I Will Not Call Them STD's

Our Save the Date's went out last week, which was totally exciting. It snapped me back into wedding planning mode, and it made the whole thing seem much less surreal, and a lot more realreal.

These are the standard letters sent out by Disney. They usually send them out with a sheet that has ticket ordering info on it, but we opted not to do that. It just felt a little tacky to us, and besides the savings were not all that significant.

I loved that they took care of this detail for us. I really did not care to make our own save the date's and send them out.

Here's a dirty little secret: no matter how cute and perfect your save the date is, I make note of the date in my calendar and throw it away, unless you sent me that magnet, which gets put on the fridge for a few months and then thrown away.

This letter though, I will keep in the forever pile.

More Pictures From Rob and Sarah's Disneyland Wedding

A short while ago I told you all about Sarah and Robin who were the first legal same sex marriage to take place at the Disneyland resort.

They had an awesome wedding with Sarah rocking a red dress, riding up to the ceremony together in Cinderella's coach, and a very cool checkerboard dance floor I think I want for our wedding.

Enjoy the pictures (courtesy of Boutwell Studios) and congratulations Rob and Sarah, may the happiness we see in these pictures last the rest of your lives.

Disneyland's First (Legal) Same Sex Wedding

I got a really great e-mail out of the blue two days ago from a woman named Robyn. On August 2nd she and her new bride Sarah had the first legal same-sex wedding at Disneyland.

They went with Boutwell studios, which are some really talented photographers I was also considering for our wedding before I fell in love with the pictures taken by Danielle at SkyeBlu. Luckily for all of us Robyn and Sarah are featured on the Boutwell's blog so we all get a sneak peek at their fabulous wedding. The red dress is just amazing.

Finally An Update From Disney

After what feels like an eternity (even though in reality it's only been three and a half weeks) I received an e-mail update from the lovely people at Disneyland Fairytale weddings. It was just a quick check-in with an attached excel worksheet. The worksheet is for names and addresses for our Save the Dates!

I am really excited to be making some progress with this. The save the dates will have information for guests about booking hotel rooms and buying theme park tickets if they choose to do so. I have no idea what will be in the planning kit so I will rush home every day this week to see if it has arrived!

In my usual obsessive wedding planning fashion I have completed my part of the data entry for the save the dates and I have sent the form off to my lovely husband to be for him to finish. He's not as obsessive about this whole thing as I am, but one of us should keep a level head, right? I sent it to him half an hour ago, I wonder if he's done yet . . .

Disneyland Wedding Information

For anyone out there that thinks a Disneyland or Walt Disney World Wedding might be for them, the best place to start is the Disney Fairy Tale Weddings Website. I think I have poured over every single page on this website enough to be able to rebuild the website if need be.

The website is great and shows you some general options, but is definitely lacking in the arena of specifics. My first question was: How much will it cost? For specifics you have to call the Disney people and sometimes it can take a few days to get a hold of them (this is according to other people, in my experience I've never had any trouble getting through to them).

A great source of more specific information is www.mouseweddings.com. This woman has put together a wonderful resource for anyone trying to plan a Disney Fairy Tale Wedding. One work of warning from the webmaster herself, she does not work for Disney, and the prices she gives might not be up to date.

A Disney wedding is not for everyone, but it's also a class act all the way. Just because you get married at Disney, it doesn't mean you get a Mickey Mouse wedding, unless that's what you really want.

Our Reception Site

Originally we thought that we wanted to have our reception at the Grand Californian Hotel. I was really excited at the prospect of our guests walking through the sliding stained glass doors at the entrance, entering the lobby, and feeling the sense of awe I felt the first time I stepped into the hotel. Unfortunately that sense of awe did not extend to the ballrooms that were available to groups our size at the hotel.

These rooms were not terrible by any means. They were very nice and had some very nice details, wood paneling on the walls, tiffany lamps, and carpeting, but ultimately they just looked like a typical convention room. A nicer than usual convention room, but a convention room none the less. The rooms that are used for large parties look considerably nicer, it may be because of the hight ceilings, but we did not want to have a 200 guest wedding.

It turned out the perfect reception site was at the Disneyland Hotel. The hotel is older and nowhere near as nice as the Grand Californian, but the Sleeping Beauty Pavilion was perfect, and we decided to make it the venue for our reception.


It is an octagonal shaped room with floor to ceiling windows. It is on the second floor of the hotel, so when you are sitting in the room you feel as if though you are sitting in the trees. It will make a great site for the reception, and I think all the guests will be surprised at how nice a Disney wedding really is.

The moment we booked our reception site I started thinking about ways we might decorate it. I really like the lighted draping in the ceiling, but I get the feeling it might be a bit expensive, and I can think of a few things I would rather spend that money one. If we were to go with the draping I would like to see something like this, with many different shapes, colors, and sizes of paper lanterns.


So far this is only one idea, and there are many more. I am really very eager to be able to talk to our event planner and see how much some of these things would cost us. I will make choices based on cost of having Disney do things and the cost of having an outside vendor do it. No matter what we do I know we will have a great time and a celebration our friends and families will enjoy.

More Wedding Details After a Shaky Day - Location, Location, Location

The great thing about living in Southern California is that when we have earthquakes we can use them as excuses for nearly everything. So you see, that's why there were no posts yesterday, we had an earthquake.

Working with Disney up until now has been a really great experience. They know their business well, and it seems like their wedding operation runs really smoothly. Disneyland definitely does not have all the choices that Disney World does, but what they do have is really nice.

Usually Disneyland has two ceremony locations, one at the Grand Californian Hotel and one at the Disneyland Hotel. Unfortunately because of construction going on for the new Disney Vacation Club Villas at the Grand Californian they are not using that site, which is a shame because from the pictures I have seen it looks lovely.


Instead we will be getting married at the Rose Court Garden at the Disneyland Hotel. It has an amazing gazebo and is surrounded by over 800 rose bushes (so they claim, I'm not going to bother to count them). It's an amazing space, and although the currently unavailable Ceremony Site in the Grand Californian seems more masculine and in the craftsman style I like so much, I would probably choose the Rose Court Garden only for the topiaries.




It's going to be an amazing day in an amazing setting. I don't know if you have all deduced what a big Disney fan I am, but this is like a dream come true. I've always wanted to stay at the Disneyland Hotel, and now I have the perfect excuse to. More to follow on our reception site at a later date.