You and I are a team. Nothing is more important than our friendship. - Mike, from Monsters, Inc.

Hi again to our lovely readers!  This is Jennie and I'll be posting the first part of a two part post about our wedding party.  On the day we made our announcement as to where the wedding was to be held, we invited our two families out to dinner as well as three of the members we hoped would be in our wedding party.

Immediately after making the announcement of where the wedding was to be held, we asked our bridal party if they wanted to be involved and they all received a gift box as we "popped the question" to them.

So in today's blog post I'll be writing about our lovely, gorgeous, wonderful and fantabulous bridesmaids!  My two lovely Disney maidens that I have hand selected to be aiding me on my special day are two girls that are very special to me and I have known for a very long time.

The first is my matron of honour:  Corinne Knoll

 

Corinne loves her stuffed animals, so no doubt when she gets to WDW she'll be raiding the stores!

Corinne is my younger sister, not just a little younger, but younger by seven years! She may be younger but don't be deceived by this fact, she is probably far more mature than I'll ever hope to be. Well mostly... she's still incredibly fun, silly and very social!

I've known Corinne her entire life, she might say "sadly", but besides our parents I'm the only one that can vouch for her being adopted... no, really!

Although she was adopted, Corinne has great genetics and has grown into an elegant beautiful woman, and like our entire family, Corinne and I are pretty close.  Regardless of the attention seeking fights we had!

Corinne on her wedding day, she's so purdy!!

Corinne has always shared a similar passion for Disney as I have, and although we've always been ultra competitive in certain aspects of our lives (NES, SNES, N64, thumb wars, just to name a few) I think we share many similar passions, especially when it comes to the shows we like.

We may have a number of similar interests, but Corinne is almost the polar opposite in personality to me.  She's the yang to my yin, which is perfect for adding the extra perspective from her light and bubbly side.  She's the extrovert and I'm the introvert, I'll be thinking something but won't say it, she will.

When searching through Corinne's facebook photos I had to wade through lots and lots of photos similar to this...

She's extremely organized and fantastic at getting things done on time (again the polar opposite to me)!  I really couldn't think of a better person to be by my side ensuring everything runs smoothly... plus I get to boss her around for an entire day.  It's the ultimate wedding gift!!!

The second is my bridesmaid: Natalie Le

Natalie is Tan's younger sister and is pretty much like my second sister, I've known her since she was about 9 years old and she's always been incredibly supportive and ready to stick up me for at every opportunity (and always ready to beat up anyone that looked at me wrong!)

She has grown up into a gorgeous young woman and has always shared my love of Harry Potter, in fact I blame Natalie for getting me interested in Harry Potter.  She was the one that loaned me her books in the very beginning.

She's an awesome cook as well, but I won't be making her cater the wedding.

She's always helping me with sourcing the best beauty products, and has fantastic fashion sense.  We share tips on looking after our furry families.  Deuce (my cat) is about the same age as Natalie's cat "Heidi" and were rescued from the same shelter.

Natalie getting picked up by "Donkey" in his waffle stand.

Natalie and I also share the same love of traveling, so she was super excited when she heard the wedding was going to be in Orlando!

We're pumped to beat these bitches at their own game!

I can't wait to see these two gorgeous girls all gowned up as my maidens, hopefully we can sing some crazy Disney princess songs and then bluebirds and bunnies will be surrounding and following us everywhere!

That's all from me, thanks for reading and please come back to read Tan's post on the groomsmen!

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date! - The White Rabbit, from Alice in Wonderland

Hi everyone, it's Tan here again with some very exciting news.

We have just received confirmation from Disney that they have held our preferred wedding date of September 18, 2014.  This means that there's less than one year until we get married!!

That was me after they confirmed our date

Having this date held means that we're 95% sure that this will be the date that we're getting married.  We still need to sign the contract to make this legally binding and put ourselves in a position where we can get sued (not to mention the money that we will be guaranteeing Disney).

