Wedding Planning

What’s the Buzz??? 5 Months and Counting!

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning

150 days, to be exact. And that makes things feel really close. Especially since our countdown officially started in the 800s!

Didn’t mean to leave this blog hanging for 2 months, but some exciting things have been happening and that’s what I’m here to update you on.

See, as I was finishing up my Disney posts I finally got the word and it was good: I was picked to be a Bee!

Weddingbee the wedding blog | wedding vendor reviews |DIY wedding invitations | DIY save the dates | wedding resale

Yup, as of early April I’ve been hanging out on Weddingbee known under the name Miss Road Trip!

roadtrip

So while I haven’t been creating new posts, I’ve been retooling a lot of the old posts to fit the customs over at our new digs. Going forward (starting in a couple weeks I’ll be back to posting new stuff, once the archives are caught up) you’ll see instead of Jenn & Todd it’ll by Miss and Mr Road Trip (or RT, or Mr Trips as I sometimes refer to Todd). It’s been wonderful getting to know the other Bees “in person” and we even have another Bee right here in Tallahassee.

Not that it’s been a champagne and roses. To tell the truth, some of the comments my posts have received haven’t all been kind. Sure, it’s something you expect when you post your inner rambling for the outer world to read, but it doesn’t make the rude ones any easier to take when they land in your inbox. Still, you take the little bit of bad and compare it to the whole heaps of good and the scales definitely tip more in favor of that.

Our plans are picking up speed–we finally had a meeting at our venue and now a lot of little things are falling into place–and things will keep happening at a breakneck pace for the next 5 months. To continue the to-do list tradition, here’s what is on the docket for 5 months out:

  • Rehearsal dinner: make plans, reservations, and decide who all’s going to be there
  • Wedding Invitations: confirm your order or start/continue the DIY
  • Cake time! Tastings or test recipes
  • Showers: if you’re having one, get your guest list to the hostess
  • Wedding shoes and dress fittings
  • Hair and make-up: if you’re outsourcing, make your choice and schedule your trials, otherwise brush up on your supplies and try out some things at home
  • Music: decide what’s playing when

So where are we? Not too bad off. I have the plan for our invitations, have my shoes and need no fittings, nor am I encouraging any showers in our honor. Just doesn’t seem fitting. I do need to come up with a guest list for the “bachelorette” party (though I prefer to adopt the term Hen Night from our friends across the pond; just sounds better, like the “hen parties” Mom used to call the gossips who’d congregate up the road when I was a kid).

All in all, we’re good on the broad strokes, now I just need to get cracking on the long list of DIY decorations, especially now that I know exactly what we need!

In the mean time, I’ve been keeping up with the Wedding Year Scrapbook. Here are the January and February pages–I’m getting caught up 🙂

PW_week9_spread

Happy New Year!PW_week10_spread

A low-photo week (silly SD card crapped out on me) leading up to our e-shoot.PW_week11_spread

And then a surfeit of photos thanks to our fabulous photographer.PW_week12_spread

Gaming and fun with foodie things. A common thread throughout out life.PW_week13_spread

I won tickets to HAIR so we had a double date night this week!PW_week14_spread

Actual work on actual wedding-related crafty things.PW_week15_spread

Geek love just in time for Valentine’s Day.PW_week16_spread

We’ve got rings–one more step taken toward being ready for the wedding.
PW_week17_spread

Monkey shines! Todd (I can still call him that, since this post won’t be going up on the ‘bee!) frequently arranges the monkeys cutely to surprise me when I get out of the shower.

And that’s us for now. I expect us to be back to our regular scheduled planning sometime this month.

Until then…

Disney Honeymoon Dreaming: Delicious Decisions

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning
(I'm actually not all that fond of buffets, but I liked the rhyme) digital collage by Miss Road Trip

(I’m actually not all that fond of buffets, but I liked the rhyme) digital collage by Miss Road Trip

One of the great things about being on vacation–any vacation, but more so your honeymoon–is not having to cook. The downside is that you then have to decide where to eat for each meal. That can get to be a little much. After all, we’re the type to sit down and plan a menu each week so we never have to face the ‘what’s for dinner’ dilemma.

Disney offers a lot of dining options both in the parks as well as at each resort (you can hop over to a resort you’re not staying at just to have a meal in new surroundings). They basically break down into Carts & Kiosks for the snack and beverage carts strewn about; Counter or Quick Service places that are akin to fast food; and Table Service dining. Table Service includes both regular sit-down dining as well as various buffets and many of the character meals, too. There are also some dinner shows to choose from.

A few years ago Disney started offering Dining Plans that you could add to the Magic Your Way room & ticket packages. The definite upside is that you can pre-pay some or all of your meals (depends on the level of plan you choose) and not have to worry about it (much) once you’re on property. Some say that the most recent price increases have made the dining plans not as cost effective as they were when first introduced. I think it depends, though, on if you’re doing it for the savings or if you’re doing it so you don’t have to worry while in the parks.

