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.

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.

WedPics

A tip we picked up online from someone else (sorry, whoever you are; it's been so long ago that I've forgotten!) for our wedding is to take advantage of the fact that many, if not most, of our guests are going to have smart phones with them. Since we have two families spending almost a week in Disney World, sometimes together and sometimes apart, there's a lot to chronicle and keep as memories, and we only have a photographer for about three hours on our wedding day. Fortunately, phones with cameras and Internet access are ubiquitous among our guests, so we're going to ask all of our guests to get those phones out and snap lots of photos over the course of the week that we're there. Instead of having one photographer, we'll have 12 or so, taking photos of all of the pre- and post-wedding events and hopefully capturing some great, candid shots.

We're transforming our wedding guests into our personal paparazzi.

Of course, having a dozen people snapping photos during the trip doesn't do us any good if we don't have some way to aggregate them. Some websites recommend setting up a single repository on Photobucket or Flickr to which people can upload theses photos. However, I found setting those up to allow multiple people to upload to them to be a bit of a chore, so I started doing some research on dedicated apps for just this kind of event-based image collation. The one I ended up settling on was WedPics, for a number of reasons. First, it's free, which is a big boon. Second, it has apps native to both iOS and Android, which means that basically anyone in our family with a smartphone will be able to upload and view the photos for the trip. Lastly, the interface is easy, and you create a special wedding identifier that your family can use to connect their apps to your albums, automatically uploading everything to the right place. I think Girl Scout Fiancéeis also going to like the fact that the app can apply Instagram-like filters to the images before uploading them.

Man, they can do anything with filters these days.

I really hope it's going to work out; if it does, we'll have a lot of great photos from the trip. The biggest hurdle is going to be getting our families to remember to take the photos in the first place, and then to upload their pictures to the WedPics albums. We've put information about our WedPics album into our welcome brochures (which I'll talk about in a future blog post), so hopefully everyone will embrace this so we can come home with some great visual memories of the entire week.

Goodbye, Canada; Hello, New Fantasyland

It's easy for me to see how I was overly ambitious with some of my original plans for things to do and places to eat in Disney World, and the time came a few weeks ago when I had to make a hard decision and sacrifice one of our dining reservations. They days were just getting to jam-packed full, and I found myself scheduling us for three sit-down meals on a couple of our off days. A few weeks ago, I finally came to my senses for a couple of reasons. First, after having a huge lunch one day, Girl Scout Fiancée and I ended up skipping dinner one night, reminding me that neither of us can eat like we once did. The second reason is one of energy levels; as the time drew closer to the trip, both of us started spending almost every evening working on wedding preparation, and I could tell that soon both of us would be running on fumes and might need some days by the pool to recharge our batteries.

It was with great sadness that I had to bid goodbye to Le Cellier. I just didn't think we'd be able to squeeze in Via Napoli for lunch on one of our days off, and so it came down to deciding whether or not we wanted a fifth signature restaurant dinner, or pizza. I have fond memories of Le Cellier from when I was younger, but I've never been to Via Napoli, so I decided it would be a good chance to experience a new restaurant with both Girl Scout Fiancée and I never having tried it. I canceled my Le Cellier reservation, and moved my Via Napoli reservation into its spot, so on our first day at Epcot we'll be having lunch at the Living Seas and dinner in Italy.

Another new development includes shifting some plans around to try and get a lunch at Be Our Guest, which has been getting excellent reviews. Unfortunately, lunch is first-come-first-serve counter service, and the line to get in sometimes extends to a half hour or even 45 minutes.  The one saving grace is that it appears that many resort guests are invited to participate in a special Be Our Guest Lunch FastPass+, which does not count against your daily limit of FastPasses and lets you go to the front of the line. I'm hoping we'll get an invitation to participate, as I doubt we're going to want to spend valuable park time just waiting in line for lunch.

The big wrinkle in that plan, though, is the dedication ceremony for the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride on May 2nd...the very day we'll be going to the Magic Kingdom for the first time. I've already moved all of our FastPasses out of New Fantasyland, because I can almost guarantee you that it is going to be packed with people there for the dedication; I just hope we can get in and see the inside of Beast's castle, because it's something totally new to me.

A Quick New Addendum to Our Snack List

Just saw a post over on the Disney Food Blog about the new Mickey Kitchen Sink Sundae, debuting at both the Plaza Ice Cream Shop and the always-popular Beaches & Cream. The sundae is a sizable amount of ice cream, a boatload of toppings, though it looks like a pretty standard ice cream sundae. The big draw of the sundae is the container it comes in: a sink-shaped pair of Mickey Mouse's pants. Yes, you too can eat ice cream out of Mickey's pants.

I need you to know how mightily I struggled to keep this caption family-friendly.

