Our Very, Very Late Disneymoon TR!!! It's DONE!!

iheartpluto

Mouseketeer
Joined
Feb 25, 2009
Table of Contents

[post=36461047]Intro: The Tale of a Proposal, and the Wedding that Almost Wasn't[/post]

[post=36473106]Day 1: A Delayed Flight, and an Awesome Ride[/post]

[post=36513855]Day 2: A Segway Tour, A Water Park, and Dinner with a Fairy Godmother[/post]

[post=36522415]Day 3: A Confetti Heart, The Ice Cream that Mickey Bought, and a Birthday Dinner[/post]

[post=36596630]Day 4: Lilo Has an Accident, The Awesome Canadian, and Indistinguishable Towel Animals[/post]

[post=36629923]Day 5: A Safari, A Rug, A Sparkly Blue Tattoo, and Ginormous Crab Claws[/post]

[post=36682187]Day 6: A DHS Adventure, A Disneymoon FastPass, and a Rainy Epcot[/post]

[post=36766285]Day 7: The. Most. Magical. Day. Ever.[/post]

[post=37041574]Day 8: Goodbye to the Magic Kingdom, A Thunderstorm, and a Hotel with No Blankets[/post]

[post=37088700]Day 9: A really long drive, and an Upgraded Hotel Room[/post]

[post=37276335]Day 10: Just Another Lazy Day in Key West...[/post]

[post=37276800]Day 11: An Aquarium and Sloppy Joe's![/post]

[post=37277845]Day 12: A Day at the Beach, and a Yummy Drink![/post]

[post=37277967]Day 13: The End![/post]


I was a horrible slacker last year. I started a PJ for our at-home wedding and Disney Honeymoon, and never finished it. I journaled our trip, and I have tons of pictures, but it's been almost a year since we've been back and I wondered if anyone even wanted to see them! I guess I could just post it for us, and for posterity, but I was wondering if it was appropriate. (I haven't been on the boards for a long time because I couldn't bear to be on here when we didn't have a trip planned. Now we're going in January, so I can join in everyone's excitement again! I'm horrible, I know!) Thanks for any thoughts!
 
Ok, good! I was hoping I would get some positive feedback, you guys rock! My pictures are uploading as I type, and I'm off to read through my journal...
 


So, I got married last year (6-6-09) and it was a beautiful wedding (in spite of a few hiccups the week of, more on that later.) But first, a little bit about us: I am a total Disney nut, and have been since I can remember (my parents got the Disney Channel on cable as soon as it was available for me... I was 2!) My fiance... not so much. But, he loves the Pixar movies, and is getting more and more excited about our WDW Honeymoon (more about that later.) We met online, and pretty much fell in love immediately. He proposed on our 6 month anniversary (we are from the Detroit area and had taken a weekend trip to Chicago.) He tried SO hard to make it a magical proposal, but unfortunately I kinda screwed it up. We went to a BEAUTIFUL fondue place for dinner (Geja's Cafe, I highly recommend it) and the only problem with it was that it was much further from the EL station than my DF originally thought, so we had to walk quite a ways and I was in high heels. Then we went to Second City which was hysterical. We got back to the hotel, and needless to say, my feet were KILLING me so I was a bit cranky and tired. My DF said "Let's go to the Sears Tower" (do you see where this is going? I had no clue!) and I said, "I really don't feel like it right now.. can we chill out for a bit?"
DF: "Ok, but let's go tonight" Well, I don't remember exactly how it went, but I was annoyed, and my feet hurt, and I was cranky, and he was being SO insistent that we ended up getting into a bit of a fight.. and during said fight I said something like.. "you know, when you're like this it seems like you doubt our relationship!" And then he sat up on the bed and said, "Come here" and he pulled out the ring! And I looked at him and said, "Shut up!" And he said "will you marry me?" and I said, "shut up! Are you serious?!" Needless to say, not the magical proposal on top of the Sears Tower that it could have been... just my luck! So, anyway, I cried, and said yes, and then I said, "can you please get down on one knee and ask me again?" So he did.

Let me give a little bit more background... When we first got engaged, I really wanted to go to WDW. I brought it up a bunch of times and DF always said no. (Even though I am a huge fan, I have only been to the World once, and that was 10 years ago!) He kept saying that he would maybe go once, when we had kids. Anyway, we had at first talked about going to Croatia for our honeymoon, because my family has a house there, and DF has never gotten to go out of the country (except for Canada, which is so close to us it doesn't exactly count as leaving the country!) I wanted to go too... But the closer it came to reality the more freaked out I got about it. I have lots of family there, and I love to go. My mom usually lives there 6 months out of the year.The problem I had is this: My dad died 3 years ago from colon cancer, and he is buried in Croatia. He was there when he passed away. My brother and I went to visit him when he was near the end, and he passed away a week after we left. None of us could be there for his funeral because they do things much more quickly there and even if we could have gotten flights, we would have missed the funeral. So, I haven't seen his grave yet, and I didn't want the first time I saw his grave to be on my honeymoon.