In our case, it was a little bit of both. I haven’t discussed it much, yet (but I will, once we get around to menu tasting), but I’ve recently “discovered” a laundry list of food intolerances that, if not heeded, will make me anywhere to mildly uncomfortable to quite ill. Neither of which I want to feel on my honeymoon (or any given day, for that matter). Disney is amazing at dealing with special dietary requests, but it’s admittedly easier for the chefs at the table service places to accommodate than the managers of counter service shops. Hence, we’ll be doing a lot of table service dining for my safety as much as anything else.

So we decided not only to go with a dining plan, but actually select the Deluxe Dining Plan which includes (among other things) 3 dining credits per person per night that can be used at either counter service or table service meals and 2 snack credits per person per night. That sounds like a lot (especially for snacks) but the other reason this works well for us is that our honeymoon falls on the last week of the Food & Wine Festival at EPCOT, and many of the items offered at each F&WF stand count as dining plan snack credits!

The downside to the popularity of the dining plans (and it’s only a slight downside at that) is that it’s had an (I’m sure) intended effect of packing the table service restaurants on a regular basis, so walk-up seating can mean a long wait.

Not that Disney is going to leave you hanging! At 180 days out (or about 6 months prior to your arrival) you can make ADRs (Advance Dining Reservations) for any of the table service eateries on property. You don’t have to be on one of the Dining Plans to make an ADR (though they may require a credit card to hold certain reservations).

This is the main reason I started nudging Mr. Road Trip to make the final call on our honeymoon plans, because our  ADR window opened on May 7th, and since we wanted some Character and Signature dining reservations, I was up at 6am to get online before work and get everything sorted.

To decide where we want to eat, we’re using a combination of the reviews in the PassPorter guide and the menus posted on allears.net (a great resource in general, but definitely for the restaurant menus). And since we’ve already worked out which park(s) we’re doing each day, we can plan our meals to match our surroundings, therefore not having to criss-cross the entirety of Disney each day (unless we want to, of course).

Right now our plans are to have a nice dinner at Jiko at Animal Kingdom Lodge our first night on property. Tuesday will be spent eating/snacking our way around the World Showcase at EPCOT, using up a bunch of those snack credits, but will be back on Thursday for dinner in the World Showcase. Wednesday night we want to dine with the Hundred Acre Wood gang, so reserved our spots at the Crystal Palace and Friday will start with a late breakfast at Chef Mickey’s in the Contemporary. While some seasoned Disney travelers view a lot of sit-down dining as a time waster, I’m looking forward to those planned breaks in the day to keep us from running ourselves ragged. Plus, we’ve tried to space everything out (late suppers, especially) to still get plenty of park time in.

It’s kinda like a jigsaw puzzle, in a way. A delicious jigsaw puzzle. But with the big pieces in place (the corners, if you will), we can now get back to wedding details, knowing that the broad strokes of the honeymoon are all taken care of.

Would you ever be able to decide where you wanted to eat 6 months in advance?

Disney Honeymoon Dreaming : Planning for the Parks

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning
digital collage by Miss Road Trip

digital collage by Miss Road Trip

While I firmly believe you can have plenty of Disney fun without setting foot inside the actual parks, the 4 parks of Walt Disney World are the big draw. There’s a lot to see, do, and experience out there and it helps to have a plan.

Tickets, please!

I don’t know about you, but I still get a slight case of sticker shock when I look at park admission prices to anything Disney. A single park, single day pass will set you back $95 for the Magic Kingdom or $90 for one of the other parks. Ouch. Thankfully, Disney really wants you to spend more than just one day with them, so they give discounts for tickets that span multiple days. Instead of costing $475 for a 5 day pass (1 park per day, $95 x 5), it’s only $289.00 (or $57.80 /day); for 10 days it’s only $339 (or $33.90/day). Now, if you want the flexibility to Park Hop (go to multiple parks in a single day, a very useful feature in my mind), it’s a flat $59 (plus tax) no matter how many days your ticket is good for.

My 2006 Key to the World Card | personal photo

My 2006 Key to the World Card | personal photo

As Florida residents, we generally get a break on ticket prices–I think the theory is that if they charge us less, we’ll be likely to visit more often–and they also give up a lot more options. Whereas anyone can purchase an Annual Pass (a definite savings if you plan to be in the parks for 10+ days or are planning 2 trips within a calendar year), Florida residents actually get some seasonal options that might black-out certain high-traffic periods, but otherwise are good deals. I kept digging and found out that the Weekday Select Annual Passes for Florida residents have the usual high-traffic black-out dates (which we’d never want to visit during anyway) but are good any other Monday-Friday. Since we’ll be driving down there on a Sunday and heading home the following Saturday, this was pretty much perfect. Best part, these passes cost $212–so for what one regular Annual Pass (FL Resident discount applied) would have costs, we got 2 Weekday Select passes. (For reference sake, a 5-day Park Hopper–annual passes are automatically hoppers–would have been $346, so even if we don’t make it back before our anniversary, we still did pretty good.)

