First stop Franck's
We only learned about Disney’s Fairytale Weddings shortly before getting engaged in Disney World. So on that same trip, after proposing on Splash Mountain, my wife, Christina, and I took an afternoon out of enjoying the parks to learn more about having a Disney wedding. We made our way over to the wedding pavilion. We entered the main building, named after the eccentric wedding planner character played by Martin Short in the 1991 film “Father of the Bride,” Franck’s Bridal Studio.
Let's set the scene
For the uninitiated, as of this writing, Walt Disney World is 25,000 acres divided up into four Theme Parks (The Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, Disney Studios) and more than twenty-five resort hotels. I think everyone is familiar with the Magic Kingdom as that is what most people think of when they think of Disney World. If you’re looking for the castle, this is the park you’ll find it in! In front of the Magic Kingdom is the Seven Seas lagoon. If you’ve ever taken the ferry from the TTC (Transportation and Ticket Center ie. Magic Kingdom parking lot) you’ve ferried across the Seven Seas Lagoon.
Around the Seven Seas Lagoon, counter-clockwise from the Magic Kingdom are the Grand Floridian, the Polynesian, and the Contemporary – with each of these resorts having a monorail stop.
Just a short walk past the Grand Floridian brings you to Franck’s, and if you cross a bridge to a private island, you’ll be at Disney’s Wedding Pavilion.
Fun story about the creation of the Seven Seas Lagoon
After Walt Disney had built Disneyland in California, he saw a cast member (the Disney term for employees) dressed like a cowboy walking through Tomorrowland (a futuristic themed land) to get to Frontierland (a turn of the century wilderness themed land). He felt that this took guests out of the world he had created in a jarring way. When Disney World was built, a “utilidor system” was designed to keep park operations out of guests’ view. To do this, The Magic Kingdom is actually constructed on the second story. The first floor is the “utilidor system”! (This means that a lot of dirt was needed to build up the land and effectively bury the first floor after the utilidor structure was created.) This is because they couldn’t dig down as Florida is essentially swampland with a high water table. The hole they dug became a huge ditch that was later filled with water and is now the Seven Seas Lagoon in front of the Magic Kingdom. Here’s a great article that goes into it more: https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2019/03/imagineering-seven-seas-lagoon-a-waterway-for-the-world/
The First Meeting
Christina and I arrived by monorail to the Grand Floridian, and from there, it was just a quick walk over to Franck’s. It was overcast, and I’ll never forget the view standing in front of Franck’s Bridal Studio and watching the monorail pass overhead. Fortunately, there were no weddings in progress, and there weren’t many people around. Of course, for Disney, a few hundred people count as not many around, so I should quantify that it was just the two of us. We knocked on the door, and a woman waved us in. Instantly, the idea that we were going to get married here for real became clear as all manner of wedding accouterments were laid bare before us. There were a couple of “meeting tables” designed to sit and chat with your wedding planner. Each of these were decorated with a collection of different chairs, slip-covers, place settings, centerpieces, flower arrangements, and even cakes – though I assume the cakes were fake. The woman approached us and welcomed us. We told her our Disney engagement story and conveyed our dreams of Disney Wedding. She started filling us in on some information, and shortly after, a friendly and exuberant cast member named Joe DeMate appeared and greeted us.
Joe led us back to his office and listened to our engagement story, and asked us about our Disney wedding dreams. He explained how Disney weddings are planned, and I believe gave us some printed literature as well – though that has been long lost to time. The biggest take away was that booking a Disney Wedding can only be done up to 12 months in advance. Seeing as how I had just spent all my savings on an engagement ring, and we had big plans for an exotic honeymoon as well, it would be over a year before we could start booking anything. Our engagement trip concluded and it now it was just a question of money.
Time to Start Saving $$$!!!
When we started our planning, we had great ideas and empty bank accounts. We had a huge savings goal to meet, so I started looking for any unique way to make money. I even discovered a way to make a bunch of money off of credit cards! I had also recently purchased an expensive car with an even more expensive loan – and decided the best thing I could do now was sell it. This became a lot easier since my father-in-law helped us out by giving us a used SUV. In fact, without the money and help my parents and in-laws contributed, we never could have married when we did. That said, even with their help, we still had many tens of thousands of dollars we needed to save quickly. Not only was the wedding going to be pricey, but we were planning a 2-week Tahitian honeymoon. As it turned out, we’d get married in May of 2008 and buy our house in August! Fortunately, we were making a decent income and had few expenses – even fewer without the car loan. Now it was just a matter of time, budgeting, and saving. Out of necessity, I even figured out a trick to make a few thousand dollars in interest that year!
The fun begins! (Our first formal meeting)
Fortuitous timing
We were well on the way to our savings goal and it was getting about time to reserve our wedding date – which can only be done 1 year in advance. This made it all the more fortunate that in late April 2007, when we would need to go do to Disney to book our wedding, my job needed me to go to Florida for a trade show. Even better, my company hired my fiancée to work at the show! This was perfect, as we were hoping to get married in May of 2008, it seemed like the ideal time to book our first formal wedding planning meeting. Even better, since it was now a business trip, our round-trip airfare was covered! Like the opportunistic Disney fans they are, my parents offered to meet us at Disney after the show and join us for the meeting if we’d like. Christina and I talked it over and agreed it sounded like a great idea – we’d have someone to bounce ideas off of. I called Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings & Honeymoons and managed to snag a reservation for the time we’d be down there. Even better, it was with Joe, who we had already met.
