Something Borrowed, Blue, COLD & New - A Disney Wedding Extravaganza! Update: 11/15 (pg. 15)

Yay :) So excited to find this TR!!!

The New Year's Eve fireworks are simply amazing, nothing else like them.....or so I thought, until I found out their 4th of July fireworks put the NYE ones to shame. Guess I have to figure out how I'll getback there in July one of these years!!!

I can't believe we never bumped into each other on your couple nights at Pop or during the weekend, but so excited to read about your trip :)
 
Aaaaah I didn't realize you started this! I'm here!!
I love the pictures! I now want to do NYE eve!!! So you didn't think the crowds were that bad?
 




I love the fireworks pictures! I love that they do the big event fireworks at MK more than once - we had a similar experience with July 3rd - it was great to have a chance to see the fireworks with fewer crowds (of course we were stupid and braved Epcot on the 4th, but ... we survived).
 
Joining in, I virtually met you on the fb group chat for the epic trip, :wave2: I feel your pain with the way below zero frigid temps, average January day at my house, ugh! Glad the other flight attendant stepped in so you could get down to start your magical wedding trip! Wow exciting! We always start and end our trip in MK so great start!
 
Yep, my Disney addiction is 100% to blame on the Jets haha

Not a bad reason. :)

I actually pushed him and he fell.

This I believe.

You can't really tell, but Luke's tshirt he was wearing in our engagement photos says "999" on it, and has the hitch-hiking ghosts in the 9's - here's a better picture of it :)

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Okay... love it!

Impressive!

I think you mean "obsessive". :rolleyes:

Edmonton! I think I might have mentioned this before, but I'll be heading to your part of the country in October! Luke is originally from the same city as you (hence the love for the Jets)

Well, poop! Wish I'd read this earlier. I was just there.
 
we had decided to skip Christmas this year – which broke my heart a little bit since I love decorating so much

Man, that must've been hard.

where she once again spoiled us by buying us a red KitchenAid stand mixer

Nice! Of all the things in my kitchen, that's possibly the one item that I would never get rid of. I love it. Thing works like a mule.

We then went to the Olive Garden for unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks haha

Only thing worth getting there, IMHO.

this time at Famoso.

I ate there (in Jasper) once. :)

The pets were all really helpful while I packed…
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Very nice of them. :laughing:

Luke went to sleep at a decent time, while I stayed awake because I decided I needed to clean our house.

I get that. Ruby likes to come home to a clean house.

yep, it felt like -47oC with the windchill

Aren't you so glad it's summer now?

we had actually bought a bunch of those bottles to put into our welcome bags for our wedding guests, so I told him he could steal one from there so he wouldn’t be without on this trip.

Right about now, one of your guests is going "Hey! That was mine!!!"

I was a little nervous watching them disappear on the conveyor belt as my wedding dress and Luke’s suit were inside one…

I can believe that!

Once she was finished, she told us to follow her and she escorted us to the front of the line. We easily saved 20-30 minutes in line just by being randomly selected!

Well.... score, then!

“What is the purpose of your trip?” To get married!"

:goodvibes

I’m fairly certain my body composition is ~40% ketchup chips due to how often I eat them…

:laughing: (And all the US readers are going :confused3)

only to hear an announcement that our flight would be delayed due to one flight attendant not being there.

Move your butt, attendant!

Luke and I were now patting ourselves on the backs for spending the extra money to fly direct – if this had happened any other time we’ve flown to Orlando we would have missed our connection.

Good call!
 
and then hopped on the fake-o-rail! Am I the only one who considers this to be the first ride of the trip?

Nope! It's definitely the first ride! :)
(But not the last. Going the other way, it's not a ride. At all.)

into our row, and almost immediately shown to our bus. It was already about half full, so we weren’t able to get seats in the front to try for a picture of the Walt Disney World sign. Oh well. We didn’t have to sit on the bus for long before pulling away from the airport

I actually prefer not waiting. While front seat photo would be great... I wanna get there!

We only had to wait a few minutes before a bus pulled up to take us to our first park of the trip – Magic Kingdom!

Nice! More of "no waiting" :)

I had purchased a Premier Passport the previous year (the annual pass which allows you access to both WDW and Disneyland

Hadn't heard of that. Huh!

As we were speed walking along, I stopped. I looked over my shoulder at a man we had just walked past, then looked at Luke and said ‘I think I know him! I’m pretty sure it’s someone from the Disboards who writes trip reports that I follow!’