Anyway, after we discussed that, I felt really bad for denying DH his first chance to go to Europe and I told him he could pick where we would go for our HM. He started thinking about an Alaskan cruise, which I was excited about since I've always wanted to go there too. DH came home one day and said "I've been think about alternatives to an Alaskan cruise," and I perked up and said "Disney Cruise?" and DH said "um, no." That was the end of that conversation. However, a couple days after that, he said "So, I've been looking into this Disney Cruise thing..." I was SHOCKED! I couldn't believe it! DH said that I should know he researches everything, and I shouldn't be so surprised, but going on all the reactions before, I never thought I would get anything close to Disney! Anyway, after further research, we discovered the buy 4, get 3 nights free deal. DH and I talked and realized we couldn't go somewhere where all we did was lay on a beach. We like to DO stuff. So, I told DH that if he found anywhere else that he wanted to go more than Disney that we could do stuff and get as much bang for our buck, then we would go there (all the while I had my fingers crossed for WDW!) and lo and behold, he booked Disney!! I cried when we officially booked the trip. And for the Valentine's Day right before the wedding he surprised me by upgrading us to the GF with the Platinum Package! (this intro was shamelessly copied from my aborted PJ!) :lmao:

Anyway, on to our wedding. We were set to get married in my church (which is a Croatian Catholic church, Croatian being my family's nationality.) Unfortunately, The Wednesday before the wedding (we got married on a Saturday) my priest called and said "we have a problem..." My heart stopped. See, DH is divorced, but his first marriage was only a civil ceremony, he didn't get married in a church. His ex wasn't Catholic, and neither is he, so it shouldn't have been an issue, right? Well, apparently the Catholic church does not recognize civil marriage ceremonies if one of the party is Catholic, but if neither of the couple is Catholic, then they do recognize the marriage. Yes, I know, it made no sense to me either. So my priest, (who knew about the divoce, obviously, but failed to file the proper paperwork until right before the wedding) informed us of this 3 days before our ceremony and said "We can't marry you in the church, because your fiance needs to get an annulment and that takes a few months. When you get an annulment, we can perform the ceremony then. 3 DAYS BEFORE MY WEDDING!!!

Needless to say, our response was basically "Screw you, we'll find somebody else to marry us!" My FIL is a Lutheran Pastor (he was newly ordained at the time of all this) and we asked him to perform the ceremony and of course he said yes. We changed the ceremony time from 12 to 1, called everyone we could get a hold of, and told them we would be getting married at the reception site (which was outdoors.) Needless to say, it was chaotic! If we hadn't have been trying to please my mother by trying to have a Catholic ceremony in the first place, we would have asked FIL to do the ceremony originally, but we were trying to do the proper Catholic thing. That has totally gone out the window now, and I haven't been back to my church since.

Another lovely hiccup was our tent. There's a pavilion and hall at the ceremony site, but we had too many guests to use the hall for the guests, so they were seated outside under the pavilion and tent. I had gone to reserve the tent a few months beforehand, and said "I need to reserve a tent for my wedding." No problem, right? Well, it was Thursday, and I arrived at the reception site to do some prep work, and wait for the tent to be delivered. Well, they start to put up the tent, and... it's a yellow striped tent. Yes, yellow. Of course, I flipped out. I called DH and told him to go to the rental place and figure out what the &$)%@! is going on! He said that the rental place said I had never specified a white tent, and so the yellow stripe was the default tent. I didn't even know they offered anything but white tents! All of their pictures had lovely white tents and I said "tent for a wedding." Who in their right mind would take that as "a yellow striped tent!" They had also sent me yellow walls! Well, they didn't have any more white tents, but they did replace the wall with white walls with windows.. So at this point I had no church, a changed ceremony time, and a yellow tent. Yup, I was majorly stressing! The day of the wedding was completely beautiful, though. I think all of our bad luck was used up during the preceding week! My cousin went to the church to tell any guests who didn't know of the changes to go to the reception site for the ceremony. The ceremony was gorgeous. My 2nd cousin (who was also a bridesmaid) is a trained opera singer, and she sang "Ave Maria" which was gorgeous. My FIL performed the ceremony, and everything went off without a hitch! I'll post a few of my favorite wedding pics next.
 
