Calling Disney Weddings for the First Time

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Bill S. Preston, Esq. through our wedding planning.

Today we called Disney Weddings (407-828-3400) for the first time. Even though it was really far out in advance (we are aiming for April 8, 2014 for our wedding date), we had a bunch of questions about a wedding in Disney World that we weren't finding convenient answers to. We had also heard that, even though the wedding can't be booked until 8 months out, we had heard you can get a "soft" reservation for your wedding date.

Being on the West Coast and timeshifted 3 hours behind Orlando, by the time I got up in the morning, went for my morning workout, and then had coffee (and waited on Girl Scout Fiancée to wake up), it was well after the hour at which the phone lines opened. I started out by calling GSF's phone, and then doing a three-way call to dial out to the Disney Weddings line, because I wanted her to be able to hear everything that is said and be able to interject her own questions, rather than playing the telephone game (tee hee) to relay questions and answers back and forth.

Because I'm a psychotic overplanner and we're living just about as far away as you can get from Orlando and still be in the continental United States (making it less convenient to plan a wedding so far away), I had compiled a lengthy list of questions to pepper the poor, unsuspecting phone representative with. As I was coming up with the list, I began to suspect that fewer questions were asked during the Spanish Inquisition than I was putting on paper, but given my crippling need to know everything I went ahead anyways.

As it turns out, the phone representative we spoke to (whose name has sadly been lost to the echoes of history, or at least some government phone monitoring database somewhere) was so good at anticipating our questions that we had no need of many of them. Despite the rumors to the contrary, we were not offered any chance to put a "soft" reservation on the date at all, and were firmly (but politely!) informed that we had to wait until the 8-month window began.

We did learn a few valuable things from the phone call, which I will share here:

• Yes, the 18-guest limit on an Escape wedding is a hard cap. There's no ability to add "just one" person to that. Understandable, but possibly a little frustrating as suddenly some of GSF's extended family has expressed interest in coming to the wedding. I'm going to let her handle the family diplomacy.
• No, you don't book your hotel through the Disney Fairytale Weddings system. Or, at least, you don't have to, and given that we're going to be doing a honeymoon afterward (thus resulting in a lengthy on-property stay) we were advised to consider booking our hotel as soon as rates were posted for April 2014.
• The wedding planner is going to handle all of the details of the wedding...which means there's no sense in worrying about a lot of details until we have a wedding planner. This is a little like telling a duck not to swim or a psychotic over-planner to chill out, so of course I'm going to be antsy for the next 5 months until we actually book the wedding.
• Just about anything else can be substituted, modified, or added to...for a fee. Musicians, photographers, decor, etc. 

Our phone rep did arrange for us to receive, via e-mail, an information packet that included a lot of links to information on their website. Sure, it's the same-old standard "chill out you Disney nerd!" e-mail everyone is going to get, but...at least we got it!

If there was one message I walked away from the phone call with, it was this: Relax. Our phone rep was super polite and answered all of our questions, but there's no sense fussing about it until much closer to that time. Still, I would encourage anyone thinking of doing a Fairytale Wedding to give them a call and ask your questions. At worst, they will give you some peace of mind that there is someone there to help you, even when you live so far away that you have to take a space shuttle to get to Orlando.

First Crack at the Finances of a Disney Wedding

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like the USS Nimitz through our wedding planning.

Since Girl Scout Fiancée and I are going to be paying for our wedding, honeymoon, and now a party in Seattle ourselves, the cost of the entire venture is on my mind pretty much constantly. The big challenge for me is that, while I don't want us to sink into debt to pay for the wedding and honeymoon, I also don't want to cut corners and feel like we cheated ourselves in some way. After all, you only have one wedding, and this is going to be something we look back on for the rest of our lives. Couple that with the fact that Girl Scout Fiancée has never been to Disney World, and I want to make sure she has an amazing time on the honeymoon, and I need to start working now to budget things out.

So, I've built myself a budget spreadsheet in Excel that should help us track the ongoing costs of the wedding. I'm using the PassPorters Disney Weddings & Honeymoons book as a basis for a lot of my financial calculations, and thought I know a lot can change between now and 2014 it seems to be the only starting point I have.

Thankfully, technology has made it easier than this to grasp the reality of your costs.

Some of our costs are already known quantities; for example, the cost of the Escape wedding package is right there on the Disney Fairytale Weddings website. Others I can estimate pretty well, like the cost of our hotel, the cost of a round of golf, the cost of the marriage license, etc. Others...well, I have no idea.