Apparently, the Beaches & Cream version contains additional items and toppings that the one in the Magic Kingdom does not, including a brownie. It's also astronomically priced for ice cream: a whopping $23 for the sundae. Now, you get to keep Mickey's plastic pants, and that's a pretty cute souvenir, but it it really worth more than we'll pay for an entire lunch one day? I dunno. It's something to keep an eye on, though, because I'm a sucker for keepsakes.

Putting Together Some Disney Duds

I've mentioned it in a few previous posts, but both Girl Scout Fiancée and I have lost quite a bit of weight since our engagement. Just comparing our engagement photo shoot with things like the profile photo I have up now makes it pretty obvious how much we've lost, but as of this writing I've lost 110 lbs. since we got engaged, and Girl Scout Fiancée has lost a proportional amount. Of course, this leaves us with something of a problem every few months: we don't have any clothes that fit us. Since summer ends in Seattle in August, the last time I wore all of my summer clothes was about 50 lbs. ago, and now even the shorts I was wearing just fall down around our ankles. We'll be heading to the heat of Florida in just a little over a week, and so this past weekend the time was right for us to do a major summer clothes shopping expedition, because neither of us wanted to walk around on our honeymoon looking like little kids dressed up in their parents' clothes. 

Like this, only not adorable.

Since we settled on Disney World for our wedding and honeymoon, Girl Scout Fiancée has been following a fashion blog called Disney Bound. The premise of the site is that they put together outfits inspired by characters from Disney movies, using color schemes for those characters paired with more modern fashion. Girl Scout Fiancée has taken the idea and run with it, and in the weeks leading up to our shopping expedition she put together an outfit based on Snow White, along with a couple of variants. We have dinners planned at four pretty nice restaurants at Disney World (Yachtsman Steakhouse, Victoria & Albert's, Jiko, and California Grille), and we're going to want to look nice on the nights that we go to those dinners. So, in addition to shopping for clothes to wear at the resort and around the parks, I decided to follow Girl Scout Fiancée's lead and put together a few outfits of my own. After all, if she's going to look that good, I've got to at least keep pace!

Mickey Mouse

How can you not love the mouse himself as inspiration for an outfit? Back at Halloween, I snagged a pair of red jeans and a black shirt for a Mickey Mouse costume, and my first thought was just to use that. However, it doesn't quite match Mickey's look, especially not how he appears in the parks. I did a little Internet research and found some photos of Mickey in Disney World, and used that as a starting point.

If you're going to dress like a Disney character, why not go for the Big Cheese himself?

At first, I'd planned to wear a white t-shirt under a black blazer, along with the red jeans and my black dress shoes. Despite the fact that a jacket-and-t-shirt-combo can look hip and trendy on Seattle hipsters, I just didn't feel like I was pulling it off (though, I'll admit that part of that is because both my jacket and my t-shirts were far too large for me, and made me look disheveled). During our shopping expedition, I came across a nice white dress shirt, and even found a great-looking black dinner jacket at a secondhand that looked amazing on me (it was the equivalent of a medium, where my existing jacket was an XL). Now the Mickey-inspired outfit involves the red jeans, black dress shoes, a white dress shirt, and the black dinner jacket; I may use the bowtie from my wedding outfit with this, too, depending on how hot it is and if I can stand to have my collar closed. I'm also considering going back to Kohl's on Sunday or Monday to grab one of the black vests they had on clearance; I won't wear the vest with the jacket, but instead replace the jacket with the vest for a different look that uses the bulk of the same clothing items. That gives me something to wear to Yachtsman Steakhouse, and then wear the other version of the outfit to California Grille.

Aladdin.

At one point, Girl Scout Fiancée pointed me toward an awesome outfit that was inspired by Aladdin on DisneyBound. Since Aladdin is my favorite Disney movie, it took no convincing to get me to pursue it. Even better, I already had many of the components for the DisneyBound version of the outfit.

Though I won't be buying a magic lamp.

All I needed was a brown dress shirt and some slacks, both of which were easy to come by and both of which I could wear to work after the honeymoon is over. My brown work shoes are a little scuffed and uneven in color, but a little shoe polish will take care of the scuffs, and may even make it look more like the "street rat" version of Aladdin that the outfit is inpired by. I picked up the shirt and slacks, along with a nice new belt, on our shopping expedition, and I'd planned on using the vest from my wedding outfit as the vest for this one. Then, at the same store where I found my dinner jacket, I also found a vest that I knew I had to grab: it was a deep, royal purple, easily one of the flashiest pieces of formalwear I'd ever seen, and I could only imagine that it was once part of an extremely fabulous suit worn by Jerome from Morris Day and the Time. It's a little big, but I'm going to wait and see how I'm feeling about the whole outfit the day that we go to Jiko before making the call on the navy vest vs. the purple vest. Even better, Girl Scout Fiancée found a blue dress that is almost the same shade as Jasmine's, so she's putting together a Jasmine-inspired outfit to wear that same night.