And if I hadn’t stepped in to “help” plan, Mr. Road Trip would have spent way more than he needed to, but he’s learning.

Right This Way

Tickets done, now comes the fun part: deciding which parks to visit on which days. Now, I know not everyone wants to be that structured, but forewarned is forearmed and all that, and I like to be prepared.

Disney will almost always be busy, and often packed. Sites like www.easywdw.com and others, though, make a habit of predicting the crowd levels to help people like me plan the least stressful way to tour the World during our trip. They also include which parks might be opening early or staying open later (for resort guests only, a definite perk) called Extra Magic Hours or EMH.

image via Passporterstore.com

image via Passporterstore.com

For more in-depth planning I think PassPorter’s Walt Disney World guidebook is tops! I first found this guide back in 2004 when I was planning two long weekend trips and it was awesome to have all that information at your fingertips. Every attraction is rated and described and the maps are incredibly detailed. They also offer digital versions if you prefer to carry your tablet or smartphone instead of a guidebook (though I prefer the print version–it has planning pockets in the back).

By planning ahead I know that Animal Kingdom (the only park Mr. Road Trip has yet to visit–it wasn’t open last time he was there) closes earlier than the rest of the parks, and that Monday (the day we plan to visit AK) is evening EMH hours at Hollywood Studios, so we can plan to hop over there and get some extra rides in after supper. And while we plan on spending all day Tuesday at EPCOT enjoying the regular sights as well as the Food & Wine Festival, I found out that the former lead singer of STYX, Dennis DeYoung, is performing Thursday night as part of the Eat to the Beat concert series (part of the Food & Wine Festival) so we’ll leave DHS (our least favorite park, though the PIXAR updates might change our mind) early enough to catch his 6:45 show before our 8pm dinner reservations in Japan. And then for Friday we’ve secured our tickets for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, the first of the season, as soon as the ticket sales opened, so whatever we don’t get to on Wednesday (our planned MK day), we can catch up on that night when the crowds will be even lower.

And, of course, having a park plan makes the final prep step that much easier…

Do you like to have an itinerary on your vacations or just go with the flow?

Disney Honeymoon Dreaming: Deciding Where to Stay

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning
digital collage by Miss Road Trip

digital collage by Miss Road Trip

I’d managed not to pester Mr Road Trip for a honeymoon decision for a whole 8 months before reminding him that, if Disney was to be it, some decisions would need to be made soonish (this being back in March). While I know that plenty of people go to Disney World for short and long vacations both and only make minimal preparations, there’re so many things that you can miss if you just go with the flow.

I’m not really much of a go with the flow kinda girl (in case you hand’t noticed).

While I’ve been visiting  Disney World since I was a toddler, most of the more recent trips have been quickie weekends and nothing since 2006. Our honeymoon will be the first time I’ve spent a full week at the parks in over 20 years! For Mr. Trips it’ll be 20 years exactly, as he was there in 1993 with family, and that’s his last trip to The World period!

We’ve got some time to make up for, wouldn’t you agree?

Of course, the first thing you have to decide when planning a Disney honeymoon is where to stay, and the first decision is whether to stay on- or off-site.

In the interest of full disclosure I need to confess that I sleep on the side of on-site lodging: it puts you totally inside the Disney “bubble” and unless you really want to do otherwise, you can park your car and not even think about it until it’s time to (regrettably) head for home.

Still, there are options outside of staying at one of the numerous Disney-owned resorts, and they can offer some savings on your room as well as additional flexibility if you’re interested in hitting up other Orlando-area attractions. Everything from condos and vacation homes to hotel rooms of all sizes and prices exist out there and all of them will say the same thing: “minutes from Disney.”

And that might not necessarily be untrue, but minutes can be hours when you’re fighting the rest of the Orlando/Kissimmee area trying to drive to the parks, too. Then there’s parking (and the parking fees–$15/day, currently) and (ugh) the drive back. Like I said, I’m biased.

The other perk of truly nearby hotels and communities is that they run shuttles to save you some of the offsite hassle. Keep in mind, though, those shuttles tend to be hourly at best, whereas on-site shuttles are every 15-20 minutes. Just saying.

