everyone gets out of the limo. I’m still half recording, half just being excited, I step out of the limo but my feet slide off of the little step and I trip and jar my ankles and wrists as I tried to brace for impact. Ouch. My mom’s like “careful mary, you’re the bride you can’t break your ankles!” I laugh it off and say I’m okay but it actually hurt quite a bit!! I figure it will go away in a few minutes.

We’re at the Yacht club, I am just too excited, I don’t know what to take pictures of first or what to look at first! We give our bags to the bellhop and go in the lobby.

 

[Mary626]

Ahhh, everything smells so good and looks so pretty. There’s nothing like walking into a Disney Resort lobby for the first time. There’s always so much to take in. We go to the front desk and Jenny & Kevin are beside us checking in as well. The lady behind the front desk is really nice and goes through our info. Two other people behind the counter come to us and say something about it being our wedding and are making jokes and laughing, and I swear to you, I did not understand a WORD they said! I smiled, nodded my head, and pretended to laugh where I thought appropriate or where Jim did, but the whole time I could not hear them.I figured Jim understood as he was doing the same thing, but when I asked him later, he said he also had no idea what they were saying. I’m sure it was nice though. While we were checking in, Jenny leans over to us and says “Mary, we got upgraded to a water view!!” Figuring it was a good opportunity to ask, and there’s no harm in asking, I then ask the lady if it would be possible to be upgraded as well. The lady kind of smiled and laughed – I think she had been planning to do that for us as well, said she could. Woohoo! I was very happy. We then take out our Disney Dollars to pay – we had saved up a lot of Disney Dollars to use at the hotel – but they only came to us in $10 denomoniations. So there we were paying in exactly 180 ten dollar denominations. I felt like a little kid paying for some candy in pennies, but hey, it’s legal tender in Disney world!

Blurry pic of the lobby (there will be better pics of the lobby later on)

Friendly cast member checking us in

Paying with our Disney dollars that we had been slowly saving for the last year

We finish checking in, and go over to check on my mom and dad who were also checking in, but my mom seemed to be in “crucial moment” mode again, so we said we’d call them when we got to our rooms.

We walk up to our rooms and I’m recording video the whole way. We get to our room – 4087 and it was just beautiful!! And we had a view of the wedding gazebo and the lighthouse and stormalong bay and the boardwalk right outside – it was perfect!!

Walking into our room:

Hidden mickey!

Our view to the left

Our view to the right

and even more to the right

More hidden micky’s in our room:

We could see Jenny on a balcony across from our room:

The hallways maintained the sea-shore feel to the hotel

My parents in the hallway

I was so excited, I wanted to go in fifty directions at once and take pictures of everything at once, and was just so happy I didn’t know what to do with myself. We called for our luggage and they said it would be right up.

Well it actually took over an hour (literally) for our bags to come up, but it was probably good for me to have a little time to calm down and settle in. Though I was on a tight schedule! Everyone else had already gotten their bags and went over to the boardwalk to walk around, while we had to wait for our bags. At this point it is 6 pm. We all had dinner reservations for ‘ohana at 9:30 that night, and there were quite a few things I needed to get done, such as exchange our annual pass vouchers, then go pick up the Disney Dining Experience discount card so I could use it on dinner that night, and I wanted to pick up the mickey/Minnie wedding ears to wear to dinner.

We can see Jenny & Kevin walking to the boardwalk while we were stuck waiting for our luggage:

 

[Mary626]

So we get our bags from a bell hop named Mike, who was actually really sweet and said congratulations to us and seemed really happy to tell us about what was new at Disney, so even though it took him an hour to bring our bags, he made up for it.

So Jim and I head out to go to Epcot. We weren’t familiar with the hotel so we kept walking in the wrong direction or out the wrong door. Meanwhile, once again everyone in the world starts calling me while we try to make our way to epcot. Finally we get to the lighthouse where the water shuttles pick you up from, and wait ten minutes for the boat. We make a few stops and 20 minutes later we are finally at epcot. I didn’t realize at that point how easier and quicker it is just to walk to epcot from the hotel. My ankles and wrist start to feel swollen and a little painful from tripping while getting out of the limo, and I keep feeling really stupid about slipping. Great job tripping, Mary, really smart!!