Victoria & Albert's

Not every outfit I put together for our trip is inspired by a Disney character. Leading up to our shopping trip, I was getting very nervous about what I was going to wear to Victoria & Albert's. On the one hand, the dress code specifically calls out dinner jackets for me, which are not the same as a blazer, or even a simple suit jacket. On the other hand, I'd read a lot of posts by men who had simply worn their business suits, or even just slacks and a blazer, to Victoria & Albert's. Also, we're going to be sitting at the Chef's Table, not out in the main dining room, and I've seen enough reviews to know that it's a much more relaxed environment. Even still, there's something about me (guess I'm Lawful Good after all) that doesn't like breaking the rules, so I felt an insane amount of relief when I found the dinner jacket during our shopping trip. Girl Scout Fiancée showed me the dress that she plans to wear that night (she also wore it out for her bachelorette party), and it mostly black and pink. Since my dinner jacket and pants are black, I found a pink dress shirt at Kohl's and got a nice tie to go with it at Nordstrom Rack, putting together a pretty nice outfit that not only matches what Girl Scout Fiancée is going to wear but also didn't break the bank in the process.

Failed Outfit: Prince Charming.

There was one other outfit that I wanted to put together for the trip, but failed to do so. On the DisneyBound page I found a great looking inspiration for a Prince Charming outfit, which would have looked nice at any of our fancy dinners, or would have been perfect the night we went to Cinerella's Royal Table (though I'd probably want to run back to the Boardwalk to change after a day at the parks, since I wouldn't want to wear it all around the park that day).

This guy is definitely Doing It Right.

Unlike my other outfits that I put together, I'd need to obtain a lot of more expensive items for this one. I planned to start with the same red jeans and white dress shirt that would be a part of my Mickey Mouse-inspired outfit, then add a tan vest, a gold tie, and a gold belt, plus some nice brown dress shoes. Unfortunately, all of the components I needed were expensive. There weren't any tan vests at the secondhand stores, so I would have had to buy new, and none of the places I looked for vests had anything in the right color. My fallback would have been a jacket (though I wasn't thrilled at the idea of doing the jacket with no vest), but jackets are even more expensive. I ended up abandoning this outfit (for now; there's always the anniversary trip next year), and will stick with the three really nice ones I put together already.

Dessert and Snack To-Do Lists

I went into detail some time ago about the lengthy list of restaurants that Girl Scout Fiancée and I are going to be visiting during our honeymoon. Though both of us have made great strides with our health, eating habits, and weight, we both agree: the honeymoon is for us to enjoy, so bring on the delicious food! With that in mind, I decided to start compiling a post about the various delicious snacks and desserts out there that aren't a part of the meals we'll be eating. So, here's a list of all of the non-restaurant items I'm looking forward to trying out on the honeymoon. A huge shout out to the Disney Food Blog for all of the photos contained herein; all of these items are reviewed on that site, so check it out!

First stop on the delicious-and-bad-for-you food tour is the Magic Kingdom. I'm really looking forward to trying the sweet cream cheese pretzel at the Lunching Pad in Tomorrowland. After having something similar at a breakfast food truck in Portland, I'll be making sure to head to Sleepy Hollow and grab a Nutella and fruit waffle sandwich. For breakfast one morning, I'm really hoping to snag a maple cinnamon roll from Gaston's Tavern. It's already going to be tough to find room for another dessert at the Magic Kingdom (since we're doing the Tomorrowland Terrace Fireworks Dessert Party) but it's going to be difficult for me not to stop into the Main Street Bakery for a homemade ice cream sandwich. Maybe one night on a non-park day, or after dinner at Jiko.

Sweet cream cheese pretzel.

Nutella waffle sandwich with fruit.

Maple cinnamon roll

Homemade ice cream sandwich.

Epcot is going to be a virtual cornucopia of delicious treats, I already know. I have penned visits into the bakery at the France pavilion for several nights, and I just know that I'll be walking away stuffed to the gills. Still, there are quite a few other snack offerings at Epcot I'm dying to try. Of course, one of the first ones that I hear a lot about is the school bread at the Norway pavilion, which looks delicious. Anything with custard in it stands out to me. As a sucker for salted caramel, the chocolate-covered sea salt caramel from Karamell-Küche in the Germany pavilion is on my hit list. Then there are the competing ice cream-like sandwiches, the gelato cookie sandwich from the Italy pavilion and the pressed brioche ice cream sandwich at L’ Artisan des Glaces in the France pavilion.

School bread.

Chocolate-covered sea salt caramel

Gelato cookie sandwich

Pressed brioche ice cream sandwich.

