Brittany & Ryan 10/22/11 Wishes Wedding-Photos are in and reviews posted!!!

[PinkSleepingBeauty]

Gorgeous sneak peeks! Congrats on a beautiful wedding! Your wedding was three days before ours! Glad you had a perfect day, ours was a wonderful day too, Disney were fantastic! I will check out the rest of your photos on the link!

 

[Bewitch324]

Your pictures are GORGEOUS!! You must be so happy! You looked so beautiful and you've got some terrific shots there!!!

Thank you for sharing them...it looks like your day was really amazing!! (and that food looked awfully good too!!)

Brooke

 

[DisneyBrittany]

I guess that maybe I should do my reviews.

Disney Photography- They were great! Rick Ferro is excellent and I want to use him again if we ever have an anniversary shoot or a baby shoot. I was upset to not get my first or second choice but the minute I met him I felt so comfortable. Our pictures turned out fantastic as well and I am very happy with them. He read over my shot list and referred to it throughout the day so I knew that he was really taking into account what I wanted. His assistant was Cricket and she was great as well! She got so many wonderful detail shots and I am so glad she was there. By the end of the day we honestly felt like they had been in our family for years and we were sad to see them go. They made friends with many of our guests as well. I was so nervous about using DPS but they were SO great! We also got the link to our pictures very quickly. The only thing is that our dessert party photos were not on the website but I have emailed Dara and that is supposedly being taken care of.

Wedding Planner Jamie- She was absolutely amazing! I feel like she is a family friend too. She was the best event coordinator I have ever seen. She took care of us. She brought us more drinks without us having to ask, she brought us food, she took care of things behind the scenes that I never even thought of, she directed everyone and made sure it all ran smoothly. I found out later that she had also worked with my Mom on a couple of surprises for us and she kept it all a complete secret. She also ran our rehearsal really well and made me feel so comfortable about what was going to happen the next day.

On another note, I wish that the wedding planners weren’t called wedding PLANNERS. I feel like that insinuates that they would be like any other wedding planner in the real world. It makes you expect to have lots of hand holding and discussions about colors etc. Really they are not like this. They should be called wedding COORDINATORS instead because that is really what they are. They are spot on when they run an event. The planning was a little dissapointing sometimes. There were times that I wanted more input on whether something was a good idea, if there was a better or cheaper way to do something and I didn’t feel like I ever got that kind of input during the planning. It all turned out wonderfully though and I would request her again if I ever was able to plan another wishes wedding Hehe.

Ceremony at Epcot- SO glad we did this! SO beautiful! The event coordinators here were WONDERFUL. There were two men that helped out with everything here. They held my veil out for pictures, they carried my bouquet, they gave me their jackets in-between shots because it was so windy, they found warm spots for us to wait inside, they approached me very calmly when they had a question and they got things done. Everything was set up exactly as I had asked. The music was run perfectly ( I had brought my own ipod), the microphone and speakers worked well. Everything was just so great.

Reception at Summer House- I loved the summer house! It was so perfect for us. It had a little bit of everything. It was outside, had some victorian charm, had a beautiful view of the lake and wedding pavillion, had a beach for beach pictures. I wish there had been a tad more shade because it did get hot at one point. There was shade off to the sides though where guests could go.

Continued in next post...

 

[DisneyBrittany]

Mears transportation- We had the motorcoach for guests and then like 5 or 6 one way vans throughout the day. All of these vans and buses were on time and were very clean. (I didn’t have to worry about sitting in them in my white dress). The drivers were very nice. The only thing was that I ended up paying an extra $13.00 because apparently we made one of the vans wait longer than 15 minutes. I think this might have been after our dessert party when it took us a while to say goodbye to everyone. Oh well, $13.00 is not the end of the world. By the way it was $.65 for every minute and it said he waited 20 minutes.

Videography of ceremony- This was a surprise for us from my Mom. I remember seeing the cameras and I wondered if we were being filmed for a tv special or something. I kept thinking that I hoped they knew I wasn’t paying for that! Haha. I had mentioned to my mom that videography of the ceremony was one thing I would add if I had the money. I guess I shouldn’t have said that because she went out and got it. They were very unobtrusive and my Mom got the video the week after the wedding! I’m still amazed by that. I haven’t seen it yet but she says it is good.