Jim in the elevator salivating over the pictures of Disney food, must save appetite for ohana, jim!

The entrance to the giftshop in the lobby

The back entrance to the yacht club

Aboard the friendship, talking to Matt who just landed at the airport

We get to the International Gateway and go to exchange our annual pass vouchers for the regular passes. The lady sees that they’re wedding vouchers and asks if I want my new name on the pass or my current one. I tell her current, since that’s what’s on all of my ID’s, etc, I didn’t want any problems, better just to have everything with the same name. Jim looked a little confused and asked why I didn’t want the new name on the ID, I told him my reasoning, but he still looked hurt and asked if I was sure that was the real reason or something. I had no idea why he was hurt by it, I just didn’t want any problems and didn’t understand why he was acting upset. Finally I almost start to cry and I ask him to stop making me upset, there was no reason for it and it was stupid!! I didn’t want to cry right before entering Disney!! Normally I wouldn’t cry over something so silly, but it was a very emotional day for me.He apologized and we just forget about it.

We didn’t have much time in epcot, and our plan was to head to Mousegears and buy the mickey/Minnie wedding ears, and then go to the front of the park to get the Disney Dining card (which you could only get at the front entrance to epcot), and then go get ready for our ‘ohana dinner.

The international gateway entrance takes you into the world showcase, between France and the UK. We head to the left, past the UK. Epcot’s spring flower festival had just began and they had the most adorable topiaries everywhere! In the UK, they had some Winnie-the-pooh topiaries, so we had to stop and take some pics with them. We could see the Italy Isola across the lagoon, I wanted to go see the construction wall, but we didn’t have time. I thought I could see it from across the lagoon but wasn’t sure. As we were passing the UK, the “Off-Kilter” band was playing by Canada. They were really good! I slowed down to listen to them, and was kind of dancing along to the music, and all of a sudden it hit me that we were there.. I was finally in Walt Disney World, in epcot, and I could see where we (maybe) would be getting married. I was so happy that I just broke down and started to cry. Good thing I had sunglasses on because I probably would have looked really stupid otherwise. So me and Jim went to the fence alongside the lagoon and he hugged me and we were both just so glad to finally be there after one long year of dreaming and planning everything!

A tigger topiary in the UK

Off-kilter made me cry

Done with the whole crying thing, we head to mousegears in future world, passing the beautiful flower topiaries they had out. We took a few pics but we knew we really needed to hurry.

Beauty & the beast topiaries

Mickey & Minnie topiaries

Bambi:

We get to Mousegears, which is coincidentally where I worked when I did the college program, and was showing Jim around telling him where I used to stand, and how I used to greet people at the door, etc. We buy our ears and put them on.

The entrance to MouseGears

I used to have to wear one of those snazzy outfits to work everyday!

We get our ears, lets never take them off!

Cute stitch topiary

Once we had those ears on, it was like all of a sudden everyone in epcot wanted to congratulate us. It was so nice to receive that kind of positive attention from complete strangers, it was a really cool feeling! We head to guest relations, get the Disney Dining card, and the “Magic Wishes” pin (we didn’t even have to ask for them, they handed them to us right away and congratulated us). As we were heading back to the International gateway to go back to our hotel, I don’t think there was a single Disney cast member that didn’t congratulate us on the way. And then as we were passing from future world into the world showcase in front of a refreshment stand, this cast member jumps out in front of us and says “CONGRATulations!!! What would you guys like to drink, it’s my treat!!” I was like wow, that is so cool!!! I said a water and a diet coke, and he handed them both to us and told us to have a wonderful life together.. It was so nice!!!!! I don’t think me and Jim stopped smiling the entire way back to the hotel.

We get our magical wishes pins

This guy gave us free drinks!

Jim likes the free drinks!

Me on the phone again with someone

Me happy to be in epcot;

Instead of waiting for the boat, we decide to walk to the hotel, and wow is that a short walk, I had no idea how much quicker it was to just walk!!


