Our Cartoon Selves are Getting Married

So about a month before the wedding, Girl Scout Wife had an idea that I knew would entail a lot of work for the both of us: button! In doing some research into Disney wedding perks, we learned that one of the things you can (and should) do when entering the parks is stop by Guest Services and pick up special buttons that you can wear that indicate that your trip is a part of a celebration. They have buttons for all kinds of things, from engagements to first visits to birthdays, and some of the most coveted buttons are the ones they give to people on honeymoon. Turns out, Disney has discontinued the "Just Married" buttons, and now only offers the "Happily Ever After" buttons. I hopped on eBay to see if any former brides/grooms were parting with theirs, and saw a bunch of the Disneyland buttons, but then when I found the Disney World ones my jaw dropped: none of them were priced at less than $50! That was a ridiculous amount to spend on buttons, so instead Girl Scout Wife suggested that we make some Just Married buttons of our own, and wear them next to the Happily Ever After buttons we were picking up when we got there. Of course, since we'd be making them ourselves, we could make enough for all of our guests to have one, so that they would all have a special button to wear around.

You're looking at $50 right here.

Girl Scout Wife did a bunch of research, and found a few other homemade buttons on the Internet that matched her vision for the buttons. Most of the buttons she liked had a cartoony representation of the bride and groom on them, along with some very stylized imagery of weddings, celebration, and Disney World. Luckily for us, my job in the gaming industry has introduced me to a large number of creative and talented individuals, one of whom happens to be a skilled cartoonist. I was nervous at first about asking him to do an illustration for us, and approached him first with the idea as work-for-hire. I asked him to estimate a cost as though this was a piece of freelance work, and built the cost of his illustration into our wedding budget. Even though in the end he decided to make the illustration his wedding gift to us, I can't emphasize enough: if you approach someone who has a special talent, one that they make a living off of, and ask them to do something using it for your wedding, pay them a fair rate for it. You wouldn't work for free, and creative individuals shouldn't be expected to either. If, like my friend, they turn down your payment, that's fine, but it's something that really bothers me when people try and take advantage of the skills of creative types.

Our cartoonist friend asked us to send over some reference images; as he put it, the way he sees us in his head is not necessarily the way the world sees us, and he wanted to make sure the cartoon was recognizably us. Individually, we sent over reference head shots, along with photos of our wedding attire, and since Girl Scout Wife's wedding dress was still a surprise, I couldn't see what reference images she sent. Once the illustrator got the cartoon back to us (and we were giddy from the moment we saw it), I set to work building the button image itself in Photoshop. I started with a circular pattern and put two rings, one inside the other, around the outer edge, using our base wedding colors for those rings. I then placed the illustration of the two of us at the height that I wanted, and created a wave-shaped break in the circle. I grabbed the green color from within the cartoon of my bow tie (which the cartoonist had modeled after the actual bow tie I wore in the wedding), and colored the entire bottom half that green. Behind us, I filled in the still-visible center of the circle with a blue gradient that starts from the top as the same navy blue shade as my vest in the cartoon. This gave us the basic shape of the button, and a general color scheme that matched the colors in the illustration.

Next came the lettering. I grabbed a couple of free Disney-related fonts from the Internet (the two I used were Waltograph, modeled after Walt Disney's own handwriting, and Orange Grove, the font used for the Disneyland log). I started with the same text used on the Disney honeymoon buttons (I'm Celebrating!) in Waltograph, and then curved the text to curve along the bottom edge of the button. Next, I put our basic button text (Tammie & Rodney's Fairytale Wedding) in Orange Grove, and below that I put the date in Waltograph again. At this point, the button was mostly done, but it was still looking a little stark, so I grabbed some genetic confetti clipart from Google Image Search and mirrored it in the background. As a finishing touch, I also put two Hidden Mickeys into the confetti, though truthfully on the final buttons you can't really see them. Still, in the raw image I've posted below, they stand out rather well.

Behold my graphic design prowess.

Once the image was complete, the time came to put together the physical buttons. First, I printed out a few test buttons on our black and white printer at home. Then, Girl Scout Wife borrowed a button maker from one of her fellow Girl Scout Leaders. Then came the trial-and-error process of figuring out how to size the printed out image in order to have it fit the button perfectly; when the image is too large, the button press won't seal, and when it's too small the button looks sloppy. Once we'd figured out the appropriate size for the image, I put several of the buttons into a single image (creating a 3x4 grid) and had them printed out on a high-quality printer at our local Staples. At that point, all that was left was to actually make the 16 buttons (plus two special buttons I made, replacing the "Tammie & Rodney's Fairytale Wedding" text with "Just Married" for us to wear after the wedding), a process that involved a lot of pushing down really hard on the button press and almost breaking our dining room table.

