What would you do differently?

[weich1001]

If you had a Disney Wedding, what would you have done differently? Or was there anything you really thought afterwards you could have done without?

 

[lurkyloo]

Oooh! Good question! For a while there, some of us were posting a section in our trip reports called "Glad I Did/Wish I'd Done" or something like that. Here's what I put in mine:

Wish I'd Done:

* Only offer guests 2 of the 4 blocked hotels: I loved the idea of blocking 4 hotels so that a discount would be available to us at all of them for our honeymoon stay. But if I’d known about one-way buses and the time savings of transporting guests from fewer hotels, I would only have given mine 2 choices. As it is, most of them only stayed at 2 of the 4 – the Value and the Moderate.

* Vintage Rolls: I hate limos; I just saw ours as Point A-to-Point B transportation, but I forgot it would be in all our pictures and our video – ugh! Caryn made me feel a lot better about this by pointing out that I am too tall for the Rolls. However, I’ve always loved the idea of creative wedding transport, and if I’d been thinking about it, I would have found something as an alternative – maybe a Vespa?

* More specificity about cake colors: I was SO specific with multiple pictures of everything else at my planning session, I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me to include multiple samples of the cake colors. Oh yeah – because I thought they do what was in the picture I gave them! Still, I can’t complain too much – the designs were all spot on, just in the wrong shades.

* Had my waxing services done in LA before I left: After my horrible experience at Mandara Spa, I think I would have been much better off getting this over with before I left (and getting to eat free brownies and drink lemonade at Bliss!).

 

[weich1001]

Oooh! Good question! For a while there, some of us were posting a section in our trip reports called "Glad I Did/Wish I'd Done" or something like that. Here's what I put in mine:

Wish I'd Done:

* Only offer guests 2 of the 4 blocked hotels: I loved the idea of blocking 4 hotels so that a discount would be available to us at all of them for our honeymoon stay. But if I’d known about one-way buses and the time savings of transporting guests from fewer hotels, I would only have given mine 2 choices. As it is, most of them only stayed at 2 of the 4 – the Value and the Moderate.

* Vintage Rolls: I hate limos; I just saw ours as Point A-to-Point B transportation, but I forgot it would be in all our pictures and our video – ugh! Caryn made me feel a lot better about this by pointing out that I am too tall for the Rolls. However, I’ve always loved the idea of creative wedding transport, and if I’d been thinking about it, I would have found something as an alternative – maybe a Vespa?

* More specificity about cake colors: I was SO specific with multiple pictures of everything else at my planning session, I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me to include multiple samples of the cake colors. Oh yeah – because I thought they do what was in the picture I gave them! Still, I can’t complain too much – the designs were all spot on, just in the wrong shades.

* Had my waxing services done in LA before I left: After my horrible experience at Mandara Spa, I think I would have been much better off getting this over with before I left (and getting to eat free brownies and drink lemonade at Bliss!).

The Spa thing is the scary thing for me. I have a Spa in the Pocono's that performs all of my services from facial to wraps to massages to hair etc... and using the GF Spa doesn't really excite me! I mean, I only had a massage there this past September---it was okay, not horrible but nothing memorable either. And mixing chemicals-prepping for the big day and then going there and them using something else, kinda worries me.

 

[Lynn5700]

Only thing I would have done different was not have our luncheon at The Grand Floridian Cafe. Wish we would have went to Ohana.

 

[Skylarr29]

The only thing that comes to mind is not paying to have a chocolate silk screen of our monogram on our cake plates because there isn't even a photo of it.

 

[DisneyBrideToni]

I would have done the wedding pavilion instead of SBP. I went inside the WP when I was there and it was gorgous.

 

[OceanGdss]

Not freaked out the morning of the wedding when getting into my dress....i had a 5-minute 'crazy bride' moment (not quite 'bridezilla' level thank goodness lol), and I would have appreciated the moment rather than be so concerned about the pain my dress was causing me.

As far as Disney, I wouldn't have used UK Lower for my DP...the smoke from the fireworks was TERRIBLE!!!

 

[Tiggerific04]

The only things I would have done differently would be having someone take photos while I was getting my hair/makeup done, and I would have been more specific about what kinds of shots I wanted my photographer to take. I assumed that there were some "standards" he always did, but that wasn't the case and it was my fault for not asking.

 

[tiggerrifficheidi]

--had not purchased beverage napkins--we had WAY too many leftover which leads me to believe they weren't used much.

--been WAY more specific about the look of my bouquet. They got the types of flowers right, but they plopped the pink roses together in the center...and my predominant color was purple. The purple roses were on the edges.

--factored more time to get ready. We planned almost 4 hours for 6 girls (hair and makeup), but we still ran late...which cost me "before" pics with my bridesmaids.

--given my photographer a list of "must-have" pics. They asked for it, but I got too busy to do it.