We get to our hotel room and it was like 8:30, and we knew we wanted to be there close to 9 for our 9:30 pm reservation. I had so much to do before we went to dinner though!! Since our luggage had come so late, I didn’t have time to unpack anything, so I was practically throwing all of our clothes out of our suitcases as I looked for my dress, nylons, shoes, jewelry, etc. It was a whirlwind! As I was getting dressed I asked jim if he could prepare the welcome baskets (I had had them wrapped in cyran wrap so their contents wouldn’t fall out). So I was frantically getting dressed, putting jewelry on, or re-applying my makeup as I was “directing” jim what to do and occasionally helping with something.

As Jim was helping to prepare the welcome baskets, I asked if he could open up the box with my diamond earrings (I had taped the box close with tape – I only have one pair of really nice earrings and I didn’t want them to fall out of the box while in flight). But when Jim opened the box it kind of popped open, and one of the earrings got flung into one of the welcome baskets!! I was like Oye!!! So we had to empty and frantically search through three of the baskets before finding the earring. Whew that was close, that would have been a really expensive welcome basket for that one person!

We put all our welcome baskets into our carry-on suitcase so we could wheel it to dinner, and we head to the lobby to meet up with my family.

We get to the lobby and my sister Lisa and her friend Lynn is there. I haven’t seen Lisa since December either, and immediately notice her hair-extensions, they looked great!! Made me wish I had gotten hair extensions for the wedding, but they are pretty pricey. We all take a few minutes to say hello and catch up a little. I tell Lisa and Lynn about the ceremony site problems, and how I was worried they might cancel the Fantasmic show on Saturday. One of the bell-hops overheard me and said not to worry about the weather, that it was really hard to predict in Florida. I could have hugged him!

 

[Mary626]

We were all going to take a taxi to ‘Ohana to save time, but Jim’s best man, Matt says he’ll just take the bus, I’m like “just fit in with us, we don’t have a lot of time”, but he insists on taking a bus. I elect not to worry if he’s late to dinner or not, and we all head to the Polynesian.

Stuffing ourselves into the taxi

Lynne sitting on Lisa’s lap to make room in the taxi

We walk into the lobby and Jim, who’s never been in there before, seemed to really be impressed, and asks me “why aren’t we staying here?” I tell him, it’s not close enough to where all the wedding stuff is taking place. Jim and I stop in the lobby giftshop to buy ourselves some flower lei’s. We had got some for all of our guests but had forgotten to buy some for ourselves. The lady behind the counter was so excited that we were getting married and asked a lot of questions about it. I was surprised by her excitement, I would have thought they’d have seen a lot of brides at the Polynesian, with ‘ohana and sunset pointe being right there.

We walk up to the second floor where Jim’s mother and brother are. We hadn’t seen his brother, Chris, in quite a while, so we say hi and catch up with him. The other people in Jim’s family didn’t make it to the dinner, so there were only 11 of us. There was a musician singing Hawaiian music as we waited in the lounge area to be called. I opened up my suitcase and presented the welcome baskets to everyone, and took out the lei’s and said “aloha!” to them while throwing the lei around their neck. It was a lot of fun! Everyone loved the welcome baskets, although they were a little confused by the paper towel I stuffed into the bottom so that Stitch’s head would be poking out of the top of the bag. I didn’t have the time to make it prettier, but they were still good!

Aloha! My dad in the lounge before ohana

Sue & Lisa after getting their lei’s. Musician in the background

The welcome bags were a hit!

Picture of the welcome basket (taken at home in California)

We got seated and I handed out the few gifts I had for people, even though it wasn’t really a “rehearsal dinner”. The whole dinner was a blur, there was so much going on. Everyone loved their gifts, and the “gag gift” me and Sue made for Jenny was a hit..My mother cried when she read the card me and Jim wrote for her, and Chris & matt both really liked their t-shirts. The gifts for the groomsmen were stylized t-shirts with the faces of the groomsmen on them, with jim's face on the top, and the back said "the groomsmen" (it was supposed to be kind of silly). The bridesmaids gifts were photo albums from things-remembered with their names on it, and the first page of the photo album had a thank-you card printed out on photo paper


Everyone at dinner

Jim’s mother & brother at dinner

Chris likes the groomsmen t-shirt, it has his face on it!

Mom cries reading through her card & gift I made for her

Bring on the food!

Jenny likes her gift!