In short, we will be owned by the Disney Corporation (NYSE: DIS)

So what else does this mean?  It means that we can start booking flights, accommodation, photographers, videographers, make up artists, hairdressers, officiants (shout out to Renee Silverman, who is our only confirmed cast member and so very excited!), and other stuff that I haven't thought of yet.

We will be sending out the, 'save the date' cards in the mail to all the people we intend to invite.  In addition to this, we will be putting three golden 'save the date' cards in Willy Wonka chocolate bars.  If you are lucky enough to buy a chocolate bar with a golden save the date, then you too will be able to experience the magic of the Disney Chocolate Factory*

Dramatisation of what it will look like if Charlie found a golden save the date

*I made that up.

Jennie has done a fantastic job with the save the date cards.  For those who don't want to ruin the surprise, stop reading now!!  Below is an image of the card that Jennie has had designed.

I'm quite impressed.  Although my ears should be bigger.  It was cold that day...

Jennie and I have also decided that we will be visiting Disney World in Orlando to plan our wedding in person.  As much as we thought we could plan the whole wedding from the other side of the planet, it is proving to be quite difficult to do.

So next year in February, we'll be going to Orlando to lock in everything (especially the food and drink tasting) to make sure it will be extra super duper magical.  I will also have to sell one of my kidneys and fifteen percent of the working part of my liver to be able to fund this expedition.

But how will you get to Disney World, Bart??

So that's about it for this week.  Our next posts will be about the bridal party (who they are, and why we chose them), key people such as photographers, officiants, and mascots.

Thanks for reading!

This is a hobo suit, darling! You can't be seen in this. I won't allow it! - Edna Mode, from "The Incredibles"

Hi all, it's Tan here.

Before I start, this whole blog post was inspired by Edna Mode from, "The Incredibles".  For those who don't know who that is, check this out:

NO CAPES!!

How did Edna inspire me to do this blog post?  Well, watching Edna reminded me of the first and only experience Jennie and I have had when dress shopping recently.  It's not that we don't like Edna - quite the opposite really.

(Jennie: Just to clarify to those wondering, Tan will be helping me in the dress selection process as he enjoys clothes shopping more than many women do and he also has awesome taste.  So in my honest opinion sticking to some silly outdated tradition would be just selfish of me!)

Our first experience left us wishing that we had someone as awesome as Edna to help us with the dress selection.

What we thought Wedding Dress shopping would be like

(Jennie: I feel that our view of bridal boutiques may have been slightly influenced by watching too much "Say Yes to the Dress". Kleinfeld Bridal have an absolutely amazing store!)

Jennie: I'd love to go here just to say that I have!

One of the possible designers Jennie had "narrowed" down her selection to was Alfred Angelo, as he is responsible for the Disney Fairy Tale Weddings Collection.  Quite a nice collection, if I do say so myself (see more here).  He is quite popular in the US however, there are limited stockists in Australia.

One of the few places in Melbourne was the first place we visited.  I don't want to name any names, but if you're ever looking for Alfred Angelo dress in Brunswick... Don't even bother!

What we thought it felt like being in that shop

So what went wrong?  Where do I start...?

The experience upset Jennie so much that she went as far as writing to Alfred Angelo themselves to let them know how poor the experience was.  Here is an excerpt from her feedback:

"When we walked into the store, it was quite a small boutique and had a very "thrift store" feel about it. I was disappointed when the first thing I noticed was all the dresses in the store were not covered and were all looking "dull" because they weren't protected at all.

I presented my list to the attendant who made it clear she didn't have much time as she was the only person working that day, even though she made a point of mentioning that we were the only people that were in the store the entire duration of our visit. 

Actual image from the shop,
sadly this image looks better than the store does!

She began searching through the dresses and went through about 50 or more trying to find the ones on my list even though I had all the codes written down and tried to explain the styles to her.

I recognized the newest Ariel dress (style 223) on the hanger and pointed it out saying that it was the one, but even through it had a "Disney Fairy Tales Wedding" swing tag on it she disregarded it as being that dress because it had a different code on it instead she kept looking through more and more dresses unable to find anything.

