The most fantastic, magical things can happen, and it all starts with a wish. - Jiminy Cricket, from "Pinocchio"

Whoa...  What an action packed few days we've had!

It's Tan again, just in case you were wondering...

Since we last left you, we've managed to jam in as much as humanly possible in the space of three days.  We've had a grand total of sixteen hours sleep in three nights (Anh, if you're reading this, I know that you consider that too much sleep, but we're not all superhuman like you are!).  We've gone shopping, gone to theme parks, gotten drunk and of course, the reason why we're here...  Planned our wedding!

These Mickey Ears will be event appropriate in September

After getting back from IHOP on Saturday morning (at about 4am), we crashed for four hours before getting up to go shopping for SIM cards and some essentials.  What we had originally planned to be a quick two hour trip somehow turned into four hours.  We went to Florida Mall only to end up astounded and disappointed.

Astounded because there was a huge line of people in front of the mall.  We took a closer look to see that the majority of people in the queue were teenage girls and some poor parents they dragged there.  We assumed that they were there to see some singer or try out for American Idol.  What is it with a large group of teenage girls?  When one screams, it sets off the others in their vicinity, who then set off more teenage girls who then... etc.  They seemed to scream every time a semi-decent car drove past as well as when I walked near them.

Yep, I've still got it...

No-one could resist this!!

We asked some poor mother what they were there for and to my surprise, she told us that they were all there to see Bethany Mota.  Apparently she is some YouTube sensation who has gained fame by providing fashion advice and designing clothes.  I'm quite impressed that she has been able to establish such a strong following via YouTube.  This does not mean that I didn't want to douse everyone in gasoline and give them each a box of matches to play with.  Maybe next time...

These teeny boppers queued up to see WHO?!?!

Why were we disappointed?  We were disappointed because we were there at 9:30, but the mall opened at midday.  What kind of mall opens at midday??

Anyway, we still needed to get the things we had set out to purchase.  I proceeded to drive around in random directions (remember, we don't have a GPS unit and we needed SIM cards to take advantage of Google Maps) trying to find a T-Mobile, Verizon or telecommunications provider.

It seemed like all stores were closed on this day!  We ended up going to Walmart to find what we needed and as much as I wanted to get a six-pack of shotguns, I didn't want to waste time getting a gun license.

We put that unhappiness behind us, dumped the car back to the car rental place, and proceeded to make our way to Magic Kingdom to hang out and do fun stuff.

I won't go into detail here as I wanted to focus on the wedding planning for this entry.  Just know that we had a great time as usual, and it felt so good just to be back in Magic Kingdom again.  I'm pretty sure I would live here if I could.

After we went to MK, we headed to Downtown Disney where we proceeded to eat bad food and accidentally get drunk.  Yes, accidentally.  We forgot that we hadn't had much sleep so those two margaritas a PB&J (Frangelico, Chambord and Baileys) shot each really messed us up.  We stumbled our way to the bus terminal where we promptly fell asleep waiting for our bus.  We were lucky that we woke up at 1:30am just as our bus was pulling in!

This was me at Downtown Disney after a few drinks...

So it seems like I've written a fair bit in this entry thus far.  Jennie has told me that I should start talking about our wedding planning session.  Here goes...

We got into our room at 2:00am after the bus terminal incident.  Then we woke up four hours later to get ready for our planning session.  We got a taxi to Franck's Studio (the place where you plan the wedding), which is next to the pavilion where Jennie and I are to be married (it still feels weird saying/typing that) where we met the wonderful Joe DeMatei.

We had been in constant communication with Joe for the last six months and it was great to finally put a face to the voice.  I thought Joe would be much taller, but that didn't change my mind about having a Disney Wedding.  Other than that, Joe was as awesome in person as he had been over the phone and over email.  Joe drove us to see our wedding reception location at Epcot and we were taken to the "behind the scenes" entrance!

I would have taken photos of behind the scenes, but this is what would have happened to me.

This entrance gave me an added appreciation for how much time and effort goes into making everything such a great experience.  There were so many people running around!  The sheer volume was such an eye-opening experience.  Everyone knew their roles and executed to perfection.  I was in awe.

For our guests attending the wedding, it is located at Epcot, but the general public is not able to access this venue so you'll be taken there by motor coach and personally escorted to this venue!

We were previously unsure about the location because we didn't think it suited what we were trying to achieve.  I can't speak for Jennie, but the moment we entered the venue, it erased all doubt in my mind.  I think everyone is going to love this venue (or else *shakes fist*).

Our venue.  Don't pay any attention to that horrible, horrible green tablecloth!

Now that we were comfortable with the venue, it was back to Franck's to work on the details of the wedding.  We were assigned our very own wedding planner, Pamela, and her assistant, Nicole (Nicole was filling in for Pamela's regular assistant).  Jennie and I spent the next three hours with Pamela and Nicole picking out linen, cutlery, napkins, flowers, decorations, cake flavours and fillings, table decor, ceremony decor, underwear, baby names, and much much more!

Okay, we didn't pick any baby names - but "Mickey" has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

I thought I should spend a bit of time talking about the wedding cake tasting.  They brought out a tray full of cake flavours and fillings for us to mix and match and try.  It was a tough decision, but we finally decided on the flavour and filling combination.

CAKE!!!  And fillings...

