Moving Forward

Wow ~ I got quite a few responses on my Night or Day blog. And I want to thank you for the suggestions!

The funny thing is that there's no real "bending the rules" with Disney. Not really, anyway. It is what it is. The best we can do is work as inexpensively as possible, bring in outside vendors, and possibly do a few DIY projects to keep within our budget.

Andrew and I went ahead and tackled this quandary this afternoon. In playing with the budget, we discovered that by doing a lunch reception, we were only $10 (per head) away from having a dinner reception. Andrew had overestimated a bit on the total wedding cost difference of $5,000 between a daytime and nighttime wedding. So, with that overestimation, AND taking out the lighted ceiling drapes (seen in the pictures I posted last time), we came down to a $2,000 to $3,000 difference. Not as bad!

So, we shall move forward and stick with our Saturday, November 7, 2009 wedding date! Dum dum da-dum...!

My next task to find out what these guys are about...could we possibly use them for floral and lighting decor?

http://www.bvfloralconcepts.com

Night or Day...? (An Elaboration)

I just received an email from a friend, who was kind enough to make the suggestions of compromising by having an afternoon ceremony and a dinner reception.

Here's the thing. Disneyland only has two wedding time slots. Daytime ~ with a morning wedding, leading to an afternoon reception. And evening ~ with an early evening wedding (some may consider a late afternoon), leading to an evening reception. It will be November when we have our wedding, thus making late afternoons dark (an idea that I love!). So, to take advantage of that sunlight (for photos ~ per friend's suggestion / not a huge concern of mine), is out of the question.

The reason why there IS a conflict in choice is this: our budget. Dinner receptions are ALWAYS more expensive than receptions held during any part of the day. Ultimately, yes, we *can* afford the evening wedding. However, Andrew is a big fan of saving that money for after our wedding, so that we can start out comfortably.

But do we go for the wedding that we both would love, but is significantly more expensive? OR do we play it safe and go for the less expensive option, where we could "deal" with the atmosphere?

So that we are on the same page, here are the visuals (videos & pictures) that we are looking at... Daytime vs. Nighttime:



(forgive the cheesy videos...it's all I could find for actual weddings at Disneyland)

A montage of the ceremony and reception (this girl has her reception in the Sleeping Beauty Pavilion):


A short documentary on a couple's Disneyland wedding. Kinda cute. They have their reception in the Sequoia Ballroom, though...not what we're looking at:


Finally, here's what the nighttime looks like for the Rose Court Garden:

Night or Day...?

As soon as we think we have it all figured out, the contract throws us a surprise! This entire time we had been working with a number of 75 ~ our coordinator even worked with us with this number. Andrew and I took a look over the contract, which came in last Tuesday, and saw that the minimum number stated in the contract was 80! Why didn't we think that there could be a minimum number of people when we were working with our budget?! I guess we were thinking that as long as we met the minimum $ per head, along with the minimum $ overall, that we would be okay. Alas, it is not so!

Now that we have discovered this, we have to reconsider that evening wedding. Boohoo! :-( Both Andrew and I have our hearts so set on having an evening wedding, that we can't even come to a final decision about it. The evening is known for romance. Twinkling lights, the moon, candles... The ceremony, the reception would all look SO much better in the evening. But do we find it worth the extra $5,000? The more I talk about it, the more I say it is. But...is it?

One positive for having the wedding during the day is that after the reception, we would have time to change and go into the park to watch the fireworks...and take pictures! Since the park doesn't allow people to come in in wedding gear, I plan on buying a nice white dress (and perhaps sneak in my veil and/or tiara), so that we still look a little wedding-y for the pictures.

If we do decide to go for the evening wedding, we will do the fireworks/park pictures the following night.

But what to do? Along with that, if we change the time of our wedding, the date could possibly change, as well. The contemplations...