Bridget and Miles' 2017 Disney Fantasy Wedding Cruise Planning Journal

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:

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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

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I’ll have more updates soon, including our Disney World honeymoon plans, and my radtastic wedding shoes and jewelry. :D

I'm very curious to hear if you're able to have the cake made vegan. I've been trying to find out if this is possible too.. I can't imagine having a wedding cake that I can't eat! Super cute cake topper!!
 
I'm very curious to hear if you're able to have the cake made vegan. I've been trying to find out if this is possible too.. I can't imagine having a wedding cake that I can't eat! Super cute cake topper!!

I will definitely let you know what I find out.
 
Hi Bridget!
I was so excited to find your thread! I'm hoping to plan a wedding cruise on the Fantasy for the early summer on 2017. I've found lots of threads about shorter wedding cruises (3 or 4 nights) but haven't found too many for the longer cruises. I love your save the dates and your wedding website!! Thank you so much for sharing them -- so helpful!! Your FAQ section is so great!! You are such a thoughtful bride!! Your welcome packet is fantastic!
I have so many questions!!

I know they don't "confirm" the day for the wedding until a few weeks before the cruise, but have you gotten any information on which days of the cruise or times you might be able to have the wedding? I'm wondering if they usually do them on the sea day or on the port days? Are you going to be doing any kind of "Bon Voyage" party on land before the start of the cruise?

Thank you so much for sharing your journey through this process!!

Hi there, I just heard back from Val on my question about ceremony times. She said in her email, "Since you are sailing on the Fantasy, they offer their Ceremony times in the late afternoon, early evening. You can certainly request a time when you send in your completed planning guide." So I guess there aren't set times! I'm going to aim for maybe a 2 p.m. ceremony time.
 
I'm very curious to hear if you're able to have the cake made vegan. I've been trying to find out if this is possible too.. I can't imagine having a wedding cake that I can't eat! Super cute cake topper!!

Vegan Cake Option Update

Good news from Val today via e-mail. She said...

"Yes you can request this on your planning guide, however if there are only a few vegan guests, we suggest ordering a regular cake, and then we can provide Vegan desserts for those that are vegan. Please let me know what you would prefer when you send in your completed planning guide."

Hot dog!
 


Hi there, I just heard back from Val on my question about ceremony times. She said in her email, "Since you are sailing on the Fantasy, they offer their Ceremony times in the late afternoon, early evening. You can certainly request a time when you send in your completed planning guide." So I guess there aren't set times! I'm going to aim for maybe a 2 p.m. ceremony time.
Fantastic! Thanks for the update!! Are you going to go to Palo that night or have dinner with your guests at the restaurant on your rotation?
 
Vegan Cake Option Update

Good news from Val today via e-mail. She said...

"Yes you can request this on your planning guide, however if there are only a few vegan guests, we suggest ordering a regular cake, and then we can provide Vegan desserts for those that are vegan. Please let me know what you would prefer when you send in your completed planning guide."

Hot dog!

Hot dog is right!!! This is such great news!!! I'm so glad you'll be able to have cake!! :-)

I wonder why she would suggest not doing the whole cake vegan? I do a lot of vegan baking so I'm wondering if they'd take a recipe... Probably a long shot! I know there's a lot of variation in taste when in comes to vegan baking and can seem difficult for folks who aren't used to it. :-)
 
Fantastic! Thanks for the update!! Are you going to go to Palo that night or have dinner with your guests at the restaurant on your rotation?

Yay!! We're having dinner (and hopefully some leftover cake) with our guests the night of the ceremony. And we're planning to have our private Palo dinner the second-to-last night. :-)
 


Hot dog is right!!! This is such great news!!! I'm so glad you'll be able to have cake!! :-)

I wonder why she would suggest not doing the whole cake vegan? I do a lot of vegan baking so I'm wondering if they'd take a recipe... Probably a long shot! I know there's a lot of variation in taste when in comes to vegan baking and can seem difficult for folks who aren't used to it. :-)

I know! I'm so shocked/pleased! I think we'll just do the whole cake vegan, because six of our party of 20 eats that way -- and it's our big day! :) I won't say anything to the omnivores and I bet you they won't notice a difference. Hehehe.
 