Hollywood Studios is not really known for its snacks, though in addition to sporting additional places to get some of the other snacks on this list, there are a few snacks unique to the park. I'm not usually a huge fan of carrot cake, but the carrot cake cookie at the Writer's Stop sounds delicious. I also know I have to try the Butterfinger cupcake from Starring Rolls, and that I might have to fight Girl Scout Fiancée for every bite.

Carrot cake cookie.

Butterfinger cupcake.

Not every delicious treat is found in the parks. I'm sure I can pretty much find them anywhere, but one thing I love (and haven't been able to eat since we started trying to lose weight) are the chocolate croissants, which appear at many different breakfast buffets. Of course, one of the big perks to staying at the Boardwalk is that the Beach Club (and thus, Beaches & Cream), is only a short walk away, making obtaining a No Way Jose sundae pretty easy.

Chocolate croissants.

No Way Jose.

There are also a number of snacks that you can in multiple places. I know I'll be labeled as not a True Disney World Fan for saying this, but I've never had a Dole whip, and I've got my eye on the pineapple Dole whip float.

Pineapple dole whip float.

So, here's the real question: what did I miss? What are Girl Scout Fiancée going to kick ourselves for not grabbing when we're hungry for a snack, or something sweet?

Our Magic Bands Are Here!

You can tell that you're getting close to the start of your trip when two things arrive: your luggage tags for Disney's Magical Express, and your MagicBands! We received our luggage tags a few weeks ago, and just this week our MagicBands arrived. Leading up to about 30 days before our trip begins, we'd been asked (each time I looked at my itinerary page on MyDisneyExperience) to customize our MagicBands, picking a color and a name associated with them. Since Girl Scout Fiancée and I are likely to return for another trip in the next year, we decided to put more fun names on these MagicBands, making them a keepsake of our wedding trip.

Folks who know us won't be surprised at our color choices.

Like all of the new MagicBand/MyDisneyExperience paraphernalia that we've received in the last year, the MagicBands come in an Incredibles-themed package. The box is actually quite large, especially compared to the MagicBands, which are, in turn, relatively small. The inside of the box has some simple instructions on it, because wristbands require instructions (hey, I get it; new technology frightens and confuses people).

Mrs. Incredible has sealed the package tight.

And in case of a water landing...

Of course, like many of the things we're getting from Disney before our trip, I'm now trying to think of ways to preserve them without creating just a box o' junk under the bed for the rest of our lives. It also helps that the MagicBand unlocks something very special in my Disney Infinity game, as this video shows.I tried to shoot my own video, but trying to juggle an Xbox controller, an iPhone, and the Disney Infinity stuff proved too much.

First Honeymoon Registry Gifts

I thought today might be a good chance to update everyone on how the honeymoon registry is working out for us. When we first set everything up, we didn't really tell anyone about it, so we went months without anyone buying us any gifts off of our registry. Once we sent out the first batch of invitations to our Seattle reception, we got our first gift (from someone who isn't going to be able to make it to reception, alas).

The nice thing about the website is that it sends you an e-mail each time a new gift is received. The weird aspect of this is that there is a delay of a day, sometimes two days, between the time the gift has been received and the time the e-mail goes out. Realistically, this doesn't really matter that much; no one need to know instantly when they receive a gift on their registry.

No, I need to know at the exact moment someone sends me a gift!

One thing that did come up is that, once you receive your first gift, you also receive an e-mail from the honeymoon registry explaining how to actually get your gifts. It's pretty standard stuff; bank transfer, check, etc. The only weird caveat is that you are limited to claiming gifts from the registry to three times, so I guess you'd better be really sure that you want to claim your gifts? Seems a bit arbitrary, but I'm sure there's a reason. They also helpfully show you how much of a cut they are taking out of the gifts, which we knew was going to happen, and show you what your actual balance is.

Right now, the only thing I'm a little concerned about is that the invitations we sent out were to our party here in Seattle...which doesn't start until almost a full month after we leave for Florida. Now, if many of our guests are like Girl Scout Fiancée and I are, they may not even be thinking of a wedding gift until, oh, say, the day before the reception, at which point we'll already have been back from our honeymoon for two weeks. Are we putting people in an awkward spot, then, when they go to our registry to get us a gift, only to discover that we're already back from our honeymoon? Fortunately, Girl Scout Fiancée and I have two more trips to Disney planned for the year (one at Christmas, and one next year for our first anniversary) to take advantage of our annual passes, so if anyone waits until the last minute they can still give us gifts off of our honeymoon registry. At some point, I guess it just transforms into our anniversary trip registry!

Wedding registry, transform and roll out!

Flower & Garden & Fireworks

The Epcot Flower & Garden Festival will be in its last days when we arrive for our wedding and honeymoon, and one of the things I'm hoping we have time for is sampling food at many of the special outdoor kitchen kiosks that will be spread around the World Showcase. Fortunately for my planning efforts, the Disney Food Blog has just posted a great run-down of all of the different menus, allowing me to start putting together my Must Eat list for the trip.