When we eventually found another style that was on my list and this time had the code (it was the Snow White dress, style 220), she pulled the dress away from the others while it was still on the rack. I had about 1 minute to glance at the dress before she tucked it back in with the other dresses. The shoulder train (or cape) was still tucked into the dress (to protect it apparently) and her lack of care and presentation did absolutely nothing for such a beautiful dress.

I asked about the Cinderella Platinum dress (style 209) as it is one of my favorites, she said she had that one and pointed to a dress that was hanging on the end of one of the racks. She never bothered to hang it away from any of the other dresses, fluff it out, show us the back or try and present it to us in any way. We were to view it on the end of the rack and that was all.

I asked if they had another store that I could view some of the other styles or when they'd be getting any of them in. She said they weren't going to be getting any of the other styles in because they wouldn't sell in Australia so there wouldn't be any point. 

She offered to order them for me if I wanted something specific, but as you know, it would be silly to buy a wedding dress without trying it on because what you see in a book will look completely different on each individual bride.

This attendant had no time, no product knowledge and no interest in selling your gowns. Overall I had a very disappointing day from what was meant to be an extremely exciting and magical time. I am surprised that Alfred Angelo is willing to allow a retailer that is clearly not doing the brand justice to be allow to sell such a beautiful and rather high-end product. 

I would love to see them put a little more time into their screening process as if I wasn't such a big lover of Disney and determined to travel half way around the world to have my wedding in Walt Disney World then I wouldn't have given the product a second thought, I would have walked out and purchased something else."

Quite scathing from Jennie (if you know Jennie, you'd know that she usually doesn't send this type of feedback).

What it must have felt like to Jennie...

Credit to the team at Alfred Angelo, they responded to Jennie's feedback within a few days and told her that they would help out when we're ready to go dress shopping again.

Here's hoping the next time is much more magical!

Thank you for reading.  Would love to get your feedback.

P.S. If you haven't responded to Jennie about the room allocations, please do so ASAP - this week is the week we lock in our dates and expected room booking numbers.  You will miss out on the discounts!!

Thanks for reading!!

I was hiding under your porch because I love you - Dug, from "Up".

Hello again!  Jennie checking in to give everyone some information regarding our pending "lock in" date.

This time I want to give people some information regarding the WDW (Walt Disney World for those of you that aren't up with the lingo) Resort locations that Tan touched on a little in the last blog entry.  I also want your feedback on what you feel would be right for you and your family.

This does not constitute acceptable accommodation

In order to have our wedding at WDW we need to meet a number of certain criteria and while much of the criteria is based on our minimum spends and other requirements that don't really relate to our guests there is one aspect that can get slightly tricky if we don't get it right.  This part I'm referring to is what Disney call their "room block", where we have to create a request for Disney to block a number of nights from certain Disney Resort Hotels that are reserved specifically for people on our guest list.

It's extremely confusing even for us, but essentially what happens is Disney give us a list of their hotels that they're willing to reserve for our wedding guests.  These rooms will be sold on to our guests at a discounted rate (some of the discounts reaching up to 30% off per room, which is pretty nice!)  Another aspect that can get quite tricky is when we create the room block we must guarantee that 80% of the rooms we ask to be blocked will be sold.

So as you can imagine this can be quite daunting and tedious if we are left to simply "guess" how many of our guests are interested in staying within the WDW area.  We're hoping to remove some of that guess work with your help!  We can do this by passing on the information we have and allowing our guests to decide where would be best for them to stay and how many nights they think they will be staying within the Disney area.

Tan: I'm so confused!!  Help me, Jennie!!

I also want to take this time to go a little further in depth about why staying within the Disney area is so amazing, because for those that have never been to WDW it is quite an amazing place to be and an incredibly massive area!  To give you some idea of just how massive, the area itself covers 47sq miles (for those of you that live in Australia, 121sq kms) or 30 000 acres!  It's also quite a distance from WDW to any of the hotels in the area surrounding the park, so getting from any hotel outside the park to inside the park, you're going to be driving about an hour or so per day not including the time it's going to take you to park and the time it'll take you to get from your car to the front of the park!