My mom, brother and me
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Ceremony Pics
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My gorgeous cousin singing Ave Maria
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Family (This is just my side, and it's not even all of us!)
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My brother got very emotional...
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My nephews and I in the limo:
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My handsome groom!
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My Mom, Brother and his wife and my nieces, nephews, step-niece and step-nephews. (Love love love my new SIL and new niece and nephews!) They were only engaged at the time this pic was taken, just got married on April 11th!)

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Some other favorites:
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Our awesome cake!

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The little memorial to my dad my cousins made for me.

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We had a photo booth, which I highly recommend!

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Some reception pics:
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Oh, and I forgot one of my favorites!
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Your wedding photo's are beautiful!
I am so glad you have decided to share and finish your TR, can't wait to hear about your disneymoon :thumbsup2
 
Well, we got married on June 6, but we waited 2 weeks to go on our Disneymoon! It was a crazy two weeks, but we were finally on our way! My mom drove us to the airport (Detroit Metro) and we were supposed to leave at 7:30 am. Of course, our flight was delayed and DH was a bit grumpy about it, but I wasn't about to let it start our honeymoon off on the wrong foot, so we tried to make the best of it. It turned out to be a bit of good luck though (as you'll see later!)
Waiiting in the airport..
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Us with our iPod headphones in. I don't know what we would do without our iPods!
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Anyway, DH had decided to get a car service for us, and we were kinda nervous because we were late. DH had called the company when we found out we were delayed, and they had said to call them when we land in Orlando.

So we waited for our car, and I had to take pictures of the ME and DCL buses because I was getting SO excited! (Not that we were doing a cruise, but hey it was something Disney!) :)
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We waited for a little bit, and then THIS pulled up!
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SO exciting! The driver said that since our flight was delayed, the Town Car we had reserved wasn't available, so they sent the Escalade Limo!

Here's some pics in the limo, I'm so excited I look crazed!

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DH had upgraded us to the GF as a Valentine's Day surprise, so I was SO excited to get there! It was my first time staying on-site. I had always thought I would never get to stay there, so pulling up to the GF was like a dream!
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Had to take some lobby pictures...
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Note the perma-grin... Can't believe I'm actually here!
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While we were waiting for our room to be ready, we had lunch at the Grand Floridian Cafe.

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It was really yummy! DH had the sauteed shrimp app. and the roast beef sandwich on ciabatta bread. (sorry no food porn pics, but I did remember to take some later on in the trip, of desserts, mostly!) I had the crab cakes, and the NY strip steak. DH had key lime pie for dessert (his fave!) and I had lemon cheesecake.

Here's my first glowtini! (I had I don't know how many of these on this trip, and I forgot every single one of the darn Glowcubes! I was so mad...
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Anyway, we went up to our room, and this was waiting for me!
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DH surprised me with it, it had a bride and groom Mickey and Minnie, a cute little GF keychain, and our bride and groom Mickey ears! I was SO happy about those ears, I had been bugging DH to order them beforehand, and he said "No, let's just get them there." Now I know why!

Here's some pics of the room, including a towel hidden Mickey! (another thing that made me "squeee"!)
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Here's the view from our balcony. (It was room 9328, just wanted to post that so I remember!)

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When our luggage arrived, we headed down to swim in the pools for a bit, and to try out our new water-proof camera. (yep, it's water-proof!)

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Then we went back to the room to get ready to go to the Spirit of Aloha Luau at the Poly!!

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First pic of Cinderella Castle!! (I cry every time.)

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More luau pics. The storyline was cute (a bit cheesy for DH, but he still liked it) and the dancers (especially the fire dancer) were amazing! The food was really good, too!

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We walked along the beach back to the GF (SO romantic!) When we got back to our room, this was waiting for us:

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A bottle of champagne and congrats from Mickey!!! It was the perfect end to a perfect first day...
 
BTW, is there a way this thread can be moved to the regular forum and not the completed TR forum? Mods help please? :)
 
I love all of your pictures so far! Your wedding was beautiful and looks like you guys are a tight knit family! Congratulations on your wedding and disneymoon!
 
And the GF is really lovely.

The GF is SO pretty... and I'm glad you liked the flowers, too! I did the girls' bouquets and my bouquet out of silk flowers. And I love bright colors, especially blues and greens so it was a very easy choice of color scheme. It's so nice that you noticed, and I appreciate your appreciation! :goodvibes
 
Your wedding was soooo pretty!! I want to use that same color for my dresses! The last minute changes would never have been known by those photos!! I can't wait to see more of your pictures and hear your stories.
 

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