Since Jenny was pregnant, and had been like throwing up every day for the past 4 months, we customized one of those pregnant Barbie dolls for her, Sue even made a dress for it to match the bridesmaid dresses;

Me and my mom

Chris being silly

The “master of ceremonies” lady came by and congratulated us and asked us our names. Later in the dinner, she made the announcement to the restaurant we were getting married and everyone “toasted” us and she made us practice our kiss. She also gave us another lei! It was really nice.

The master of ceremonies lady congratulating us

I barely got to taste the food, I was so busy having a good time, taking pictures, taking videos, doing both at the same time, or taking video of the fireworks while trying to eat some food, it was really funny. Even though I only had a few bites, the food is delicious here!! This is one of our favorite restaurants at WDW - it's a must try!! My dad was so funny, the only thing he wanted was the shrimp that comes as appetizers, so he kept ordering more bowls of shrimp instead of eating the meat from the skewers. (he really liked the shrimp!)

Towards the end of the meal, they dimmed the lights a little and started playing the music from the "Wishes" fireworks.. oh cool, i forgot they would be playing whilel we were there, what a great way to end the night!

My Disney Dining card saved me $80 bucks. Since it cost $60.00 to buy, I had already made a profit off of it, woohoo!

We all had an absolutely amazing time at dinner, everything turned out perfectly! My only regret is that more people couldn't make it, but most people would be coming in two days later.

We stopped for some pics on the way out in the lobby. More cast members wished me and jim "congratulations!" on the way out:

We went back to the hotel, and it took me literally 2 hours to unpack all of our stuff and to clean up from when I tore our luggage apart looking for my dinner outfit Finally I got to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I was so excited and just sat there in bed thinking of the wonderful day I had and how wonderful everything was, and how this was just the first day!!! I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time and only got three hours of sleep that night. It would be a continuing trend that whole week!!


Coming up: The animal kingdom, deciding on a ceremony location, fun with a broken electric scooter, and dinner in canada

 

[Mommy Poppins]

Happy 2 week Anniversary, Mary!!! I'm so excited to read your trip report. You have great details!!!! Keep typing and don't leave us hanging very long!!!!

 

[kellyf2626]

I have really enjoyed reading about your trip!! Can't wait to hear the rest!!!

 

[WDWINJUNE!]

Mary, Thanks so much for posting a trip report. I loved reading it so far, can't wait to read more. I'm impressed....we were married on April 1 and I still haven't managed to post a trip report yet But it sounds like you've had a great time so far!

Laura

 

[ktink]

Ok, I'm ready for what happened next.

 

[JonetteA]

I can't wait to hear more!!!

 

[Marty Moose]

More! More! MORE!!

Congrats! I'm loving your trip report!!

 

[scarlett873]

Well...what happened next???

 

[Snoopygirl]

Great Wedding Trip Report!!! Can't wait to hear more!

 

[Button]

Loving it - Give us more...

 

[FutureMrsC]

This is a fabulous trip report! I feel like I'm actually there! The suspense is killing me though... I can't wait until you post again!

 

[Cinderella Fan]

Such a great TR! I can't wiat to read more. All of the pics are great, you and Jim look so happy and ready to get married! I hope you wedding was everything you dreamed it would be!!!

Congratulations!!

 

[Philadisney]

i am loving your report - especially the preggers barbie! that is GENIUS!
congrats on your marriage, i can't wait to read about the rest of your trip!

 

[Janet2k]

Mary626, congratulations! And welcome home! I'm sorry to hear that you got injured, but I hope you've healed by now (I know Pixie Dust works wonders).

 

[nkkilala]

Mary I am loving your wedding report! I am so happy for you!

 

[Cinderella2006]

good job Mary, i have enjoyed reading your report. Keep it going

 

[janine]

Can't wait to hear more.
I loved your pictures...we stayed at the Yacht club too for our wedding, so it brought back many happy memories. Your room was not too far from ours, we stayed just to the left of the gazebo.
When you went to Ohana's your Dad is sat in the same chair I did in the lounge, and you also ate at the same table we did!
Isn't it funny how that feeling of excitement comes over you once you get into those gates? I smiled at all the little things you said like I didn't know what direction to go in next. I know just how you feel.
I am looking forward to your next part...please dont leave it long, it makes my memories come flooding back.