Wedding in Paradise Fall 2017 - complete 5/30 - Wedding TR linked!

Our budget (all in, everything included from little things like postage stamps to big things like the catering) is just over 10. But that's literally everything, as well as highballing the catering cost, since we don't know what exactly that'll end up being. It's ridiculous how expensive these things get. We're also including our honeymoon in that number, and things that have already been paid for. I have a very detailed spreadsheet on my laptop, lol.

I am all about the spreadsheets!

Your plans for DL sound fun, but that finagling sounds like a pain in the butt. I hope it goes well!

Thanks! I hope when we get there, it's realized that we don't all have to be glued at the hip. But it's Disney! It can't be too bad :rolleyes:

We're skipping a DJ and will just use Pandora or Spotify with a case amp we're going to buy on Amazon. It's $100 with free shipping and includes a mic for the ceremony and toasts and stuff. We just couldn't justify the cost. Our biggest expenses are the venue, catering, photography, and honeymoon (which may end up getting canceled, we haven't worked that out yet).

If this DJ won't move dates, we might go that route. We already have to come up with something if we want ceremony music. The lights were really just a perk :D

Our big ones are venue, food/alcohol, and photography. We're counting the honeymoon separate. If it came down to it, the honeymoon could get pushed back... but F&W! lol. I don't get why people look at you all crazy when it's like, no, I am not going to spend six figures on a wedding, I have other plans for my life (like maybe a house, a dog, eating dinner tonight...). I got a quote for 6 employees to serve food and alcohol if we DIY the food and it was $2800. I wish I knew more people around me, because it'd be like, "Who has high school/college age responsible siblings who want to make some cash?" :laughing:
 
Since it's been a month and a half.....

Basically, I was thinking/hoping/praying that by now there would be some kind of sign as to how the family drama will go. The city rec venue only lets you hold a date one year out, so I thought that by the time June/July came around we could be figuring out which date we wanted for 2017.

Unfortunately... there was no sign.

This drama started around October/November. Also unfortunately, it is not with, say, a cousin, or an aunt or uncle. It's with my dad. Makes it more difficult to make a decision. We've had very little communication since it started. If you really want the sticky details, you can PM me.

The bottom line is, we don't know what we're doing. Not having the big wedding makes me very sad. Not because I want to be the center of attention (that's definitely not me), but because it was important to us to have those people there. But it really doesn't look feasible...
 
I am so sorry for the family drama, that really is the worst. *hugs* Feel free to PM if you need to vent.
 


Thanks everyone. What is it with weddings that brings out the family drama? I'm just bummed because we're stalled AGAIN, and I feel like all of my research/planning/budgeting/cost chasing for this plan is all going to go to waste (again), and I'm going to have to start all over AGAIN.
 
:sad1: so frustrating, I'm sorry.

On another note, I'd love to try and say hi while you're at Disneyland this month! Looks like you'll be there right around my birthday. :yay:
 
Now that I've been MIA for two months...

There's been a lot of discussion about what we're going to do, and we finally have a new plan! I'll update in the next couple of days...
 


I lied about the few days part. I wanted to things to be a bit more concrete... So here it is:

The Old Switcheroo
We're getting married at Disney - sort of!

I really threw myself into that July trip to Disneyland and had a nice time not thinking about wedding stuff (everything else that happened on the trip is a different story!)

After, I broke out the spreadsheets, PJs, Passporter, started listening to Carrie's podcast, joined a facebook group... and started re-calculating scenarios. We wanted to keep it at the $15k, or hopefully a bit under, as we'd like to do at-home receptions if we do a small Disney wedding.

I was really hoping for Mini-Wishes, but that came down to either WAY overpaying for photo/video through Disney, or picking random things to meet the Disney minimums and hiring outside photo/video. Either way, out of budget.

As for Escape, the hard limit on the guest count worried me... which was probably silly. I looked at Escape with a restaurant meal after, with a Disney Catered Event... Being the dork that I am, I ran all of these ideas in my spreadsheet with two versions - what we would most likely do/spend, and also add everything/trying to make them all equal ie characters, photo shoot, etc. Any way you sliced it, it was more than we wanted.

And then I found Paradise Cove.

