Worst Wedding Blogger EVER

Wow! So what am I averaging here, a post every three months? I need to get my behind in gear over here! Considering how much time I spend thinking about my wedding, you'd think that I could take a few minutes to write a blog post once a week. So that is my new goal - one post a week. If I ever get any readers maybe there will be someone to hold me to it!

Now where did we leave off...

Venue Selection

I'll admit it - I was planning my Disney Wedding with Mr. Disney Groom only a few months after we were dating and before our first trip to Disney together. I post frequently on some Disney-centric wedding boards, and recently someone bumped up a thread from 2008 that I had posted in! How embarrassing! It was a full 2 years before we got engaged!

In the course of the 2 years between my discovery of the world of Disney Weddings and our actual engagement, I went through several different potential weddings.

1. I was convinced I wanted a reception in the Epcot Italy Pavilion at night with dancing outdoors.

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2. Then I was convinced that we were going to have our ceremony and reception in Animal Kingdom.

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3. Then Disney concocted a rule about no outside photographers being allowed in the parks, and I decided that we simply must have our reception at the California Grill.

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4. Then I toyed around with the idea of us getting married outside of the parks and having our reception in Animal Kingdom (I didn't want to let that one go!)

Once we were actually engaged and it became time to figure out where we wanted to get married, I had to get serious about our options and the pros/cons of each. As mentioned before, you can not bring in an outside photographer to an in-park wedding, and I already knew I loved the work of 2 photographers and needed one of them (needed).

The ceremony site was an easy choice. We stayed at the BoardWalk Villas in March 2010 and I just fell in love with the area and Sea Breeze Point. It's on the water, and I always imagined myself getting married by the water.

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Looking at our resort reception venue options, there were a lot of ballrooms. Nothing against anyone who has a ballroom wedding, but I'm not asking my guests to fly down to Florida to attend our ballroom reception. I knew it needed to be unique, but honestly, the options were limited outside of the parks.

As mentioned before, the California Grill has two private rooms that can be booked for wedding receptions - the Napa and Sonoma rooms. They have amazing views of the Magic Kingdom and the fireworks, but I wasn't so crazy about the carpet and the lack of a high ceiling and dance floor.

The Beach Club had a smaller venue, Ariel's, that had an interesting look (definitely not a typical ballroom) and a built in dance floor, but I couldn't get over the fish or the low ceilings. It also had an uncertain future and Disney wasn't sure they'd be booking it beyond 2011.

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Then all of a sudden, another venue jumped out at me. At the time, there wasn't a lot of weddings at this venue (that has changed since then and it has become very popular!). Atlantic Dance Hall was also on the BoardWalk, within walking distance of our ceremony venue. It had high ceilings, interesting architecture, one of the coolest ceilings I've ever seen, outdoor space with balconies that overlook the water and Epcot's Illuminations fireworks, a built in dance floor, and it was unlike any venue in New Jersey. I was concerned that our group would be too small for this venue, but I quickly talked myself out of it since it was so perfect in so many other ways. And with that, we chose our reception venue.

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I did find a way to work some theme park venues into our wedding events - but that's a story for another day!