Girl Scout Wife and I hauled the buttons down to Florida with us, stuffed them into the welcome bags, and distributed them to our guests. They were worn some, but the real fun began when we wore them. Not only did they (plus the "Happily Ever After") buttons elicit frequent congratulations from various staff members and park guests, we had several people stop to look and ask us specifically about the ones we created. This, of course, gave us an opportunity to talk about how beautifully unique and creative we are, and it was much appreciated. In all seriousness, I do not regret creating those custom buttons in the slightest; the amount of attention they garnered was far more than just the generic buttons, and it led to some really great interactions with cast members.

Here's Girl Scout Wife sporting our homemade button, the official wedding button of Disney World, and her 1st visit button.

Welcome Brochures

Though we had already sent out two newsletters in the months leading up to our trip, both Girl Scout Wife and I had some lingering concerns about the plans being made by our families, and wanted to help everyone feel comfortable and welcome at our destination wedding. For a while now, Girl Scout Wife has been keen on the idea of doing welcome bags for our families. While there are many challenges in creating welcome bags for a wedding taking place all the way across the country, I'm instead going to focus on the parts that I had the biggest hand in, in this case the welcome brochure.

Getting started on creating a brochure for our wedding welcome bags was easy, since Microsoft Word and the Internet combine to have a bevy of templates available for use in all kinds of brochures. The real challenge was, once faced with six folded panels of text, what information to include? We wanted the brochures to be useful and informational, but we also had to keep in mind that, by the time our families received their welcome bags, they would already be in Florida and all of their plans would already be locked in.

The first page was simple, since it would serve as the front cover of the brochure and didn't need to be packed with text. We also included our cell phone numbers and a spot to write our room number at the Boardwalk on the front page, so that if any of our friends or family had any questions they would be able to contact us with relative ease. Another page could be taken up by the information on WedPics, which none of our family will know about yet. Of course, we'd want a wedding day itinerary (after all, it's the most important event of the trip), and even though some of the folks wouldn't be getting their brochures and welcome bags until a few days into the trip, I figured it couldn't hurt to list the other, pre-wedding activities and provide a few details. Another thing I'd seen other people do in their welcome letters was to provide the contact information for various information and service numbers (things like Disney dining, cab companies, etc.). That left us with one panel to fill, and I knew quickly what I wanted to put there: a listing of everyone attending the wedding. Obviously this is something that's only possible with a small wedding like ours, but I figured, since our families are unfamiliar with each other, having a cheat sheet with everyone's names on it would be useful.

The end result was pretty clean and simple, and I think it got the job done. Everyone seemed to like having the relevant information, and I know that some of our family members seemed glad to be able to reference it from time to time. Was it worth the effort that went into it? I don't know. But I'd rather provide that information to everyone and have them not need it than leave someone out in the cold.

Greetings from 30,000 Feet!

Well, the honeymoon is over. I mean literally. As you can probably tell by the fact that this blog stopped updating a few days before our wedding, we left for Florida and my chance to make any more updates vanished. Let me tell you, from the day before the wedding until just now has been a whirlwind, but a great one. I am currently writing this blog post while sitting aboard an Alaska Airlines non-stop flight from Orlando to Seattle, and thanks to the joy of $20 in-flight internet connections, I am able to get out there and do at least this one update.

Of course, a lot has happened in the last fifteen days, and I would be remiss as a groom-educating blogger if I didn't chronicle the things that happened, the plans that came to fruition (and those that went up in spectacular flames), the mistakes we made the the good decisions we benefitted from, and posted lots and lots of pictures and information from our trip. After all, I started this blog not only as a journal of what our own process of planning and enjoying a Disney World wedding and honeymoon is like, but also to provide a boots-on-the-ground view for anyone else looking to learn a little more about how the process works.

Fortunately for any desperate souls who have been suckered into reading this blog, I have been taking copious notes throughout the duration of our trip, and have actually written several blog posts at night while relaxing in our hotel room (usually while Girl Scout Wife--yeah, that's what I get to call her now--showered or watched television). I didn't bring a laptop on the trip, only my iPad Mini and a bluetooth keyboard, so I couldn't pepper the posts with my usual array of Google-nabbed images and terrible captions. As a result, I'm going to spend the next week or so posting those blog entries one or two a day, giving you readers time to follow along with our honeymoon ex-post-facto and giving me time to sort wedding and honeymoon photos.

As for how it went, all I'll say is this: while the whole trip was fantastic, it's funny how a single hour of Florida thunderstorms can dash the best-laid plans.