This place is MASSIVE!!

This is the main reason Tan and I will never ever stay outside the park again, we did it once in 2007 and it was the worst thing we did on the entire 7 week trip!  It ate into our holiday and as you know, the one thing you seem to have a lack of on vacation is always time.

Want to avoid this?  Listen to our advice!!

No, really!  Trust us!  We've both pulled these faces when staying in non-Disney accommodation...

Tan: Hmm... There sure has been a lot of crying and tantrums embedded in this blog entry.  This is serious, people!

There are a few pros to staying within WDW:

• Distance - As I said earlier the distances you can take to travel to get to the WDW area alone without even getting to where you need to go inside the resort can be quite substantial.

Okay, maybe not THIS substantial!

• Transport - Reliable free transportation from all resort locations to any of the parks within the grounds including "Downtown Disney" and "Pleasure Island".
• Parking - If you're driving to all of the parks, you're required to pay for parking, so with the free transportation you can save money every single day you're looking to travel to a park.  If you do decide to drive to a park then parking is free to resort guests.

Paying for parking can be painful.  Maybe not this painful.

• Safe and clean - The peace of mind knowing you're going to be staying in a location that is clean and safe.  All Disney Resort locations have a standard they need to uphold.
• Disney Magic - Even the Disney resort have that feel of "Disney" about them, which you will not get staying outside the park.

It's magical, but not THAT magical

• Independence - Because it's so easy to travel around within the park, if one family member feels like returning to the room without feeling like a "burden" on the rest of the family, they can.
• No Need for Lockers - Because it's relatively quick to travel to and from the parks, you can leave your things in the room and return when you need to, eliminating the need for a locker in some cases and as a result cutting back costs.
• Extra Magic Hours - Disney only offer this to their resort guests, the park is open longer to people that stay at the resorts!  Oh yeah!

Extra Magic Hours - so you don't have to disguise yourself as a hedge to stay in the park...

• Shopping - When you stay onsite and feel like purchasing a gift or souvenir, Disney will deliver it to your hotel room free of charge without the need to get a locker or carry it around with you all day.
• Disney's Magical Express - If you decide to fly rather than drive to Orlando (a popular option among our guests traveling from outside of the American continents), Disney offer a pickup and drop off service for you and your bags from Orlando International Airport!  Really, if you didn't want to go anywhere other than WDW then there is no need for a car at all, saving you costs again in this area.
• Disney's Express check-in - Disney also offer a service within all of their resorts to "check-in" your luggage on the plane flight home as well as skipping the queues at the airport by organizing your boarding passes.. I swear they really do think of EVERYTHING!

I don't have to check in at the airport??  This makes me feel like dancing!!

• Room key - Your room key also doubles as your key to the world!.. of Disney.  Your room key not only gives you access to your room (duh..), it's also the only card you need to take with you.  With this card you can purchase anything from an expensive piece of artwork, to a banana or some sun block.  Just don't let the kids get their hands on it or your room bill might end up a little higher than you anticipated.
• Entertainment - Even at their resort locations there is no shortness of entertainment!  Sometimes it's worth just staying back at the hotel to enjoy your day at Disney!
• Child care - Disney is the king of family entertainment, so their child minding services are second to none.  Ensuring you have peace of mind when you leave your kids that they're going to enjoy themselves so much they're probably not going to want you to retrieve them.

Disney has child care - so you don't have to leave them in the car...

• Magic Your Way - You can tailor your resort stay package to include discounted tickets to any of the theme park locations around WDW.
• Wedding convenience - For those people intending to drink on the night of the wedding (or other nights for that matter) you can take the free Disney transport back to your hotel without having to designate a driver to take you back to your hotel.

Sorry, there's no paging service.  Or a bank of payphones.  Use the phone in your room.