We have also learned that on May 1st there will be a very special fireworks show at Disney's Hollywood Studios, likely to celebrate the park's 25th anniversary (Wow, 25 years; I remember going to the park the year it opened!) which puts another conundrum in front of us. We hadn't planned on activating our annual passes until Friday, May 2nd, for the first official day of the honeymoon. However, since this looks to be a one-night-only fireworks event, it seems like a big missed opportunity not to go. Of course, there are other potential drawbacks, including the almost assuredly high crowds that will be there for the event, and the need to juggle our dinner at Yachtsman Steakhouse that night, but those can be overcome. For a unique fireworks show, I'm sorely tempted.

Keep Checking Those Specials!

Earlier this week I took advantage of something that everyone planning a Disney wedding, honeymoon, or even just a Disney vacation should know about: special rates! Yes, on Monday, Disney made available special room rates for many resorts. This is something that I've known was coming for a while, but I thought it would be worth mentioning again briefly. You see, I booked our hotel rooms nearly a year in advance simply to reserve them; thanks to Disney's generous cancellation policy on hotels and the courteous nature of their staff, I knew that making modifications and even changing lengths of stay or dates would be something I could do several times as the wedding gets closer. With the initial reservations in place with a year to go, I wasn't taking any chances.

The only Disney-related gambling I can endorse.

Then, when Disney made a new room rate available this week, I was able to call up the reservations hotline, speak with a very nice representative, and asked them to change my reservation over from the rate I had (which did have a modest discount on it, for being a AAA member) to the promotional rate that they had released earlier in the week. The customer service rep was able to find my reservation, and the promotional rate, with no issues, and made the change in a matter of minutes. All told, the new rate is about a 15% improvement over the rate I had previously, which, on a 14-night stay at a Deluxe resort, is no small chunk of our budget. This was also simply a modification to our existing reservation, and the representative had no need to cancel and re-book or anything like that; accordingly, our confirmation number did not change, everything remains linked to our MyDisneyExperience accounts, and there seem to have been no issues thus far. I'm also keeping my eye out for a better discount for Annual Passholders, which has not yet been released, but for which I'm hoping we qualify (given that we'll be Annual Passholders by virtue of getting married there).

I highly recommend booking well in advance to reserve your room, then asking for the reservation to be modified when a new rate comes out. That way, you have the peace of mind knowing that, at the bare minimum, your hotel stay is reserved, even if it's not at the rate you want. You can find the current specials by logging into MyDisneyExperience and going to Places to Stay, then clicking on View Special Offers. Or, just follow this link, which is probably easier right now, though I doubt you'll want to have to route through this blog in the future.

Right there, on the bottom of the right-hand column.

If you've booked your stay (or are about to) but have not yet seen any discounted rates released, you probably want to take a look at this MouseSavers page, which shows when discounts have been historically released. In the case of the Annual Passholder discount I'm looking for, for example, those seem to not show up until March or thereabouts, so I'll be keeping an eye out toward the end of next month. I also spend some time keeping an eye on the Dis Boards resort discount codes forum, and subscribed to the thread pertaining to the time period of our stay. I actually was aware that the discount special was coming some weeks ago, thanks to intrepid Dis board members, so once a thread gets created for the month of your trip, don't be afraid to subscribe to the thread. As it turns out, having a lot of folks looking for the same thing is a lot easier than trying to do it by yourself.

Wedding Wednesdays

Late last year I suggested to Girl Scout Fiancée that we set aside one night a week to work on wedding stuff, and I had suggested Wednesday since that was one of the few nights each week that we could usually guarantee some time together. This was an outgrowth of an earlier idea I had, which involved us watching one Disney movie a week in the ramp up to the wedding and honeymoon, so all of the movies would be fresh in our minds when we reached Disney World. As things often do when you're busy, we never really got either of those things off of the ground, but by the luck of the calendar (with New Year's Day falling on a Wednesday) we had the perfect excuse to kick 2014 off right, starting up Wedding Wednesdays today (yes, we're calling it Wedding Wednesday, a name that beat out MatriMondays, Tie-The-Knot-Tuesdays, and There's-Still-Time-To-Back-Out Thursdays).

Though Fantasy Fridays might still be on the table, if I can get Girl Scout Fiancée to buy some princess outfits.

