I can show you the world shining, shimmering, splendid! - Aladdin, from "Aladdin"

Hello again, it's Jennie here...

For those of you who were paying really close attention, you should have guessed by now from all the small hints Tan and I have been dropping on our Facebook pages and this blog.  For those of you who weren't...

Tan and I will be married at Walt Disney World, in Orlando, Florida!

Fun times!  We love this place!!

(Tan: Well done to Tuyet Anh for kinda correctly guessing where we'll be having our wedding)

The date we are looking at will be mid to late September and it will more than likely be a weekday, as most people will be travelling to get to this destination anyway (and everyone in Australia will have to travel a really long way!)  We decided that having a wedding that was going to be on a weekday and not during peak holiday season was really the ideal way to cut back on the overall wedding costs and ensure we will get the venues we request.

I can now explain why we came to the decision on the destination.  Our decision was mostly based on the people that would be attending our wedding, not just because we liked the location ourselves.  Many years ago we were considering New Zealand as our destination, but based on the people that we were inviting New Zealand was still going to be too far for the majority of people to travel.

We always have so much fun in Disney World. We want to share it with our family!

The next choice on the list was Germany, being half German I have a number of older relatives that live in Germany and would have difficulty travelling long distances, it also cut back the travel time for a big number of people from Tan's side of the family that we wanted to invite.  And really, what girl doesn't want to get married near a real castle??!

We would have loved to get married here, but it was too hard :(

Unfortunately there are a number of problems associated with that choice.  Some of the major reasons we decided against going through with it, was that Tan has never been to Germany and even I have only been there a handful of times, so organizing it was going to be a monumental challenge.  

We also simply did not have the money to travel anywhere that wasn't local to us, so wherever we were going to have the wedding it was going to be sight unseen.  Although my dad speaks German and I have relatives that do, neither Tan or I speak fluently enough to plan a wedding.

It was just turning out to be nearly impossible to do and we decided that if it was going to be this difficult to organize, then there is a pretty big chance that there would be massive issues on the day of the wedding, this is something we did not want.  I am a huge perfectionist and that just wasn't going to fly with me.

What could have been...  But I think we have a pretty good wedding organised!

We were back to the drawing board and discussing possibilities again.  In the end it came down to why we decided against having the wedding in Germany.  It was simply too hard to organize somewhere halfway across the world when we weren't familiar enough with the place, we hadn't seen the locations and didn't speak the language.   Basically we went for a place that had the complete opposite.

I have spent almost a month of combined days in 3 Disney Park locations (Disneyland Anaheim, Disney World Orlando and Disneyland Paris) with the majority of my time spent at Walt Disney World (about 14 days total).  Tan has spent around 20 days at 2 parks (Disneyland Anaheim and Disney World Orlando about 14 days as well at Disney World).  So we know a thing or 2 about Disney Parks!

To Infinity and Beyond

Tan loves this place almost as much as I do

It seemed the logical choice that we get married in a place we love so much, it has a special place in our hearts and it should solve all the travel issues the 2 families were facing.  Not only did Tan have a lot of family that lived in the US and Canada, but my family from Europe weren't too far away either!  It was a great central location for everyone.

Cinderella Castle with fireworks! How can you beat this??

We did some research and spoke to our location planner "Joe", and hopefully with the number of people we have for the time of year we're looking at we should be able to lock in the Disney Wedding Pavilion at the Grand Floridian for the ceremony.

The Wedding Pavilion is a stunning location that overlooks Cinderella's castle in the Magic Kingdom.  It also has enough seating for everyone, is the most intimate and private location available and it is under cover so if the worst happens we're prepared!

The view from where we hope to have our ceremony

At this stage we're hoping to hold the reception at the Living Seas Salon within the Epcot park.  It is a lovely dining area with a dance floor and plenty of room to socialize.  That will however depend on numbers, and we're unsure if we can cut down the number of people enough to be able to have the reception here.

Living Seas Salon.  Our wedding will have much better décor (we hope!)

We are also having a dessert party, but that will be a special surprise for everyone so I wont say where or what it will be!

I hope this clears up some of the details that were up in the air and I hope at least some of you are as excited as we are.  This is truly going to be our fairytale wedding!