So many personal touches.  You gotta love Disney's attention to detail

After that, we had a personal tour through the Grand Floridian (the hotel where Jennie and I will be staying for our wedding night), and then got to see the inside of the Wedding Pavilion.  It really validated our decision to have our wedding at Disney World.  I am grateful for this as I had already paid a non-refundable deposit!

We were then driven back to Epcot for our tasting session!  We now know what everyone will be eating at our wedding.  I don't want to give away too much, but here's a little taste of what to expect...

One is eye filet, the other is lobster.  Can you guess which is which?

Our tasting session was held in the catering kitchen at Epcot and was served to us by the head chef, Tony.  We had our very own waiter/server who gave us exceptional service.  We were given seven courses to taste - an appetiser, a salad, three mains (called entrees in the US), and two desserts.

We had to give our approval before they would lock in the menu.  We only changed the food slightly - to cater for our tastes, and to also give our vegan guests plenty of options to eat.  I'm pretty sure that our guests are not going to leave hungry or disappointed.

This was the team that cooked and served our tasting meals.  Sous Chef Tom, Server Todd and Head Chef Tony

At the conclusion of our tasting, we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios to catch the Fantasmic show to wind down after such an awesome night.  It was a great end to such an awesome day.

Thanks for reading again!  I checked our readership numbers before writing this post and it seems like we've got a great following (well, more than I had ever expected - almost 250 readers for our last post!)

Jennie and I are so humbled that you're all reading our blog.  Thank you all!

Thank you for choosing Magic Carpet for all your travel needs. Don't stand till the rug has come to a complete stop. - Genie from "Aladdin"

Hi all, it’s Tan here.  I’m currently writing this blog entry from about 20,000 feet in the air over somewhere between Dallas and Orlando.  I was going to jump online to do the usual things I do to waste time, but I’m not paying $14 for 30 minutes of wifi.

I’ve been trying to get to sleep with limited success.  Each time I fall asleep, something random happens and I’m awake again.  Random things like a woman falling over her husband and landing on me because she didn’t want to wake him.  Seriously, leave the ninja-ing to real ninjas.

But I digress.  We’ve been in transit since 7AM AEST (5PM EST on January 31).  We’ve flown from Melbourne to Sydney to Dallas with layovers of four hours in each city.  By the time we land, it will be 9PM EST on February 1 – a grand total of 28 hours in transit.  OMG – it’s been February 1 for the last 35 hours!! 

You just gotta love traveling halfway across the planet (Jennie nods in agreement).

The trip has not been without incident thus far.  We have managed to misplace a pair of reading glasses and only discovered this thirty minutes before boarding the flight from Dallas to Orlando.  We think it was left on the plane in our haste to get off.  We tried to contact the QANTAS service desk, but they won’t be able to do anything for at least another 24 hours.  So now we play the waiting game…

We are undecided on whether to go to a theme park as soon as we check in, but I think common sense is going to prevail here (as much as we’d love to go to Magical Kingdom for thirty minutes, I just don’t think that’s wise!)

We will most likely go shopping to get supplies for the next two weeks and have dinner at Downtown Disney!  We’re not addicted to all things Disney…

UPDATE: We have arrived safely in Orlando.  Everything was going so well until I realised that I didn’t bring my navigation unit and none of our phones had a mobile data connection active.  This means that there was no real way of navigating to the hotel other than some hand scribbled notes that the car rental chick wrote for us.

The result?  We followed the notes to the letter, got into the general vicinity of the hotel, but kept making the wrong turn at crucial times.  The bad part was that each time we took a wrong turn, it would mean that we’d get stuck on some turnpike that took us miles away from where we needed to be.  One time, we got so lost that we had to pay a toll to get back to where we needed to go.  I guess we were fortunate to have been able to find a Target during our (mis)adventures so we stopped there to pick up supplies.

We eventually got to our hotel after a great team effort.  We checked in, got our awesome magic bands, and then headed out to get some food at IHOP. 

Not one of our best ideas, but at least we are now full.  I’m going to go shower now.  I smell like the feet of a thousand tennis players after a 45 degree (Celsius) day on centre court…  I will post some pictures as soon as I can!

Tomorrow we will get paint chips to help with the wedding planning and commence our shopping adventures!!  We have a rental car for the next day, so we intend on filling it up with lots of goodies from the outlet malls.  Jennie was smart enough to pack light, but spread it across our maximum baggage allowance.  At this stage, we have an additional 60 (SIXTY!) kilograms (132 pounds) of allowance left.

Hopefully we finish everything in time for the Superbowl.  Not so we can watch the game rather, so we can take advantage of the fact that everyone else will be watching the game so we get the whole park to ourselves.  That’s the plan…  I’m not sure if it is going to work.  For what it’s worth, Go Broncos!

One handy hint we’ve discovered for our Australian guests coming to the wedding; don’t exchange AUD for USD here.  There is an eight cent difference.  In Australia, you can buy USD for 85 cents.  Here, it was 77 cents.  I’m glad we exchanged the bulk of our money in Australia.

Well that’s enough from me.  As always, thanks a lot for reading!

Note: Apologies for the lack of visual aid to help you through this blog edition, it's currently 4am in Orlando and we're desperate for some sleep!  Oddly enough our sleep won't last long as we're hoping to wake at 7-8am so we can make the most of our day.. Yes.. we're slightly insane, but sleep is for the weak!  Plus we can sleep at home, but we can't Disney at home. - Jennie