I know! I'm so shocked/pleased! I think we'll just do the whole cake vegan, because six of our party of 20 eats that way -- and it's our big day! :) I won't say anything to the omnivores and I bet you they won't notice a difference. Hehehe.
Hehehe!!! I would (and will!) totally do the same thing! I'm so excited for you!! I can't wait to hear all about the cake once you get to try it!! Have you decided on a flavor(s)?!?
 
The cake sounds delish! I think we're going to go with the raspberry on one of our layers :)

I am totally with you about MacGyvering your cake topper. We were planning on doing the same thing--all the great toppers are the insert kind! We've come up with another plan, but we're still going to get crafty. Yours is very fun!
 
Planning has entered a bit of a holding pattern until our RSVP deadline at the end of May, but I do have one thing to share today, which I hope you'll find helpful.

I think we've pretty much locked in our :tink:Ceremony Script. I wrote some of it, and grabbed some of it from various places around the interwebs. Thoughts?

As I've mentioned, a mutual friend of ours (my best friend, and my co-maid of honor), is officiating the wedding. She's writing an intro, but I won't know what it is until the big day. Hopefully we don't cry all our makeup off.
 
Oh wow, that is so great! Honestly, SO GOOD!! Whatever the secret intro is, it's going to be perfect. Get the hankies out!
 
Just joining in on your PJ. Love all your plans so far! We honeymooned on the Fantasy after our DFTW and it is just such an amazing ship. Your wedding is going to be beautiful! I'm excited to follow along with your planning!
 
Just joining in on your PJ. Love all your plans so far! We honeymooned on the Fantasy after our DFTW and it is just such an amazing ship. Your wedding is going to be beautiful! I'm excited to follow along with your planning!

Thanks for following along! I can't wait. It seems sooooo far away today.
 
Thanks for following along! I can't wait. It seems sooooo far away today.

I totally understand. We were engaged/planning for 2 and a half years and the days seemed to drag but your wedding will come and go and you will appreciate it so much more after waiting!
 
Planning has entered a bit of a holding pattern until our RSVP deadline at the end of May, but I do have one thing to share today, which I hope you'll find helpful.

I think we've pretty much locked in our :tink:Ceremony Script. I wrote some of it, and grabbed some of it from various places around the interwebs. Thoughts?

As I've mentioned, a mutual friend of ours (my best friend, and my co-maid of honor), is officiating the wedding. She's writing an intro, but I won't know what it is until the big day. Hopefully we don't cry all our makeup off.

Aww!!!! that's so sweet!!! You did a wonderful job with this!!! It's going to be such a beautiful ceremony!!
 
Hi all,

Sorry to have been away so long, but it turns out planning a wedding and getting a new job (and several small side hustles) really eats up a lot of your time. Like, almost a whole year.

BUT a week from today we'll be sailing away! :earsgirl::earsboy:

I'll have a bunch of planning docs to share with you guys when we get back. Along with pictures, duh.

For now, here's a few shots of my gift bags (which I successfully shipped to the wedding coordinators for delivery right to our stateroom):

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We filled them up with homemade magnets for the stateroom doors (I'll try to remember to snap some pictures of those for the trip report), chap stick, sunscreen, stain wipes, gum, antacid, wine stoppers with a ship's steering wheel decoration, as well as little presents for each guest (earrings for my mom, a necklace for his, and some jewelry for my maids). Oh, and we also included the newsletter I made.

And here's the guest "book" print I ordered from Etsy (we'll have guests on the ship and at the home reception sign in the balloons):

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Finally, here's a few shirts I got to surprise Miles (also from Etsy). Miles is really particular about the softness of his T-shirts (seriously), so I hope he likes it. Either way, I fully expect him to wear it around the parks with me on our honeymoon. :cool2:

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See you real soon. ;o)
 

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