Happy almost March, everyone!
Miles and I got quite a bit done in the last few months. I’ll start with the Chicago-area, non-Disney stuff…
Dress Alteration and Home Reception Venue
I had my first alteration appointment with
Crafty Broads in Chicago. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend them. They’re a local business, they charge half up front, and seem really reasonable, AND they’re sweet and fun gals.
If you’re looking an idea on how much your alterations might cost, here’s my quote:
We also booked our home reception site at
Cooper’s Hawk Winery in Arlington Heights, IL. They have locations around the country, too. If you’re interested, here is
their current planning info. They include a lot of services for no extra cost, such as a dance floor, centerpieces, table settings and linens, valet parking and audio visual equipment.
Ceremony Planning Guide
We’re all set with our planning guide choices (
there’s a blank copy in here for you to review). As soon as our RSVPs are all in, we’ll send this along to our Disney Fairytale Weddings coordinator, Val.
For the floral, we’re going with a solid French roses bouquet in lavender and ivory, for me. Miles will have a lavender rose boutonniere, and the groomsmen will have ivory. My maids will have the smaller (and less expensive) posy bouquets.
I may also order one or two small boxes of lavender rose petals for the cake table. Not sure if it’s worth the cost – thoughts?
For the music, we're doing mostly piano stuff. We wanted to take advantage of the included pianist as much as possible:
- Prelude/Seating – A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes and Vivaldi’s Spring (Pianist)
- Bride’s Processional – The Ludlows (Pianist) [I’m providing this sheet music]
- Recessional – The Wedding March (Pianist)
- Cake Cutting – Kiss the Girl (Pianist)
- First Dance – Northern Wind, by City and Colour (CD)
- Father/Daughter and Mother/Son Dance – Stand By Me (Pianist) [I’m providing sheet music]
Our cake selection is Touch of Character (Miles' pick, surprisingly!) chocolate with raspberry butter cream filling. I plan to ask if this can be done vegan (anyone know?). I'm not getting my hopes up, but it would be nice if I could eat my own cake. The dining room chefs have made me a lot of individual vegan cake desserts over the years that were awesome, so perhaps there's a chance.
Finally, we’re using our own cake topper. (We'll have the included bride and groom Mickey and Minnie set up on the cake table). Unfortunately, the one we bought has spikes (which are not allowed) so we’re going to have to saw those off and MacGuyver a way to stick it to a flat base ourselves. We’ll see how that turns out! :O
I’ll have more updates soon, including our Disney World honeymoon plans, and my radtastic wedding shoes and jewelry.