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We had looked at Swan and Dolphin weddings, but we weren't crazy about the ceremony locations. Then, between the Passporter book and Facebook, I realized that quite a few places do Escape-style weddings around Disney, just minus a few $$. And I found Paradise Cove. We both fell in love with the ceremony site. They have a really pretty pavilion too, and we looked into having a small catered meal there, but we were getting upcharged for being small group. We also considered doing a mini-wishes with off-site ceremony, but man that $130 food and beverage minimum is killer. Going through Disney Catered Events is less, but then I couldn't wear my wedding dress, and I really don't want to buy a dress for a 20ish minute ceremony.

But there you have it - We are having a morning wedding at Paradise Cove, lunch in a private room at a restaurant (still working that out), and then doing a Dessert Party that evening. Things have been crazy here, and we hit a few snags, but I'm really happy with how it's working out.
 
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That looks like it'll be beautiful! I can't wait to see what you guys decide to do with it :teeth:

Thanks! I'm excited. Right now I'm trying to think of some decor, just enough to bring "us" into the space. But trying to remember money vs time spent there vs ease of setting up since we won't have tons of time. I might make little chair decorations that could just hang on the aisle chairs. And maybe some 3d type programs, like fans. I 'splurged' and added white fabric to the arbor after I negotiated the package down in price lol
 
I spent so much time researching things down in Florida, we've pretty much booked all of the big ticket items - ceremony site, lunch site, photographer, officiant... It was great to go down the checklist on the knot and knock all of those off! Last weekend, I FINALLY went and tried on a few dresses. All of this is making everything feel real and in motion!

Negotiating with the Venue

Here's my little story about this. Paradise Cove offers several intimate packages with different add-ons. The one most similar to an Escape wedding was $2100, with CD music instead of live, and no limo. We decided to go with their basic package instead because we thought it would work better with our plan.

The basic package includes 2 hours at the site, an officiant, 1 hour of photography, bouquet and boutonniere, and music played on CD - by the venue coordinator, not a guest (perk to me :laughing: because from what I had read, it seemed that Disney wouldn't run your iPod for you at Sea Breeze Point, which is what we considered). We thought it would be easier to have a cake delivered to the restaurant and do the cutting there than trying to transport it ourselves. I had also asked them if we could bring our own officiant because we had someone in mind, and they said they'd take $175 off the package. Score! And we could add a few people over the 20 person limit for $10 each.

Then I was thinking about photos - I knew we'd want more than an hour, and we could add an hour through them for $300, but I was thinking of taking some photos somewhere on Disney property before heading to the ceremony, and probably a few after for the cake cutting... and it would be easier to just hire someone for so many hours instead of around the ceremony... Could I bring my own photographer? I asked. They said of course, we'll take $300 off!

Then I reached a point where I was really at war with myself. For an additional $100, we could get a matching bouquet and boutonniere for the BM/MOH. BUT I have spent a good amount of time playing with my paper flowers, and I really wanted to do that... and my best friend's family would be driving down from Nebraska, so if I made a trip out there with a few fragile things (like the flowers) I wouldn't have to try and fly them down. On the other hand, if Zack and I had real flowers, and the paper ones were only for the BM/MOH, it wasn't really worth the time and gas money to make them and drive them to Nebraska. It would be the same or more in gas money to do that than just to have the venue make up the matching floral.

I made up my mind - I would ask about the floral, being the worst they could say was no. If the floral was use it or lose it, I'd go real flowers for everyone. If I could trade it out for a decor item or something, I would be paper flowering it up! They said they'd take $150 off the package if I provide my own floral, so I get to craft my heart out. There's still gas money to Nebraska, but there's the bonus of visiting people :goodvibes

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The poor girl I'm working with; every time she saw my name in her inbox she probably cringed! But we knocked the base package price from $1800 to $1175! $625 off - every penny counts, am I right? So after all of that, we added a few things, like fabric to the arch - I'm guessing something like that? I'm not too picky on this. We added a few guest spots, though now I realized I probably jumped the gun on that, at least it was only $50. We also added a surprise thing, which I will hint at with the below picture:

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After all of our additions and subtractions, and sales tax, we came to $1501! Woohoo! :hyper:

And that's how I negotiated with the venue.