We head to Disney
After a successful trade show, one of my co-workers who happened to live in Florida offered to give us a lift to our hotel in Disney, and we offered to treat him to lunch in return. We arrived in Downtown Disney (now known as Disney Springs) and headed over to a great (now closed) Cuban restaurant called Bongos. After a fantastic lunch, we parted ways – he offered to drive us directly to our hotel, and we assured him we were good and could find our own way there. He thanked us for lunch, and we parted ways. My wife and I were still in full business attire from the tradeshow, and as self-described Disney “experts,” we knew we could just grab a bus from Downtown Disney to our hotel – Saratoga Springs.
While we felt and looked slightly awkward wearing full business attire and jumping on the Disney bus in sweltering Florida at the tail end of April, no one really seemed to notice or care. It was when we arrived at Saratoga Springs that we were in for a shock.
We had never stayed at Saratoga before, and as we jumped off at the first bus stop we came to, we soon learned that Saratoga has not 1, not 2 but 5!! bus stops! The property was absolutely HUGE!
It was 88 degrees and so humid you could practically drink the air, and we had absolutely no idea where the actual hotel lobby was. We’d wander down winding paths after winding paths only to find ourselves at a dead-end and have to double back. Now’s a good time to mention we had all of our luggage with us as well. We always do our best to travel light, so our luggage consisted of 2 large camping style backpacks melting into the puddles of sweat they were creating on our backs. After what felt like hours and I can almost swear it actually was, we eventually stumbled onto the main entrance, and within the blink of an eye, we were checked in and in our room. With a quick change of clothes from business to Disney casual, we were back off to Downtown Disney for some shopping!
PRO TIP: If you're going to a hotel/resort you've never been to before, starting at the main lobby is definitely advisable!
Let the planning begin!
My parents arrived the next day, and we headed over to our scheduled appointment. We walked in giddy with anticipation. Up until this point, we still hadn’t fully grasped the scale of what we were about to go plan. Joe welcomed us warmly and invited us over to one of the planning stations. While it’s hard to remember all of the meeting’s details, one of the most memorable conversations we had was about the venue.
Joe showed us pictures of some of the various venues – different ballrooms and picturesque spots on the water in EPCOT. After he had described several options and how they would work, we asked about something we had seen on their website that we couldn’t quite understand.
“Joe,” we said, “we noticed on the website that one of the venues listed was The Great Movie Ride in MGM Studios.”
If this doesn’t sound familiar, this is because the MGM Studios is now known as Disney Studios after a brief stint being known as Disney’s Hollywood Studios”. Additionally, The Great Movie Ride no longer exists but was replaced this year with Mickey & Minnie’s – Runaway Railway.
Joe replied, “Oh, that’s a unique one, and we don’t do many weddings there.” He explained how the ride would be stopped and that the different scenes of the ride are turned into various parts of the reception. Cocktail hour in one scene, dinner in another, and so forth. As he finished explaining in great detail how the whole thing would work, Christina and I looked at one another with huge grins. Together we said, “That’s the one!”
Room Blocks... man I hate Room Blocks!
Since Disney had facilities to accommodate what one normally requires several vendors to provide, the wedding planning would actually be pretty straightforward. Additionally, most of the true wedding planning wouldn’t happen until 6 months out, and we’d come back and do that in person. That is except for the 2 most complicated concepts – minimums and room blocks. We needed to start figuring out these concepts immediately.
Essentially we weren’t really paying for the venue so much as we needed to be spending a minimum amount on the wedding in order to be able to use different venues. Fortunately, with the plans we had, we didn’t have many worries about hitting the minimums. Additionally, we learned that the markup on some basic items would also quickly allow us to hit the minimums. For instance, I remember we wanted to provide snacks and drinks to our guests while they went to watch Fantasmic between the wedding and reception and learned that we’d be paying $20/bag of chips. Normally that’s something I’d be outraged about – but in this case, it went toward the minimum. I was happy to delude myself about that as often as I saw fit 🙂
Worse than the minimums were the room blocks. Ultimately we were able to offer a discount on the hotel rooms to our guests, but only if we reserved a certain number of rooms. We also needed to pick out rooms from 3 hotel resorts – a deluxe, a moderate, and a value hotel.
To make things even trickier, the venue we selected could accommodate only 80 guests! Since most of the costs were fixed, we wanted to get as close to the magic number of 80 guests as possible, as we’d be paying for them anyway.
This meant we needed to know how many people were coming from out of state (and since we only had a handful of Florida natives who would be attending, almost everyone was out of state) so we could set the room blocks, while at the same time not having any idea how many people would actually be willing to travel to our remote wedding as their vacation in a year! We also weren’t big on the idea of having to uninvite people if we went over 80 and also didn’t want to only send out 80 invites for fear not everyone would attend! So we had to start feeling out commitments to get an idea of who could come before even sending out invites. This part was super stressful! In retrospect, it likely still won out when compared to the stress of planning a normal wedding. Outside of this stressor, almost everything else was as easy as wishing it so.
With our trip complete, we signed on the dotted line and were off to the races!
While much of the paperwork was done at home for the guest lists and save the dates and room blocks, the actual details of our booked May 1st 2008 wedding were planned in November 2007. For this, we went to Disney for our Food Tasting and detail planning trip – which turned out to be one for the most magical Disney trips we’ve ever had! So much happened it’s worth its own blog post, coming soon!
Brings back such fond memories!
Thank you!!1