This evening, after Girl Scout Fiancée made a delicious batch of Hoppin' John as our New Year's Day dish (black eyed peas for luck, spinach for money in the new year), we started by talking about a cocktail hour. Last year, our wedding coordinator had suggested that we consider adding a cocktail hour after the ceremony. According to him, with these afternoon ceremonies guests sometimes tend to wander off instead of sticking around for photos, and a cocktail hour helps give them something to do. We've also been concerned about the amount of time folks would have to go get dinner and then be back for our dessert party at Epcot, and we recently got some news about said dessert party that really nudged us toward considering adding hors d'oeuvres in the post-ceremony, pre-dessert party time. Apparently, the Canada Overlook area where we're having our dessert party isn't great for photos of the bride and groom silhouetted by fireworks. With that being the case, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to pay for a professional photographer to come to the dessert party, so we're considering taking the money we would have spent on that and instead putting it toward the hors d'oeuvres. We also just bought our plane tickets (non-stop redeye on Alaskan Airlines from Seattle to Orlando? Yes, please) and ended up spending less than I'd budgeted, so that plus the photography money should cover the costs of a cocktail hour. So, our first task for Wedding Wednesday was combing through the catering guide that our wedding coordinator sent us last year and seeing if we could put together a basic menu. We came up with two potential menus, and a whole bunch of questions, so my next task was composing an e-mail to Danny asking him about the details of the cocktail hour. We'll see what he has to say, but if things pan out I think the transition from wedding to dessert party is going to go much more smoothly.

Did you know that wedding guest boredom is the #1 threat to fun in America today?

The next task for Wedding Wednesday was to start putting together the mailing labels for the invitations to our Seattle reception. Girl Scout Fiancée designed the invitations on Invitations by Dawn, and we ordered our first wave before the holidays. We've had to break out list of folks we're inviting into different waves, since our venue can only accommodate a little over 100 people, and we know a lot more than 100 people. So our first wave consists of people who live out of town who we would like to come, but we're not sure if they will. Once we get our RSVPs back from them, we can send out the second wave, which consists of our local friends. We're pretty sure we're going to be able to have everyone come that we want to, since we don't expect a lot of out of town friends to be able to make it; Seattle is in a pretty remote corner of the country, and it's a long way to ask people to travel for a four-hour event, especially folks with kids. Still, some of our dear, distant friends might surprise us, so we need to check with them first before we go crazy inviting everyone I've ever gamed with here in Seattle. I spent a little while compiling mailing addresses, printing address labels, and sending e-mails and Facebook messages out to everyone else collecting their addresses. The best part is, I get to do it again in a couple of months!

With one sheet of address labels in hand, we headed down to the living room for the main event of the first Wedding Wednesday: a screening of the new The Little Mermaid blu-ray that I got Girl Scout Fiancée for her birthday this year (which, as she was quick to point out just now, alerts all of you that Girl Scout Fiancée just had a birthday). While we watched the movie, I wrote the names of each potential guest on their invitation (by hand; each of these invitations is blessed with my very touch!) and then Girl Scout Fiancée put the appropriate mailing label on them. Now we need only attach postage (and return postage) and the fine folks at the United States Postal Service will send forth the summons to Seattle for all of our distant friends and family.

They shall come to my wedding reception like Vader summoned before the Emperor.

I'd forgotten how much I liked The Little Mermaid; it's just got a certain magic to it that makes me grin when I'm watching it. Like many Disney movies, it's much shorter than it is in my memories. I guess when I saw all these movies as a kid, they seemed to last so long (especially compared to a 22-minute episode of He-Man), but the movie zips along at a brisk pace. There's no slowness in the film, and even the songs are over before you realize it. Unlike some of my staple Disney favorites, like Aladdin or The Emperor's New Groove, it'd been a while since I'd seen The Little Mermaid, so I kept saying, "Oh yeah, I love this part!" in my head over and over again. I'm really looking forward to each subsequent Wedding Wednesday so we can delve back through the Disney vaults and I can remember why I liked each one of them. Next week is likely going to be the new Mary Poppins blu-ray (also a Christmas gift I gave to Girl Scout Fiancée), and then after that we'll see.

Hipster Ariel meme: where the Venn diagram of Seattle resident and Disney fan overlap.

I'm hoping that, by setting aside Wedding Wednesday for us to work on wedding stuff, we're going to be able to slowly and reliably chip away at all of the things we have to do before the wedding and honeymoon, and the Seattle reception, instead of trying to do it all in one big blast right at the end. Plus, with the carrot of getting to watch a Disney movie every Wednesday and continually psych ourselves up for Disney World, there's something to look forward to other than sticking address labels or going through checklists. There's also some fun tasks yet to do, like writing our vows and maybe working with our officiant on the ceremony, so it's not all work. The big drawback is that we actually only have another 16 Wedding Wednesdays to go before the actual wedding (conveniently also on a Wednesday), so we won't be able to watch all of the Disney classics. What do we prioritize? The princess movies? Only our favorites? Only films we haven't seen in a long time? We've watched The Sword in the Stone recently, and Mary Poppins is next week, but other than that we've got to make some tough calls. I know Robin Hood has to go on the list, and I really want to put Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella on there. What about Peter Pan? Lady and the Tramp? Lion King? Mulan? I feel like I also want to put Aladdin on there because it's my favorite, but I can quote that one more or less verbatim; do I really need to watch it again? I have a feeling Girl Scout Fiancée and I need to make a list soon so we don't end up leaving off something one of us really wants to watch.