Soooooo, does anyone want to see dress pictures? :rotfl:
 
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OF COURSE WE WANT TO SEE DRESS PICTURES!!!!!!!!

Also, awesome job on negotiating! I was horrible with that part haha.

Interested to see what the surprise is, and hope if it's what I'm thinking Joe never gets wind of it. He's already trying to talk me into a jet ski on the pond by our reception place *insert eye roll here*
 
Um, duh?! OF COURSE WE WANT TO SEE DRESS PICTURES!!!!! Please? ;)

And wtg on negotiating with the venue!

Haha thanks! I'm going to try and get them off FMILs phone tonight... I've got to work 12s the next few days, 3am to 3pm, and it's pretty quiet those first 4 hours so it's a good time to Dis! :thumbsup2

OF COURSE WE WANT TO SEE DRESS PICTURES!!!!!!!!

Also, awesome job on negotiating! I was horrible with that part haha.

Interested to see what the surprise is, and hope if it's what I'm thinking Joe never gets wind of it. He's already trying to talk me into a jet ski on the pond by our reception place *insert eye roll here*

Usually I just take everything at face value... but I keep trying to remind myself, the worst they can say is no, and it's not some soul-crushing no like, NO YOU CANNOT GO TO DISNEY. :rotfl: Plus we're still forking out a good chunk of change so I'm over feeling bad about asking a lot of questions.

And we won't tell Joe the surprise... :laughing:

Good job on the negotiations! And YES WE WANT DRESS PICS! :teeth:

Thanks! Hopefully I'll get them up this week. See 3am referenced above lol :lmao:
 
More news...

We're Going to Disney World!!

:jumping1:
We're sneaking in a DIY Planning Session at the end of January, a 4 day weekend. I'm very excited to get to see everything in person. I'm waiting to hear from Paradise Cove which day works best to stop by and see the venue, and we're going to have a meal at House of Blues, because that is where we will be having lunch after the ceremony. We are able to get all of our menu choices off of the regular menu, and since neither of us have been to a HoB anywhere it'll be nice to try the food, and see the private room we'll be using. I'd also like to see Illuminations from near where we're having our dessert party - not sure how that will work out...

Mainly this worked out do to credit card rewards. We had a separate budget for the honeymoon, because even before we decided to do the wedding in Orlando, we were thinking of doing a two week Disneymoon (or at least I was... :rolleyes:). I had already thought of putting all the wedding expenses on credit cards and paying them off right away, just for the reward points, but we ended up knocking out a lot of deposits at the same time. Plus we picked up a card and put the whole Disneyland trip on it to meet the signup bonus, picked up a few free Disney gift cards... At this point, we've pretty much covered enough honeymoon expenses with points to free up enough money to pay for our 4 day weekend. We really could have paid it anyways, but we've been using the whole minimal living expenses to pay down on student loans, plus save for the wedding/honeymoon/possibly a house... So I like that we've really just moved around money we planned on spending anyways instead of adding to the pot.

When we decided earlier this year to officially push the wedding back, we figured out how much we needed to save each month since we would have around another year, and then each dumped excess savings into student loans... to the tune of $6300 each. And we continued to stick extra in there. When I looked the other day, I realized we each have paid $12,500 on them this year... for reference, just the minimum on mine comes to around $4250 a year. And we've got some extra coming in until the end of the year - our 3 paycheck months, plus it's busy season at work for me. So I'm not gonna feel too bad if we go a little over our 4 day weekend budget, because when my pay period ends this Sunday, I'll have worked 138 hours. Yeah.

So basically, I feel like this:
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So I lied a bit... I'm going to use the excuse of being tired :rolleyes: Two weeks ago when I was going to do these, I had a pretty busy weekend at work, and by the time last weekend, my weekend off, rolled around, I was pretty done. We were also told (two days before our weekend off) that we would be working every weekend until Christmas except Thanksgiving and one weekend in December. AND THEN my coworker was supposed to be off just a few days this week, and I'm not sure what happened but he ended up not coming in all week, so this week became a 72 hour week :crazy2: I just keep telling myself, student loans... wedding expenses... :rotfl:

Anyways, on to...