Nice! And I bet you made his day. :)

Also, Splash Mountain was our very first ride at Walt Disney World back on our 2016 trip, so it just felt right for it to be the first ride on this trip.

Awww...

By the time we got off Splash, we were within our next fastpass window so we walked straight over to Big Thunder Mountain.

Yuss!

We didn’t ask for it, but we lucked out and were assigned the back row – the best row on BTMR!

I haven't done that. I've done front row several times. I'll have to rectify this.

Our third fastpass was for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. This is such a cute ride, I’d prefer it to be a bit longer but it’s such a smooth roller coaster.

::yes::
 
Of course, I had to stop to take more castle pictures along the way

Of course!

and checked in for our 9:20pm dining reservation at Tony’s.

I agree with you that it's nothing special... but it's not bad either. I didn't mind it the (two times) I went.

we were able to get a really great spot to stand and watch from – and less than a 15 minute wait until it started!

Not bad!

I would never in a million years brave the crowds on NYE to see it, but in a decent-sized crowd on December 30th? Absolutely.

I have.
NYE fireworks back in 1978. OMG. Never again.
 
We love the Christmas lights too!!

I think the castle is so beautiful at Christmas!

Wow! Those are awesome pictures of the fireworks!

Thank you!

Yay :) So excited to find this TR!!!

The New Year's Eve fireworks are simply amazing, nothing else like them.....or so I thought, until I found out their 4th of July fireworks put the NYE ones to shame. Guess I have to figure out how I'll getback there in July one of these years!!!

I can't believe we never bumped into each other on your couple nights at Pop or during the weekend, but so excited to read about your trip :)

I know, I'm sad we never bumped into each other!

I watched the livestream of the July 4th fireworks - so impressive!

Aaaaah I didn't realize you started this! I'm here!!
I love the pictures! I now want to do NYE eve!!! So you didn't think the crowds were that bad?

Thanks for joining in! We didn't want to go anywhere near a park on actual New Years Eve, we just went on December 30th and I didn't find the crowds too terrible.
 
I love the fireworks pictures! I love that they do the big event fireworks at MK more than once - we had a similar experience with July 3rd - it was great to have a chance to see the fireworks with fewer crowds (of course we were stupid and braved Epcot on the 4th, but ... we survived).

I'd hate to see the crowds if they only did the fireworks show once! :crazy2: I think they even did the show twice on December 30th, so the park had cleared out a bit by the time we even arrived.

Oh wow, July 4th must have been an interesting experience!

Joining in! The fireworks pictures are gorgeous!!

Welcome! And thank you!

Joining in, I virtually met you on the fb group chat for the epic trip, :wave2: I feel your pain with the way below zero frigid temps, average January day at my house, ugh! Glad the other flight attendant stepped in so you could get down to start your magical wedding trip! Wow exciting! We always start and end our trip in MK so great start!

Thanks for joining in! It was so cold when we left Canada!
 
Well, poop! Wish I'd read this earlier. I was just there.

Oh, boo!

Nice! Of all the things in my kitchen, that's possibly the one item that I would never get rid of. I love it. Thing works like a mule.

We actually haven't taken it out of the box yet :sad2: - that's how we tend to be though haha. We bought a pressure cooker a few years ago, and it sat in the box for over a year - now we use it a few times every week haha.

Only thing worth getting there, IMHO.

Agreed

I ate there (in Jasper) once. :)

So good!

Aren't you so glad it's summer now?

I love the warmth!

Right about now, one of your guests is going "Hey! That was mine!!!"

Haha, luckily we did have an extra!

:laughing: (And all the US readers are going :confused3)

And all the US readers are missing out.

Nope! It's definitely the first ride! :)
(But not the last. Going the other way, it's not a ride. At all.)

Yes! Exactly!

I actually prefer not waiting. While front seat photo would be great... I wanna get there!

Agreed!

Nice! More of "no waiting" :)

We had the VIP transportation pass :thumbsup2

Hadn't heard of that. Huh!

It's expensive, but we did two Disneyland trip plus this wedding trip while my pass was valid, so I actually did come out ahead by purchasing it!

I haven't done that. I've done front row several times. I'll have to rectify this.

The back row is definitely the best row on Big Thunder!
 
I finally finished up my trip report from our 2017 trip, so now I can focus on this one!