Disney catering staff- They were great and very attentive. Brought everyone whatever they needed.

Not having a DJ- My younger brother acted as the MC and Jamie told him whenever he needed to make an announcement. This worked fine for us. Jamie helped to run our ipod and we never had any problems. I made several very specific playlists and even labeled them A-Ceremony, B-Cocktail hour, C-Dinner music, D-After-Dinner music, E- First dance etc. and Jamie said this was very helpful. One other tip, I had put an extra playlist of random Disney songs just in case we ran out of music at the reception, Jamie ended up using this to play before the ceremony as people were getting there. I had picked two songs to play while people were filing in but it wasn’t enough so it was good to have that extra music to fill in. Just something to keep in mind if you are making your own playlists. We didn’t have dancing besides the first and father daughter and mother son dances and this worked for us. Then again we had a brunch.

Switching the bar to BOC- I am SO glad that we did this. Our original estimate of 336 mimosas costing almost $3,000 was insane. We ended up having 132 mimosas which cost us $1,122. The beer and wine bar at the dessert party also only cost us like $552 (not including service charge and tax). That saved us so much money! I also was glad to see that the drink counts were reasonable. Obviously I couldn’t know if the counts were actually correct but I was terrified I was going to get back some outrageous amount of drinks and have to fight them on it. I didn’t though and everything seems to be about right.

Disney floral- I had Laura Kidd and she was fantastic. Everything was exactly as I had asked and was better than I could have imagined. The bouquets were beautiful. I asked for all shades of pink roses in a round bouquet and that’s exactly what I got. The bouts were just right and the ribbon colors matched. Laura also helped me to add and change my reception décor just a few weeks before the wedding and I am so glad that she did. It was beautiful! We ended up mixing and matching the black and white linens that came with the summerhouse since my colors were black, white and pink. We had white table cloths with a black overlay. I added white chair covers with a hot pink sash. I am so glad I did this because I saw the chairs later and they were burnt orange underneath. The centerpieces were three glass cylinders with different shades of pink roses floating in them. They also scattered pink rose petals without my asking. It was all so beautiful. It cost me $498 dollars to add chair covers and sashes and I think it was the best thing I could have spent my money on. I love to look at the reception pictures because I loved the décor so much.

Magic Kingdom Bridal shoot- So glad we did this. I loved our pictures there. It just went by too fast!

Dessert Party- I’m glad we did this but this went way too fast. I don’t feel like I had time to eat enough or to visit with everyone. I haven’t heard this complaint from anyone else so maybe it was just the fact that we had so many guests ( we had 60 people). There just wasn’t enough time for me to spend time with everyone. Part of the problem could have been that our food wasn’t set up when Ryan and I got there early. I’m not at all upset about this but I think that was supposed to be our time to look at the set-up and get to eat before the guests got there. Our planner had to help them set up because they were running behind. She made us a plate later but by that time I was being pulled in multiple directions with guests there. I finally forced myself to walk over and look at the set-up of the food and bar. It looked fancy! I loved the glow cubes they had on the bar. I tasted the desserts and the banana torte or whatever it was is fantastic.


All in all my wedding couldn’t have been more perfect. The weather was great. Everyone was so helpful. The carriage surprise was the icing on the cake. I loved it and I want to go do it again!

 

[DisneyBrittany]

I wish I had paid for hair and make up to come touch up my hair and makeup before the dessert party. Our reception was over at 2 pm and I had a few hours before I had to be ready for the dessert party at 8:45. My hair looked like crap by then and I really had no way to fix it. Poor Ryan tried to help me but in the pictures it doesn't look so hot.

I wish I had taken any extra slices of cake up to our room.

I wish I had made sure that someone was videoing out first dance! We had a choreographed dance and I bought a camera specifically for this purpose but completely forgot about it on the day of.

The not being touched up before the dessert party is really my big regret. If that's the worst thing that happened then I'd say we had a pretty great day!