--not used the standard tea party menu for my tea party. It looked great but was very ho-hum (the only ho-hum food the whole weekend, I might add!)

--Gotten a REAL castle topper instead of the chocolate one. It was BEAUTIFUL! But what do I do with it now?

--hadn't had bows on the backs of the chairs at Narcoossee's. I was hoping they would cover up the chairs a bit (and that was what I was led to believe)...but NOPE!

 

[StitchBride]

~I would have had photos of everyone getting ready. I'm happy with what I have, but that might have been fun too.

~Done an Epcot photo shoot. I didn't know that you could add that on to the MK shoot and DH would have loved it

That's all I can think of.

 

[weich1001]

Thanks for all the great input!

 

[mermaidbride1108]

Not freaked out the morning of the wedding when getting into my dress....i had a 5-minute 'crazy bride' moment (not quite 'bridezilla' level thank goodness lol), and I would have appreciated the moment rather than be so concerned about the pain my dress was causing me.

As far as Disney, I wouldn't have used UK Lower for my DP...the smoke from the fireworks was TERRIBLE!!!

I have UK Lower as my DP location, thinking of switching to Sango Cay Point because our Rehearsal is at WP & dinner at Ohana's. Was the smoke that bad?

 

[OceanGdss]

It was pretty bad....we had ashes all over us...i mean, big enough pieces of ash we took some home as souvenirs! lol We all stunk after the show and couldn't look straight up due to ash falling on us. It was strong smoke. Beautiful location though!!

 

[Ember]

Hmm...

- I would have had different BM bouquets. I didn't care for them at all. They sounded nice on paper...

- I would have skipped the cake if I could have. I didn't want it in the first place but was coming in too low for my food and beverage minimums. So much of it was wasted.

- Lastly, and this is just a personal one, I wouldn't have been so generous with my bridal party. We paid for their flights, hotel and park passes. It's not that I regret taking everyone, but I also learned that some people will demand and demand without ever saying "thank you" for what their being given.

One of our GM used our wedding for his half price honeymoon. They deliberately moved their summer wedding to be the weekend before ours for the stated reason of having half their honeymoon paid for. Gee thanks.

My best friend also discovered her sense of entitlement. When I went to book the flights her DF told me he didn't like the airline I was booking with, he wanted a different one. Then the hotel wasn't good enough. Eventually we just gave them the lump sum of money we would have spent had we booked the trip and let them do what they liked.

The real kicker it that it was over a year before my best friend said thank you for the trip, and the groomsman never did (we haven't spoken to him since, either). I gave up my dream of the carriage to have these people with us, I just wish they had appreciated it.

 

[wendy46001]

* More specificity about cake colors: I was SO specific with multiple pictures of everything else at my planning session, I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me to include multiple samples of the cake colors. Oh yeah – because I thought they do what was in the picture I gave them! Still, I can’t complain too much – the designs were all spot on, just in the wrong shades.

I'm going to agree...i was so picky about some things i just assumed they'd make my cake like the picture….also they forgot the cake stand i requested...just go the aluminum foil bottom...and that was something they could of fixed that night

I would have also gone with different invitations...i went with disney recommendation and they didn’t turn out well at all....I should have made them myself....

Finally I would have scheduled our MK photo shoot for a different day…we did the am after our wedding…LOL….guess I thought I was still a college kid and could still pull an all nighter…Our wedding ended very late and we didn’t get back to the GF until after 3am…our photographer picked us up at 5…I was the walking dead by that time…

 

[lpizzuro123]

It was pretty bad....we had ashes all over us...i mean, big enough pieces of ash we took some home as souvenirs! lol We all stunk after the show and couldn't look straight up due to ash falling on us. It was strong smoke. Beautiful location though!!

We had our Dessert Party in the UK Lower and we had no ashes at all. I think it just depends on how the wind is blowing. It was a beautiful location.

As far as what I would have done differently, really not much.

We had a Wishes Cruise scheduled for the night before the wedding. We cancelled this while we were down there because Wishes was not until 10:00pm and our ceremony was at 9:00am and we would definately have been too rushed.

Our ceremony was in Epcot in Italy and I walked up to the top of the bridge and met my dad there and then continued over. This was the perfect place to meet him but I would have met him in the center - he was over by the rail and I walked over to him so when we both walked down the bridge we were all the way over to the side.

After the ceremony we had a rose petal toss which I would still go with but I wish we had more petals.

We used the Unity Candle Ceremony which is what we really wanted over the Sand Ceremony but as we were outside we could not get the candles to light. We really did not want the Sand Ceremony but it would have worked better at our outside location.

Trying to light the candles.

Linda

 

[orangetiggs]

It was pretty bad....we had ashes all over us...i mean, big enough pieces of ash we took some home as souvenirs! lol We all stunk after the show and couldn't look straight up due to ash falling on us. It was strong smoke. Beautiful location though!!