Here is what I have come up with for an expenses list right now:

Wedding Expenses

• Escape Wedding Package
• Airfare for three (myself, Girl Scout Fiancée, and our officiant)
• Rehearsal Dinner for immediate family
• A round of nine holes of golf for me the morning of the wedding (I can't think of a better way to relax before the big event)
• Wedding Rings
• Wedding Dress
• My Suit (If all my weight loss plans go well, I may need more new clothes than this)
• Marriage License
• Post-Wedding Dinner/Reception
• 4 nights in a hotel for us
• 2 nights in a hotel for our officiant
• Gifts for the Maid of Honor and the Best Man
• Tickets for Universal Studios (Girl Scout Fiancée has declared that we are going to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and I obey)

Honeymoon

• Hotel for 9 nights (I expect to need that full amount of time to introduce Girl Scout Fiancée to Disney World properly)
• Food (this is going to be one of the bigger expenses, because if things go as I think they will over the next year I'm going to be ready for all the fine dining in Disney World)
• Special Events (I'd love to do the walking safari at Animal Kingdom or one of the private boats for Illuminations, two things I have never done before)
• Souvenirs
• Tables in Wonderland membership (my parents swear by this, and I can't find any flaws in the plan).

Seattle Party

• Venue Rental
• Food Truck
• Beverages (including Men's Room Red!)
• Bar Service
• Dessert
• Plates, Cups, and Silverware
• Decor
• Photography (we're thinking of having Bethany from McG Photography, who did our engagement photos, come to the event and be a photographer)
• Invitations/Postage
• Thank-You Cards

That's...well, that's daunting. The initial estimates I put in for all of these, when totaled up, really made my eyes bug out. Of course, I haven't put in any potential discounts or other sources of credit (like Annual Passholder discounts on the hotel, or any gifts we receive from other people). The thing that is really surprising to me is how much of the cost of the wedding is wrapped up in things outside of the wedding itself. I may also be crazy overestimating costs of things like food, but I'd rather be prepared for the worst than have something surprise me.

Golf Lessons

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Protector Kiera Cameron through our wedding planning.

One of the things I've been thinking about as a part of my weight loss goals is that I'd like to start doing some kind of outdoor activity again. Of course, here in Seattle that often means slogging around in the rain during the 7 rainy months of the year, but last summer I got out on the golf course for the first time since college, and actually really enjoyed myself, not to mention the fact that lugging a golf bag around for even nine holes burned almost a thousand calories for me. So, in all of our talk about planning a Disney wedding, the idea of playing golf at Disney World kept creeping back into my mind.

When I was a kid, we would go to Disney World as a family and, invariably, on the buses we would take around the property there would be signs advertising the Disney World golf courses. Growing up, no one I knew played golf, and when I say I played some golf in college I really mean I got to drink beer and ride on a golf cart while badly swatting at a ball on a badly-maintained course in Knoxville, TN. I had no training, and no real experience other than my friends trying to teach me what they knew. And yet, every time I'd see one of those ads for Disney golfing, I always thought, "Man, that would be an experience that I would love to have." I'll be the first to admit that it's a bit weird to pine for a golfing experience when you don't even play golf, but that should be a testament to the allure of the Disney World golf courses (and a feather in the cap of whatever advertising agency put those ads together).

All of this has combined together to give me a new goal for our honeymoon: I want to play golf in Disney World. However, I don't want to stumble around one of the nicest golf courses in the world like a total schmuck, which means I need to do two things: learn how to play golf, and lose a lot of weight so I look good on the golf course (which is conveniently something I already plan on doing). As for learning how to play golf, conveniently I live within about 5 minutes of a public golf course that is really nice and offers lessons. So, dragging my coworker/fellow gamer/new dad/partner in my arrested development, who I will call the Guru since that's what he uses for an online handle, along with me, I took my first of what bodes to be many golf lessons today.

The Mickey Mouse head sand trap: a place where I expect to spend lots of time.

The first lesson couldn't have gone better. I told my instructor right up front that my goal was to be able to play 9 holes of golf in Disney World and make a good showing of myself, and that I had until next April to learn how to do so. The instructor was totally on board with the idea, and though he's a pretty reserved guy I think he appreciated my desire to learn the right way to play as opposed to just messing around on the course.

Together, the Guru and I learned that basically everything we've been doing all this time is wrong. He showed us the right way to grip and swing the club, and by the end of the one-hour lesson two things were apparent: one, my hands were so unused to the right way to hold the club that they were going to hurt, and two, we were already improving significantly by the end of the lesson. I think this is going to be good for me, because it will give me a new way to exercise and burn some calories, even just on the driving range, and come the beautiful summer in Seattle I'll have something fun to do outdoors. My only hope is that 15 months is enough time to obtain a respectable amount of skill so I can acquit myself well in Disney World. 

