Steve & Heather's Escape Wedding - May 5, 2016

[Boardwalk Bride]

Hello!


My name is Heather and I am going to be a Disney Bride! Yay!


My fiancé Steve and I met at work. We got engaged at the end of November and plan to get married May 2016. Neither of us wanted a big wedding and thought a destination wedding would be fun. Originally we were thinking a beach somewhere would be nice, but with my family being HUGE Disney fans having a DFTW seemed like the perfect fit.


Disney has always been a big part of my life. My love for Disney all started with my parents. My Dad loved Disney from a young age and even worked at WDW for a few years when he was younger. He introduced the wonders and magic of Disney to our family. Growing up we took some really amazing trips to WDW. As I got older my Mom and I watched Disney Wedding shows together, dreaming of how amazing it would be to have a wedding at Disney. I never thought it would really happen, but here we are!


Steve doesn’t have the same love for Disney that my family has...YET! We are taking a short trip this May to get him hooked! While we are visiting, we are going to have engagement pictures done with Emily Gilbert. My mom and I found her through another wedding disboard and fell in love with her photos.


I have found other Bride’s planning journals to be very helpful as we started planning our wedding, so I wanted to share my plans and experiences as I go. Hopefully I can help give some information for others planning their weddings and if anyone has any helpful tips or input for me as I go please share!!

 

[Steve TLT]

Hey Heather, I'm excited to see all you post here. Though I'm sure I'll hear it first.

Can't wait till May!

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

Thanks Dad!

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

My parents have been instrumental in the planning process so far. Between my Dad’s extensive Disney knowledge and my Mom’s masterful DFTW researching this is what we have come up with so far:

Date: May 2016 (We are shooting for a Friday)
Time: 5PM if we can get it
Location: Sea Breeze Pointe
Guests: 13 total- Bride/Groom, bridal party (4), parents(4), siblings(1) and grandparents(2)
Dinner: Considering Trattoria al Forno (We are testing it out this May!)
Photography: Emily Gilbert (We are hiring our own photographer)
Extras: Considering a dessert party

Preliminary itinerary:

Wednesday- Everyone arrives and goes out for the night together. Possibly to dinner and hotel bar hopping
Thursday- Guys go golfing while girls get nails done and practice hair/make-up. Then meet back up for dinner together.
Friday- Wedding Day!
Saturday-Everyone spends the day at Magic Kingdom together
Sunday- Departure day

 

[Doodlebug25413]

April 2016 Vow Renewal here!

Sea Breeze Pointe is a beautiful location

Can't wait to see all your ideas & plans unfold!

 

[Seia]

Welcome! I can't wait to see your plans unfold. SBP is such a beautiful spot... though I may be a bit biased since I'm getting married there, too.

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

Welcome! I can't wait to see your plans unfold. SBP is such a beautiful spot... though I may be a bit biased since I'm getting married there, too.

Thank you! Your wedding is so soon! I can't wait to see photos!

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

April 2016 Vow Renewal here!

Sea Breeze Pointe is a beautiful location

Can't wait to see all your ideas & plans unfold!

I've already been looking through you're PJ too, can't wait to see the rest!

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

Now that I can post photos, here's the ring! Please excuse my dry hands and gross nails



And it came this is awesome box that plays a slideshow of our photos

 

[Doodlebug25413]

awww that's so sweet!

My husband has a lot of making up here to do. I didn't even get a proposal. We just went to the courthouse.

 

[runner_princess]

Love your ring!

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

Love your ring!

Thanks!

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

We are finally only a year away from the wedding and only 4 months until we can get our official date! Not that I'm counting

For the wedding I am bringing my two best friends. They will be my maid of honor and matron of honor. To ask them to be apart of our big day I made them boxes filled with goodies. Since we will all be flying to Florida, I made them Disney luggage tags using their favorite characters to put in the boxes!

 

[runner_princess]

Those are super cute! Loving your planning so far

 

[jwall840]

Love love love your ring and your whole story! The boxes you made your bridesmaids are really nice. Very inspiring!

May i ask where you found that wonderful ribbon? I can think of a ton of things i would want it for...and not just for my wedding!

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

Those are super cute! Loving your planning so far

Thank you!

Love love love your ring and your whole story! The boxes you made your bridesmaids are really nice. Very inspiring!

May i ask where you found that wonderful ribbon? I can think of a ton of things i would want it for...and not just for my wedding!

Thank you!! I love the ribbon, I thought it was perfect! I got the ribbon at Hobby Lobby in the scrap booking section.

 

[jwall840]

Thank you!


Thank you!! I love the ribbon, I thought it was perfect! I got the ribbon at Hobby Lobby in the scrap booking section.