The Dresses
in which I try on pretty dresses, and make weird faces

Back at the beginning of October, 19 months, 594 days after getting engaged, I FINALLY tried on some wedding dresses. It was a little weird :laughing: I think it was just a giant combination of feelings - like an out of body experience, how long it took to get to that point, not being able to take my mom or grandma, not enjoying being the center of attention, being too nice to say I HATE THIS... and also being really dang tired because I had to work from 3am to 8am that morning. Apparently I can't catch a break lately!

So even though I hadn't actually gone shopping for dresses after becoming engaged, I had poked around online. I looked at the David's Bridal site a lot, but nothing really jumped out at me. I also got it in my head that if David's was supposed to be budget, and that looking anywhere else would be terribly expensive, and I didn't want to spend too much on a wedding dress. Finally I got on the Knot and looked through wedding dresses, filtered by price, and saw that dresses not from David's weren't all $2000+ to start! Silly me! I saw multiple from the Voyage by Mori Lee line I liked, and then I found that they sold them at a store Zack's mom had mentioned to me a few weeks prior, but I hadn't looked into it (bad Alyssa). So I finally booked an appointment!

Now, before that appointment, I technically tried on one wedding dress - a few different times. It was when I wasn't seeing anything on David's website, I started checking some department store sites for wedding gowns, and I stumbled across one from JCPenney. I decided to risk ordering it because the price was so low, I wasn't terribly concerned with getting stuck with it if I ended up going with something else.

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Confession time: I actually have two of these in my closet right now. We're doing a dessert party but I can't wear a wedding dress since we're not through DFTW. This was such a low price I got a second, thinking I could make one knee/tea length for the dessert party with a colored slip underneath. I only spent $100 TOTAL for TWO dresses.
If this isn't the one, at least my search was not in vain, because it led me to this, which may be a shower/rehearsal/park/honeymoon dress... for $35

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And... on to the real appointment!

I took along Zack's mom, aunt, and grandma... I thought that it would be fun, and I also thought I might be their only chance for this with their family...



First stop was the bridal store for my appointment. I didn't have much for the girl helping me to go on... I said not TOO sparkly, long, maybe A-line, and under $XXX. But she was awesome. Her and her trainee went to pull some dresses, and we got to browse the racks until they were ready, so I found one to try on that I had seen online. They had a few Disney dresses, the Cinderella 205, the Belle 206, and a Snow White one, I can't remember which. I didn't end up trying any because they weren't my favorites (I couldn't do the glitter tulle skirt :laughing:), too big (not sure about ball gown), and more than I wanted to spend.



First Dress, and Weirdest Face

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This one probably would have been an immediate No, except I was still in the this is weird phase. It was pretty, but I wasn't sure about so much lace. It had a bit of a dropped waist, and I didn't like how it felt - that could have been a size thing, I'm not sure. And my face? Uh, maybe I was trying to shake my hair back...



Next Dress, picked by Me!

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Online I was really liking some flowy dresses, and this one had caught my eye. If I remember right, the buttons were fake and it zipped :thumbsup2 But before we even came out of the dressing room, I was like - too plain! I never would have expected that from myself. The top detail is very pretty - you can see it the model picture - and she added the sash with the rhinestone detail after - it's not on in the second picture. Looking at these after the fact, I'm not crazy about the straighter cut of the top. But I liked the skirt :goodvibes



Next!

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I liked the ruching on this one - but holy crap, it felt like it weighed 10 million pounds. All I could think was, I can't imagine wearing this in Florida - and I haven't even really been to Florida!



Dress, Take Four!

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This one was similar to the second dress, but knocked the second one out of the competition... I liked the sparkle on the bodice, and the thinner sash at the waist (this one was attached). The other sash was almost an inch thicker. But again, kind of straight across the top, now that I look at it again...



And we go a different direction!

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I decided to pull my hair up for the third picture, to show off the detail ;) I did try the Ivory over Blush like the model pictures. This was from a new budget line by Maggie Sottero. It was very different from the others so far and so pretty! I liked it, but I worried about it working with our venue... Is that silly? The illusion neckline made me think a bit of my mom's dress. I threw in that last picture for two reasons - It's probably wrong to wear your hair down with this, since it would cover some details, but I don't know what I want to do with my hair yet, and also because the corset thing they gave me to try on dresses hides a lot of the lower back details.



Hey, this one's not straight across!