Honeymoon Registry Alternative

A couple of years ago, Girl Scout Fiancée and I started going to a new and awesome dentist's office right in the same office plaza where she has her office. One of the nice perks of going to this office is that they reward you for successfully referring someone to their office, to the tune of a $100 gift card from any place you like. Recently, through a stroke of luck, Girl Scout Fiancée referred someone to the dentist's office and had the keen insight to ask for a Disney gift card. At the time, I thought that seemed like a great way to get some spending money for the parks during our honeymoon; little did I consider the greater possibility of using them as an alternative to the Honeymoon Registry.

When I see this, I see a delicious steak at Le Cellier.

As I learned through a little bit of Internet research, Disney gift cards can be redeemed for just about anything during a Disney World vacation--including food, hotel rooms, and park tickets. Since food and hotel rooms are going to take up a lot of our honeymoon budget, this seemed like a good use of any gift cards we might receive. Moreover, Disney gift cards don't expire and don't have any fees, so they're just as good as cash (except you can't be tempted to spend it elsewhere).

Due to the craziness of the holidays, some of our relatives didn't get a chance to send us any Christmas presents, and decided they wanted to contribute to the wedding instead (which, admittedly, is what I asked all of my family to do this year for Christmas). I suggested Disney gift cards as an alternative for these relatives, since the honeymoon registry does take a cut out of any gift, and close relatives have our address and can just send us things directly. For more distant relatives or friends, the honeymoon registry is still probably a good choice, because your best man/maid of honor/other family members can spread the link around easily and quickly.

Also, digital donations are pretty disappointing to open on Christmas day.

There are also some perks to buying Disney gift cards ourselves. Some stores let you buy gift cards at a discount, while our local Safeway (where we do all of our grocery shopping) occasionally runs a special where the purchase of gift cards nets you 5X reward points toward gas rewards. Seeing as how, when I fill up my tank, gas rewards have saved me upwards of $20 on the whole tank, that's a sizeable percentage of a gift card's value recovered right away. That doesn't even take into account the extra rewards points I'll earn on my credit card, which I wouldn't normally get just putting that money into our savings account. Of course, we have lots of non-Disney expenses coming up, so I wouldn't want to lock our entire wedding fund up in gift cards, but grabbing one or two here and there could be a nice way to chip at the mountain of expense instead of trying to blow it up all at once. I would say, though, that for anyone looking to do the honeymoon registry, Disney gift cards seem like they could be a nice alternative way to help pay for the honeymoon without going through a third party vendor.

More "Presents" from Disney

December has been a slow month for wedding and honeymoon planning, as faithful readers can almost certainly tell. Combining the fact that we have few decisions to make and that the holiday season is always packed-to-the-brim full of holiday parties, gift-buying, visiting friends and family, and scrambling like a madman to get all of my work done before vacation begins, I haven't had much time (or need) to update the blog. Fortunately, Disney sent us some more goodies in the mail for me to blog about, and since it's Christmas day and we are killing a little time, I might as well write a little Christmas blog about a present from Disney. So sit back and enjoy another Lazy Man's Blog: The Unboxing.

One cold and rainy day in December, the mailman delivered a box with the face of none other than Mr. Incredible (star of Pixar's best film, The Incredibles, a fact that is beyond argument for all rational minds) adorning its outside. I'd heard rumors that Disney was sending little packages out to many people that had a Disney vacation coming up, but it doesn't seem to be something that everyone is getting so I wasn't expecting this one. The image of Mr. Incredible, however, is merely a paper wrapper, and inside is...yet another box. The box inside that is actually pretty cool and sturdy, and I can see myself repurposing it for some of my gaming supplies. The top of the box is embossed with a Mickey Mouse head, as you can see in the photos below.

"Anyone who disagrees that mine is the best Pixar movie is getting a fist in the kisser!" says Mr. Incredible.

Boxes within boxes: the new Disney way.

Opening the inner box reveals a few more layers of goodies, including a helpful piece of cardboard telling you what's in the box, so that you don't miss anything as you dig down through the layers of the box like an archaeologist hunting for dinosaurs. There's also a loose piece of paper that reveals the true purpose of this package: to orient you with MyMagic+, Disney's new all-in-one trip management system tied tot he MagicBand technology that is rolling out in tests right now, and possibly in actual blanket use in the new year. Apparently, Disney really wants to make sure that everyone is aware of MyMagic+ and all of the upcoming changes, which is understandable for anyone who hasn't done any of their trip planning over the Internet. For Girl Scout Fiancée and I, though, this was all old news; we've been using the website for months, as evidenced by all of the previous posts I've made about dining reservations and trip planning. I guess whoever is in charge of sending out these kits has no way of knowing if I'm fully aware of the MyDisneyExperience website or not, so everyone gets one!