Ain't No Party Like a Seattle Wedding Party

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Ash Williams through our wedding planning.

Over the past few weeks, we've been talking a lot about our ideas for how we want our Disney wedding to go, and one thing that Girl Scout Fiancée keeps coming back to is the idea of having a party for all of our friends in Seattle. Over the past six years, we've really earned a reputation as good hosts, and the fact of the matter is that we've made lots of good friends out here who we would love to involve in our marriage, but won't be able to invite to an Escape wedding. Similarly, there are extended family members and friends from back home that we'd like to involve, though it's trickier for them because we're separated by so many miles.

Because I can't say no to anything that GSF has her heart set on (and, honestly, because I think a party here in Seattle could be a lot of fun), it looks like we're going to try to do a big party here in Seattle about a month after we return from our honeymoon. Obviously it's quite far out to have nailed down a lot of details, but we do know a few things.

First, we want to have it catered by a food truck. Food trucks are super trendy in the Pacific Northwest, and though Portland is definitely the food truck capitol, Seattle is no slouch. There are a few that have made our short list, but the danger we run into is that they can be pretty pricey, even more than simply going with catering. There are several that are on our short list, including Skillet, Cheese Wizards, and Xplosive, all of which are delicious and unique options that reflect something about us.

Portland: where it's hip to dress like you're homeless.

Second, GSF really wants to have a "garden party" theme, with lots of yard games (like bocce ball, croquet, etc.) available for the guests to play. That could be tough given the fickle nature of Seattle weather in April, but I'm on board with the idea. For me, I'm just more concerned about people having fun. I hate going to other peoples' weddings that are nothing but several hours of stuffy awkwardness, meals (shocking as it may be when factoring in my weight, but food is not a great draw at weddings for me), and social hobknobbing. I'm a gamer through and through, so the idea of people being able to come to our party and play games the whole time is very appealing. We've even talked about having some tables indoors or under shade with board games on them, ranging from party games like Telestrations and Wits & Wagers to some more serious gamer fare, like Lords of Waterdeep (the board game I designed).

Third, we want to be able to invite all of our local friends, plus all of our friends and family from Pennsylvania and Tennessee. It's a long, long way to travel, and most of them probably won't be able to make it, but we'd still like to extend the invitation. I know that some of my high school and college buddies might make the trip out, and maybe some of the younger members of my family, and I'm sure GSF has many folks who are the same way.

Other than that, we have a few minor details in mind. I really, really want to serve Elysian Brewery's Men's Room Red beer, as it's my favorite beer in Seattle. I love malty beers like reds and ambers, but, unfortunately, the great trend in craft beers and microbrews is to pour hops into the drink until there are no other flavors. Discovering the malty Men's Room Red was a great step forward for my life in Seattle, as it gives me a local beer to drink while the rest of my friends drown themselves in hops. It's still a little hoppy for an amber, but it finishes smooth and has a great flavor. As a backup (since Men's Room Red doesn't come in kegs) is the Boundary Bay Scotch Ale from Boundary Bay Brewery in Bellingham, WA.

Drink this Beer: THIS I COMMAND!

Girl Scout Fiancée really wants us to wear our wedding attire at the party (or, as she refers to it, our "wedding costumes") and I'm fine with that, but I have some concerns that it will make things too formal and people won't feel relaxed enough. Still, all of our early discussions about attire have been trending toward more fun and hip wedding attire anyways, so maybe that won't be an issue.

We have a lot of planning to do, and I'm already starting to get concerned about how we're going to pay for a Disney Wedding, a Disney World honeymoon, and then a party the size of a wedding reception back in Seattle.

The Great Lifestyle Change

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Sawyer, Jin, Juliet, Miles, and Daniel through our wedding planning.

As it turns out, our decision to wait 18 months to get married has more benefits than just the financial ones. Girl Scout Fiancée and I have been talking it over, and neither of us is happy with our weight right now. Neither of us wants to be this size when we get married, because we want to be able to look back on this point in our lives and be totally happy with how things were. Of course, I want Girl Scout Fiancée to feel like a Disney Princess at our wedding and on our honeymoon, and if I'm going to look a little more like Prince Charming and a little less like the humans from Wall-E, I'm going to have to put a lot of hard work into it. So, with that said, I'm committing myself to a weight loss goal of losing 120 lbs. before our wedding, which is 15 months from now. That will put me at about 160 (I am at 283 right now) and would be close to my weight when I graduated from high school. It's going to be tough, but it will be worth it.