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This one had sparkly rhinestone straps - also not one I would have picked up, because I would have thought they were too sparkly! :rotfl: I also liked this one a lot. Of course the straps were too long as is, they always are on me. You can kind of see in the picture that she's got a good 2in of strap clipped - it makes me laugh. More false buttons :goodvibes I do like the buttons - my mom's dress had them too.



Last and Least...

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This one was so collectively not a favorite that we didn't even take a picture of the back :rotfl: The girl pulled it last minute since I hadn't tried on any "traditional" wedding dresses. Eh, I think I would have lived. It was also heavy, and quite a few sizes too big. Even though she did a very good job clipping it, there were things that can't be changed - like the bust seams being on the outside of my boobs!


After this, it was off to David's Bridal!
I hadn't ended up making an appointment here... maybe if I had, my experience would have been better? I've seen some mixed feelings on David's and it seemed like it depends on the store. I knew it would be busy on a Saturday, but maybe they should warn you at the check-in desk - if you'd like more personalized attention, come back with an appointment? After my experience, I was really glad I went to the other place first. There, the girl was helpful, and picked out things I never would have chosen. I kind of felt like, this is my first time, but you help girls with this everyday so I liked the help/guidance.

After waiting a few minutes, a girl came out and asked me what kind of dress I wanted. I told her it was my first shopping trip and I wasn't quite sure, kind of told her the same thing I said at the first place. She told me I could look through the racks and if I found any I could hang them on the arms that jutted into the aisles, and she would come get them to take to a dressing room... then she left. I had zero idea what size to pull for myself, and by the time she came back and found me, and we went back down the aisles, some of the dresses I pulled out were gone. But I'd looked at so many I couldn't remember which ones - that alone probably didn't bode well for what I was pulling :laughing:

We headed off to a dressing room, giving me no time to wave down my entourage, and she asked if I'd like a corset top. I asked for a 36 A/B, and I got a 38 D. Trust me, my chest is NOT that big. I get that it's busy, maybe that's all they had, but I felt like you should say that... Not just hand it through the door. She zipped up the first dress, and that was the last I saw of her. One dress had a corset back and Zack's mom had to do it up for me. It seemed that she had another girl who had decided to purchase a dress, and she was helping her at the register when we left. She didn't say a thing to me - shouldn't you at least tell people you'll be back? It just left a sour taste in my mouth - apparently I wasn't worth her time. But I did try 3 dresses on.
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Pretty, but I wasn't crazy about the material. It was pretty wrinkled from the bag, which I know can be fixed, but there was also something about the feeling of the material I wasn't a fan of.



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Another lace dress. I figured I'd give it another shot. This one didn't feel weird like the one at the other shop. It was pretty, but not me. I did like the split in the skirt with the tulle.



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I think this was everyone else's favorite here, but also SUPER WRINKLED (I'm being crazy, I know) and plain.

I honestly couldn't rank these in a most to least favorite order. I felt a bit meh about them all. I didn't like the fabrics... the service didn't help... they really weren't any cheaper than the other store... and by the time we got out of there, around 2pm, I was feeling a bit sick from lack of sleep and food. At least we had found grandma a chair to sit in! It was definitely time to call it quits. We stopped for a late lunch, and when we took grandma home, we stayed for a few - and I was falling asleep sitting on the couch :rolleyes:

So I mainly ended up with two favorites... and they're completely different. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think everyone else had the same two favorites also!
The girl helping me at the first shop said I should come back in a few weeks and try the favorites, and maybe a few others. I looked around a bit to see if anyone else carried the lines I liked, and if I remember right I found two stores - one with each one. Of course a store couldn't carry both, that'd be too easy! I was mostly just curious about other styles from the lines, now that I know they're affordable. Everyone was telling me, you have plenty of time! And all the checklists seem to put me at January for ordering a dress... but with all these weekends to work... Maybe I'll take a day off in the middle of the week to see the other stores... :rolleyes:




 
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Just caught up on your PJ! I LOVE it I'm so happy you decided to get married around Disney World! We also kind of went through the same thing and our now getting married at house of blues!

I know you're pretty set on paper flowers, they look awesome! I am actually planning on doing sola flowers. They're wood based flowers you dip in acrylic paint/water.
 

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