Like a terrible-tasting layer cake.

Thank goodness this was on top; the anticipation of waiting several seconds to see what lay within was killing me!

It was upon reading this that I began to suspect this was a package for the non-obsessed trip planner.

Below all of that is a manual that is your standard vacation-planning flyer, and it includes suggestions on rides, shows, and other things-to-do while on your Disney vacation. This was something I wasn't surprised by, as it's a pretty standard method for keeping you excited even though your vacation is still several months away. Honestly, I love getting mail from Disney, even if it's information that's readily available on the Internet, because it does succeed in keeping my excitement up. Moreover, the entire insert is filled with Incredibles images, hitting both my love of Disney and my love of superheroes over and over again.

Dash looks like he's ready to get away from his family...

The booklet is customized for our trip, including my last name on the front, information about our specific hotel throughout, and so forth.

The last page actually contains a refrigerator magnet.

At the bottom of the box was the real treasure: a Disney flash drive! When I saw this, I nearly cackled with delight. What could be on it? What is so important that Disney felt the need to send me physical media, something that is no small fee to manufacture, something that needed to be delivered by such a secure method that it couldn't be sent via e-mail. I feel like Ralphie when he gets his decoder ring, and just like Ralphie the answer to all of my questions is nothing but ultimate disappointment. After popping the flash drive into my computer, the autorun system brings up a web page, and then plays a pair of videos teaching you how to use MyDisneyExperience. That's it. The videos aren't even loaded onto the flash drive; it literally just connects to the Internet through your browser. There is no reason why this couldn't have been sent in an e-mail link and been just as effectively done.

Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine.

At least it looks cool.

And it glows bright green when you insert it into your computer!

Combining two more of my loves: Disney and Tron.

In the end, this package is nice but ultimately unnecessary. We're young, hip, Internet-savvy individuals, I'm plugged into the online Disney community, and even Girl Scout Fiancée has been hitting up message boards and MyDisneyExperience for months, so this didn't really tell us anything that we didn't already know. On the one hand, it's nice that Disney is reaching out to guests, whether they need it or not, to smooth the transition to the new system. And I'm ultimately very optimistic about our digital vacation planning future. On the other hand, part of me can't help but wonder how many other families are going to receive a package like this and feel exactly the same way. In the end, I basically got a free, awesome flash drive with a glow-in-the-dark Mickey head on it, so I'm going to view this as a nice souvenir that came packaged with a bunch of information I already had, and say I came out ahead. Thanks, Disney!

Cinderella's Royal Pain in the--hey there, kids!

At the end of October, I embarked on a magical quest. This quest had one thing as its goal: to secure dining reservations at many amazing restaurants around Disney World for our wedding. This quest was, for the most part, successful, though a quick glance back at the post I made on the first day of November reveals that I did fail to get one of my top-tier reservations, Cinderella's Royal Table during the Wishes fireworks show.

I typically prefer this particular kind of magical quest.

Over the course of the following four weeks, every morning during my post-run coffee-and-almonds breakfast, instead of playing some video games or watching a show on my tablet, as I would normally do, I headed upstairs to the office to hit the Disney Dining Reservations portion of the MyDisneyExperience website. My first stop on the information superhighway each morning was a search for reservation times for Cinderella's Royal Table, and each day I met with the same result as before: no reservation times appeared in the system for a late dinner the first week in May. This became my routine through most of the month, as the cast member I spoke to had assured me that I should have no problem securing a reservation once they were in the system; apparently, reservations for 2 are fairly rare at Cinderella's Royal Table, and they should have little difficulty accommodating us.

Finally, on November 27th, my search turned up something other than frustration and the creeping fear that, somehow, I had actually missed my shot at a reservation a while back. My first search turned up a reservation time at 9:15 for the day I wanted, some 45 minutes before the fireworks show is scheduled to begin.

Got me a reservation now, haters!

Let this post be a word of advice to anyone planning out a Disney trip and seeking to get a reservation that doesn't appear available at first: persevere! In this case, it's clear that reservation times for Cinderella's Royal Table had not yet been entered into the system, and didn't appear until nearly a month after my initial attempts. Throughout my explorations of message boards devoted to Disney Dining, I've also found a lot of folks saying that they snagged a hard-to-get reservation when someone else canceled, so even if you don't succeed at first, just keep checking back. Of course, it seems like taking advantage of the 180 days (+10 for resort guests) advanced dining reservation window is the best way to go, but if at first things seem full up, keep trying back.