Of course staying within WDW isn't for everyone either, so the cons:

• Cost - The cost is often much higher within the WDW area than staying off-site.  For the amount you pay inside WDW you can often get something better and larger off-site.

Not all of us can be as rich as this duck...

• Food - The cost of food is often much higher within the WDW area than it is off-site, plus it's much more difficult to find a resort that caters for people who wish to cook all their meals.
• Distance - The downside to staying within WDW means if you wish to travel to other parks like Sea World, Universal Studios or the Kennedy Space Center then it is quite a drive from the park to any of these locations.
• Access to shops - Again the driving distance to the malls and outlets can be quite some distance.
• Room key - If you don't watch what you put on your room key, you could be in for a nasty surprise at the end of the trip!
• Facilities - Many of the Disney resorts aren't apartment style and as such lack private kitchens and laundries.

So with all that extra knowledge you now have, lets get to the nuts and bolts of the resorts and pricing!  There are three different rates in which Disney classifies their resorts and there are a number of resorts that fall within each of these three rates.  It is recommended that we choose one from each of these resort rate categories (three in total).  We have an idea of what we think will be good, but we don't really want to lock it in until we hear from a few of our guests.

As I said earlier, as we are having our wedding at WDW, Disney are going to be offering a discounted rate to all of our guests that wish to stay at any of our selected resorts.  So these prices I will be quoting apply to a standard room unless otherwise stated and you won't find them available anywhere else.

The Deluxe Resorts:

• The Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - $342 per room, per night.*
• BoardWalk Inn - $256 per room, per night.
• Yacht Club Resort - $249 per room, per night.
• Beach Club Resort - $249 per room, per night.
• Contemporary Resort (Garden Wing Room) - $235 per room, per night.
• Polynesian Resort - $365 per room, per night.
• Animal Kingdom Lodge (Savanna View Room) - $309 per room, per night.
• Wilderness Lodge - $246 per room, per night.

The Moderate Resorts:

• Coronado Springs Resort - $154 per room, per night.
• Caribbean Beach Resort - $154 per room, per night.
• Port Orleans Resort: French Quarter - $154 per room, per night.
• Port Orleans Resort: Riverside - $154 per room, per night.*

The Value Resorts:

• All-Star Music Resort - $88 per room, per night.
• All-Star Movies Resort - $88 per room, per night.
• All-Star Sports Resort - $88 per room, per night.
• Pop Century Resort - $97 per room, per night.*

As you can see, Disney cater for all budgets.  I could be here forever giving you the pros and cons of each resort but as this blog post is already getting quite long winded I'll let everyone conduct their own research on each location.

Like I said earlier, Tan and I have tentatively decided on what might work best for everyone and the resorts we thought would be good come with a little asterisk next to them (one of these ==> * ).

The Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - The Disney Wedding Pavilion where the ceremony will hopefully be held is located at the Grand Floridian, so this choice is an ease of access for those that aren't wanting to travel too far on the day of the wedding may find this option appealing as it's only a short walk to the pavilion itself.  Tan and I will be staying here the night before the wedding and the night of the wedding.

The Grand Floridian

Port Orleans Resort: Riverside - We once stayed at Port Orleans Resort: French Quarter, it was a lovely and simple hotel, quiet and clean.  The 1:00 am laundry run nights next to the pool were a blast, but we always kind of regretted that we didn't stay at Riverside instead because you can catch a boat free of charge to Downtown Disney, which is awesome!

Port Orleans Riverside

Pop Century Resort - All the value resorts are much of a muchness, there really isn't much to them.  They can apparently be a little noisy because there are sooooo many kids, but otherwise they're fine during the evenings.  It was a tough decision for us on what would be best, in the end it came down to what seemed more appealing?

One of the buildings at Pop Century Resort.  There's many more Pop Culture icons around this place

Feel free to either post your thoughts here, or message either of us on facebook to share your thoughts on which resort will be best and perhaps give us a vague idea of how long you intend to spend at any of the WDW resorts, if any.