We had uk lower and also a different illuminations show(no laser or the world) so more fireworks and no smaoke whatsoever

I guess it depends on what way the wind is blowing

 

[Mary626]

I wish I had...

- been more specific about the songs I wanted the DJ to play during the reception. He had asked for a few "types of songs" so he could guess our likes, but he was pretty far off. I should have just given him a long list of songs to play.

- no-one in my family is really big in to dancing, but I always figured we "had" to have dancing. If I could do it over I might try to think of something else we could have done to fill up this block - i don't know what i would have done, but I could have figured something out.

- i wish i had gotten more sleep before our wedding! Waking up at 3 am can be hard to adjust to, and the excitement/adrenaline can only last so long for the day!

- i wish i had done more for my bridal party. the scheduling conflicts made it kind of hard to have an official rehearsal party, and we had the fantasmic dessert welcome party, but i kind of felt like we "gipped" one or two of the bridesmaids/groomsmen.

- I would have planned another activity the night of the wedding. I thought i would want to be spending it with just my DH, but I ended up really wanting to rehash the day with family. Maybe we could have done the Grand 1 yacht to watch the fireworks or something, or just had everyone meet in one of the theme parks. I was glad we did the fantasmic dessert party as a welcome party, since most people had flights home right after our wedding, but I can see why it would have been nice to have a dessert party the night of. I especially would have loved to have been able to wear my dress one more time. My advice - make your wedding day last AS LONG AS POSSIBLE!!

- I would have asked my mom or sister or someone to take some more occasional video of us getting our pictures taken or other things. I had a videographer so I didn't bother to get any of the candid stuff, and our video is beautiful, but it doesn't have a lot of candid moments. I like the amateur stuff I guess. - you can never get too many photos or too much video of your wedding day!!

- the only thing I didn't like about the decorations, (and it really wasn't terribly bad, just a little off) ... was the head table at the reception. I thought the shade of the overlay was a little off, and the "scattered rose petals" looked like they really skimped on the rose petals! But it was still very beautiful - just wish these two things had looked a little nicer.

I wish I didn't:
- not a whole lot! We didn't go past our minimum's by very much, so there wasn't a whole lot to cut out. so I'll make this list instead:

I'm glad I didn't spend money on:
- I'm glad I didn't pay for the alcohol at the reception. It might seem tacky to not have, but we had the Cash Bar for anyone who really wanted to drink... my reasoning was that A.) only two or three of my guests really cared for drinking anyway, B.) it was lunch time - not a whole lot of people really drink a lot at 11 am! C.) it would have been like 1500 more to add it, and for that price I was able to get the fantasmic dessert party - I think my guests enjoyed that much more than being able to drink for free!

- speaking of drinks, we didn't pay for the last hour of drinks (the soda and water, juices, etc.) at the reception because we figured things would be dying down by then, and i think it saved me like 3 or 4 hundred dollars. It ended up working out great because, sure enough, most people left like fifteen minutes before they stopped serving drinks anyway, so it would have been a complete waste. (everyone wanted to get back to the parks or had to get to the airport, the down side to having a monday wedding).

- chair covers - even after the wedding i kept thinking i should have gotten them and wasn't sure if i did the right thing. A few years out I look back and think to myself - who cares about the chair covers? When ppl talk about my wedding they mention things about the dessert party, and having mickey and minnie at the reception, no-one talks about the chairs!!



That's all I can think of right now. Really all in all it was minor stuff. The one or two things I didn't like during my wedding I had no control over anyway.

 

[lpizzuro123]

Hi Mary, so great to see you here. Your Italy wedding from a few years ago is what made us use Italy for our ceremony. I just loved everything about your wedding and I just want to thank you for all the things you posed on here.

Here is a photo of our ceremony location (hope you don't mind we did alot that you did).

And here is our photo on the bridge picture. I think this bridge was being worked on during your ceremony (we were actually down there while your wedding was going on and we did a Segway tour the day before your wedding and I remember thinking to myself that this is where your ceremony was going to be the next day). Anyway, I remember you did some photos on the bridge and I just loved them.

Linda

 

[lpizzuro123]

Mary just reminded me of something I am glad we did. We did have drinks at our reception but we did not do the drink package. We paid for each drink individually. As our pre ceremony was from 10:00 to 11:00 we just had coffee, tea, juice and champaigne punch. At our reception (which was from 11:00 to 3:00) we paid for each drink and honestly with 50 people at the wedding (3 under 21 - a 20 year old, a 4 year old and a 2 year old) I think we only had 21 beers, 6 wines and 6 or 7 mixed drinks. We had mainly water and soda.

This was something we were really worried about and we ended up getting so much money back.

Linda