December 31, 2017 - Part One

We slept in a bit, but we were still up by 9:30 or so. We got ready for the day, and headed towards the main building to call an Uber to take us to the Grand Floridian.

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As soon as we walked in the door, I spotted Richard! For those who don’t know, Richard is a long-time cast member at the Grand who was still working a few days each week as a greeter, despite being in his early 90’s. He’s a bit of a celebrity among the Disney Wedding groups, so of course I had to stop to talk to him, and get a picture with him!

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He was so adorable, and so friendly! I mentioned that we were getting married at Disney, but he was sad we were holding our ceremony at Sea Breeze Point and not the Wedding Pavilion. He’s known for helping Wedding Pavilion brides with the train on their dress while pictures are being taken on the staircase in the Grand Floridian. He unfortunately passed away in June 2018, so I am very glad I stopped to talk to him for a few minutes during this trip <3

The Christmas decorations were all still up at the Grand, and I naturally had to take pictures of the tree (and of course, the lobby itself)!

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The entire lobby smelled like gingerbread, I’m sure partly thanks to the giant gingerbread house they had set up there, which was so adorable! I'm fairly certain they were pumping the smell of gingerbread into the lobby as well.​

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We were starting to get close to our dining reservation, so we headed outside and made our way over to Narcoossee’s for their brunch.
While we were eating, we received a push-notification that Magic Kingdom had reached capacity- no thank you to being in those crowds! This was as close to the castle as I wanted to be on this day:​

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(This was the view from our table at brunch - so nice!)

Once we finished our meal, we thought we had lots of time, so we decided to go for a walk around the resort. We followed the pathway all the way over to the Wedding Pavilion- even though it was not the location of our wedding ceremony, I thought it was a beautiful venue and I wanted to see Picture Point (located just outside it). They've since restructured the pricing, but at the time when we signed our contract for our wedding, it was an extra $2000 to use the Wedding Pavilion for an Escape wedding - I just couldn't justify that, since that was enough to cover our reception on our wedding day ...

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I had to take a picture of the Franck's door, even though I never got to go through it. Disney offers three packages for weddings - Memories (basically an elopement - for the couple and 4 guests, cost was $2500 when we signed our contract), Escape (the couple plus 18 guests, cost was $5000 for Sea Breeze Point when we signed our contract) and Wishes (started at $12,000 and could go as high as you're willing to spend). I initially was looking at Memories, and just having parents there, but Luke really wanted more so we jumped up to Escape. With the two lower tier packages, all correspondence is completed through email/phone calls - however if you are having a Wishes wedding you actually have an in-person planning session which is held at Franck's (including cake tasting!).

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Picture Point is so perfect with Cinderella's Castle perfectly framed behind it <3

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We called an Uber as we walked back towards the main entrance. We sat down on a bench, and watched as the estimated time of arrival kept changing - we had forgot about all the traffic trying to head to Magic Kingdom! We were heading to Give Kids the World for a volunteer shift from 3-6:30, but we were supposed to be there at 2:30 to sign in, get trained, etc. We had gave ourselves plenty of time to get there on a normal day, but not New Years Eve! What a rookie mistake, we should have known better! We eventually realized we were not going to make it there by 2:30, so we called the GKTW Village but they didn’t seem too upset by it. Our Uber finally showed up - no fault of the driver for taking so long, the lines of cars we passed as we drove away from the Magic Kingdom area was insane!​

We finally arrived at GKTW around 2:50, so at least we weren’t late for our shift to start. It had taken almost 45 minutes for our Uber to reach us at the Grand Floridian, so we would have been there early if it wasn’t for NYE traffic.

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For those who don't know, GKTW Village is a non-profit resort in Kissimmee which provides week long vacations for the families of children with life-threatening illnesses. They work with groups around the world like Make-A-Wish to make theme park dreams come true. I believe I heard that about 60% of wishes involve the Orlando area (Disney, Universal, etc), so this is where they stay. Everything on site is free for the families - they receive meal credits to use throughout the week, theme park tickets, etc. There are a few little rides on site - a train, Merry-go-Round, etc, and lot of organized activities. A lot of the day-to-day operations of the entire resort are run by volunteers, so we had decided it was a good way to spend NYE since we didn't want to go to a park.



 
Love that you all supported GKTW! One of m favorite charities! I need to uncover my sewing machine and make more pillow cases for them (assuming they even give those out still these days). I can't wait to hear about your experience here!
 

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