To kickstart your own research, here is a useful link: http://wdwprepschool.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-every-disney-world-resort/

Thanks again for reading, and hopefully soon I can get Tan to post something not so super-cereal and informative and more fun instead!

Be our guest, be our guest... - Lumière, from "Beauty and the Beast"

Hi everyone, it's Tan here.

Jennie has asked me to post on this blog as it is beginning to look like she's doing all the work and that I'm a typical lazy man who doesn't help his fiancée with anything to do with the wedding.

While this is somewhat true, let's not get into this right now...

Since we made our announcement that we're having a destination wedding in Orlando, our worlds have been somewhat turned upside-down.  We thought that our choice was going to be a popular one, but we never expected such an overwhelming positive response.  It has certainly given us added motivation (not that we needed any) to make this event a magical one.

This is the first image that I found when I googled, "Disney World Excitement" - try it for yourself!

Everything we do in our (limited) spare time has been wedding related. Guest lists, locking in dates, locking in venues, figuring out what underwear (if any) I'll be wearing on the day, there are so many decisions to be made.

Decisions, decisions...

There's a lot of work to do, but it is also a lot of fun, and I think Jennie is really enjoying the process.  I'm always amazed at how much more organised she is than me (actually, she's probably the most organised person I know), and I'm amazed at how much she's picked up and how much she enjoys this whole wedding planning thing.  I honestly think she missed her calling in life - My wonderful cousin, Khoi, even messaged me from Canada to tell me how amazing and organised Jennie is.  Now THAT'S a great endorsement!

My Disney Princess...

Wait...

I want to be a Princess tooooooooooooo!!

What we've done thus far...

One fun aspect of this wedding thus far is having to temper the expectations of our respective families.  The thing I love about weddings is how they bring families together.  The thing that I didn't expect is to have my mother invite half of Vietnam...

If my mum had her way, this is what our wedding would be like (but with Mickey Ears)

So I had to go into a little damage control.  My mother wanted to invite 'relatives' we have never heard of, and in some cases, have never met.  In the end, we had to convince my mother that not everyone would be able to make their way to Orlando for the wedding of some guy and his hot fiancée.  We ended up inviting only people we knew would go.  

Which way to the wedding??

But it did raise a valid point...  Everyone we invite will be travelling (should "travelling" have one or two "l's"? MS Word and this Blog have different ideas...) to Orlando to celebrate this occasion, and they're all going to need a place to stay.  Luckily for us, Orlando the most visited city in the USA (according to Forbes magazine), so there are plenty of places to stay.

There's hostels, hotels, Disney Hotels, flats, apartments, bus stops and park benches (and many more!)

You can sleep at the park - Not recommended

There's places for everyone, with varying budgets.  One thing that we will get as part of our Disney Weddings package is discounted accommodation at the Disney resorts.  When we get this information, we will send it out to our guests to let you know what options there are available.  Having before stayed at both a Disney resort, and a non-Disney resort in Orlando, we recommend that our guests stay in a Disney resort where possible.

The reason we say this, is if you stay outside the park, it will take you a very long time to get into the park.  You would need to drive to the park, pay for parking, find parking, then take a shuttle from the car park to the park you want to enter.  If you wanted to switch parks that weren't connected by monorail, then you'd need to make your way out of the car park you're in, make your way to the park you wish to go to, find parking and then take a shuttle to that park.  Remember that Disney World is a group of parks and they're not all connected!

Wow, how many times did I use the word, "park" in that paragraph??

This is not a car yard. It is Disney World Parking!!

That's only half the reason why we encourage our guests to stay at a Disney Resort.  We want everyone to be close to the wedding venues so that it doesn't become a logistical nightmare, and we also have minimum resort night commitments as part of our wedding package.  More on this at a later date, but please keep this in mind if you're keen on booking accommodation now.  If you wait, we will release discounted room rates at Disney resorts with your wedding invitation!  Oh, and via this blog too...

Who wouldn't want to stay close to this mob?!

Thanks for reading!  We will have more information soon!