Okay thank you! Going to go hunt that down now...

 

[Boardwalk Bride]

We went to Disney World!

Before going to Disney we went to Siesta Key with Steve’s parents for a few days then left to meet my parents at Disney World!







We don’t get a planning session with the Escape package so we made some of the trip into our own planning session. We had five very quick days at Disney with my parents. Steve has not been to Disney since he was very young so we tried to squeeze in as much as we could while we were there. The first day we went to Epcot then walked over to the Boardwalk to check out Sea Breeze Pointe and try out a potential dinner for after the wedding.







SBP was set up for an event so we didn’t get to go very close, but we got a few pictures before heading to Captain’s Grille for dinner. Steve got the New York Strip and I got the Cabernet-braised Short Rib with corn risotto. The food was amazing! We also tried the Smores Tart, which was also delicious! The only down side to Captain’s Grill is we were hoping to get a private dining room, but they don’t have one. They did offer to try and place us in a more private area of the restaurant if we reserved early enough.









Steve loves to golf, so the next morning we went golfing at Magnolia. My mom and I don’t golf so we took millions of pictures and drove the carts while the guys golfed.







After golf we got ready and met Emily Gilbert at the Boardwalk to take engagement photos! Emily was amazing! She posted one photo on her Facebook page a few days later, but we are still waiting on the rest. From the picture she posted I know I am going to love the rest and I am so excited to have her photograph our wedding!



Before we left to meet Emily, my dad took a few photos to help hold us over until we got all the photos from Emily. I still can’t wait to see the rest of Emily’s photos though!!





After we took pictures we went to Trattoria al Forno to test out a possible dinner for after the wedding. We forgot to take pictures of the food while we were there, but Steve got the Polpetta Gigante (Giant meatball) and I got Chicken Breast alla parmigiana. It was very good food, but we didn’t fall in love with it like we did the food at Captain’s Grille. They do have a private dining area we could use though.

After they cleared the plates my parents surprised us by ordering two mini wedding cakes and had them delivered to the restaurant. We had planned to order and pick up two normal 6in cakes with flavors we wanted to try, but my parents went all out to surprise us and make it special for us. They were the cutest cakes ever! One of the cakes was alternating layers of yellow cake and chocolate cake with white chocolate mousse in the center and the other was yellow cake with strawberry mousse and fresh strawberries. I’m usually a chocolate person, but the yellow and strawberry cake was the best cake I have ever had. We will definitely be getting the strawberry for the wedding!







On our third day we went to the Magic Kingdom. It was packed!! We went on Pirates of the Caribbean first. The ride broke down in the middle and we got stuck on it for 40 min. When we finally got off the ride they gave us fast passes to make up for it however rides were breaking down left and right. We tried to go on the Mine Train, but it broke down before we could get on. The same thing happened with Space Mountain. We ended up with a ton of extra fast passes to get on the rides whenever they were back up and running. We decided to take a break from the park and try again later that night. We went to Kona Café at the Poly. It was delicious, but not what we wanted for our wedding dinner. We headed back to MK and finally got to go on rides! We finished the night with the fireworks. It was a much better evening at MK.







On our fourth day we headed to Hollywood Studios. It was Star Wars weekend and outrageously packed. We were there for the rides and had already been notified Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster was broken down (big shock at this point) so we went to Tower of Terror. The wait was 150min for standby and nearly the same for fast passes. We tried to do a couple other things, but ended up so frustrated we left and went to the Boardwalk again. We wanted to try Big River Brewery to see if we wanted to have a dinner there with everyone the night before our wedding. After we got there we realized we wouldn’t be able to make reservations and that just wasn’t going to work for 13 people. While we were there we got to get a closer look at SBP!





That evening we took some time to look at the dessert party location at the Grand Floridian to see if we would rather do a dessert party there or at Epcot. We still don’t know if we will even be able to do a dessert party, but just in case we have seen what the view would look like! We then finished the night at Chef Mickeys where we made our own dessert party. I love sweets…





On our last day we went to Animal Kingdom in the morning. Nothing broke down and it was amazing! We then went to Downtown Disney to eat lunch at House of Blues before catching our plane out





Now that we have spent so much time at Disney and planning out parts of our wedding we can’t wait for it to get here. It finally feels like our wedding isn’t a million years away!

 

[FieryPixieDust]

I love your ring!! It's gorgeous. And I think it's so cute how involved and helpful your parents are being! Looks like you had a great time at Disney despite all the ride breakdowns (40 min on Pirates! wow!) Can't wait to see more!

 

[TXMNie]

Love your engagement photos and the dress you wore in them! Looks like you had a great time at Disney. Those tiny wedding cakes are adorable!