More or less the opposite of what we want our honeymoon to look like.

Of course, losing not quite 1/2 my body weight isn't going to be easy, but I've got a plan. First, I'm going to use an app to track my calorie intake. A while back I signed up for the MyFitnessPal app on my iPhone (yes, I live in Seattle and have an iPhone, try not to faint from shock) and have been absolutely awful about actually using it. So, today, I weighed myself and set the app's settings to calculate a weight loss rate of 2 lbs. per week. I'll be counting calories and inputting everything I eat, and to help me stick to the plan (and keep me from going over my calorie budget each day), Girl Scout Fiancée and I are going to have a competition. She's also going to be doing something similar with her own app, and each day that one of us stays under his or her calorie count, that person gets 1 point. At the end of the month, the person with the fewest points for the month has to do some chore for the next month. We've chosen laundry as our first chore, because we both hate it.

In a few weeks I plan to start exercising, but for now I want to get my body accustomed to the reduced calorie intake. There's nothing wrong with easing into a big lifestyle change like this, and I refuse to allow myself to be completely miserable. I want to be happy about losing weight, not resentful. Fortunately, I've got a pretty awesome partner in crime for this one, and we're going to be supporting each other throughout the process.

Here are a few relatively current pictures to show you our starting points.

Girl Scout Fiancée and I at my brother's wedding.

Girl Scout Fiancée and I at her parents' house for Christmas.

Girl Scout Fiancée and I in our engagement photos.

We Have a Target Date for the Wedding

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Henry Morgan through our wedding planning.

After much discussion, Girl Scout Fiancée and I have decided upon a target date for our Disney World wedding: April 8, 2014. Now, obviously, since we can't book our wedding until 8 months before that date (August 8th of this year), we can't say for certain that it will be our date, but it does give us something to shoot for.

It should be pretty obvious, since we got engaged back in November, that this is going to be a pretty long engagement, over 18 months. That's long by almost any couple's standards, but since we've been together for over six years at this point, I don't think we'll have any problems making it that far. There are two main reasons we want to have the wedding that far out, and both involve the cold, hard realities of the cost of a wedding.

You see, neither of our families are in a position to pay for any wedding, much less a Disney wedding. That means that Girl Scout Fiancée and I will be saving up to pay for the wedding, and, since I don't like the idea of starting our married life in the hole financially, we want to save up and pay for the wedding ourselves.

Not pictured: our financial situation.

Of course, making a trip to Disney World is no small feat for many families, and since it's likely that both of our immediate families are going to need to shoulder some of the financial burden of attending for their respective sides of the family, we wanted to give them a chance to save up as well. Now, my parents are old hands at the Disney World vacation, but even with that experience they'll need time to plan and save, since they'll likely be bringing my brother, sister-in-law, and two grandmothers with them. Girl Scout Fiancée's family likewise has to plan and save, but even more so, since she has a larger group of family that is likely to come to the wedding.

I've started crunching the numbers on the wedding (more on that in a later post), and this looks to be the only way to pull it off without sacrificing either our financial future or our ability to have the best wedding and honeymoon we want. Just like I don't want to go into debt for the wedding, I don't want to sacrifice options or cut corners on the honeymoon; I want Girl Scout Fiancée's first Disney World experience to b amazing, and I want her to get to experience all of the great things that the resort has to offer. If that means we wait a little longer, well, so be it.

Engagement Photos Have Arrived!

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Old Spock through our wedding planning.

We received the digital copies of our engagement photos from McG Photography today, and they turned out much better than I would have expected photos that contain me to turn out. We had a lot of fun at the shoot at the Christmas tree farm, and you can see what winter in the Pacific Northwest is all about in the shots below. Girl Scout Fiancée's homemade signs turned out so well that Bethany asked if she could keep them for other couples to use, and GSF was gracious enough to hand them over. I felt a pang of relief that Girl Scout Fiancée didn't want to hang on to them for her next engagement shoot with her as-yet-undiscovered second husband.

Thank goodness we were captured in our natural environment: sitting.

The blanket is not just for decoration. It was cold!

This photo taken while, off-camera, other people wonder why we decorated a still-growing tree.

Girl Scout Fiancée lassoed me with Christmas lights for this one.

The traditional Evil Fiancée photo.

Right before Girl Scout Fiancée backhanded the photographer (not really).