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!