Not surprisingly, the Road Trips will be staying on-site, and we’ve picked the fun and cozy Port Orleans French Quarter–my absolute, hands-down favorite (and where the Jackrabbits will be honeymooning the month before–suddenly I’ve got “It’s a Small World” stuck in my head). I’ve stayed there once in the past, and just love the attention to detail (though that can be said of any of the resorts). It’s the smallest of the Disney resorts, and tends to be quieter, which makes it perfect for couples, I think!

Scenes from Port Orleans (circa 2004)

Scenes from Port Orleans (circa 2004)

Little details and an amazing river view.

Little details and an amazing river view.

I understand there was a recent renovation to the inside of the rooms and the lobby is being updated currently, so even though I’ve been there before, I’m looking forward to a new experience in the greater scheme of things.

If you’re heading to Disney (for a honeymoon, mini-moon, or just plain vacation). You probably want to avoid paying rack rates, and I can hardly blame you! Check out the resources at Passporter.com and TheMouseForLess.com to find out the best specials going on during your travel dates. If you have a Disney Visa or buy Annual Passes (more on this in the next post) you may qualify for additional discounts, as well as service members, Florida residents, nurses, teachers, and government employees (those last three for the Swan and Dolphin only). And if you book your hotel and a discount or special offer comes out later on, all it takes is a call to 407-WDW-MAGIC to see if those offers can be applied to your existing reservation.

Oh, and be sure to let them know if you’re making a honeymoon reservation or celebrating anything else–there’re no guarantees, of course, but letting them know it’s a special occasion can sometimes result in a little extra pixie dust thrown your way.

 Would you consider staying on-property at Disney for your honeymoon?
Why or why not?

Why Templates Are a Girl’s Best Friend

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning

I’m a scrapbooker from way back, but I haven’t been keeping up like I used to or taking many photos that don’t correspond to a blog post. To commemorate this last year before the wedding (and remind me to take pictures of the fun stuff), I’ve been putting together a layout per week for our Wedding Year scrapbook. Now, working full time, planning a wedding, and blogging about it are enough to keep me plenty busy–adding in scrapbooking might seem like adding more work rather than some much-needed relaxation.

For me, it all comes down to 3 things:

  • Digital scrapbooking
  • Project Life
  • Templates

The Digital Approach

While I do absolutely love paper and creating with it, physical scrapbooking was becoming less and less convenient with all of my photos being digital for the last several years. That love of paper that had me scoffing at digital scrapbooking 1o years ago has since enthusiastically embraced the digital approach for both the ease of integrating my digital images but also the fact that once a digital paper or embellishment is purchased, it doesn’t get “used up.” As someone who has more than once hoarded those last few sheets of a favorite paper, this is quite freeing.

And you can always print your pages out yourself or upload them to a photobook site and end up with very professional looking albums.

Just about any photo software that will handle layers can be used for digital scrapbooking and there are some programs out there specifically for it. I learned on Photoshop Elements (PSE) 3, “back in the day” with tutorials from ScrapGirls. While I’ve upgraded to full-on Photoshop for other projects, I still use PSE (version 9, now) for scrapping for the simpler interface.

Project Life

Project Life is a system devised by Becky Higgins that is meant to make saving photos and memories easy, streamlined, and low-pressure (though it’s but one of many pocket-style scrapbooking systems out there). By using divided pocket pages–like baseball card pages but more varied–and 2 sizes of inserts (4×6 and 3×4) all you have to do is slip in your photos and write on the journaling cards and you’ve got a scrapbook in no time flat.

I’d heard about it a couple years ago (and mentally kicked myself for not trying out a similar idea many years prior) but didn’t want to go back to paper scrapping. Behold, the official Project Life digital kits are available at ACDigitals.com (though I bought my kit and template when they were still partnered with Jessica Sprague). What’s even better is that with the popularity of Project Life on the rise, several sites have similar products available. ScrapGirls has their Pocket Life line, and several designers over on The DigiChick (my 2 favorite shops) have Project 52 offerings that are compatible.

Of course, with digital scrapbooking, anything can be used with the Project Life base system, especially if you use the templates.

Templates

Just like writers who stare at a blank page/screen, feel anxious and can’t start writing, scrappers sometimes have a similar block. Recently I’ve become a total template convert as all I have to do is pick my photos, papers, and maybe a few embellishments and start clipping them to the template layers and, boom, there’s my page! Of course, when you scrap digitally you can turn and flip the templates to get a bit more variety (there are only 7 basic page layouts with Project Life, but you can certainly branch out to other templates, too).

But the Project Life-style templates, based on 4×6 and 3×4 spaces, are perfectly suited to both digital camera images as well as those cell phone shots we’ve all been taking. And if you take a lot of photos, then the simple grids are going to be your best friends.

To show you just how easy it is, I took screenshots while I put together this layout, week 9 of our wedding year album:

Week 9, Dec 29, 2012 to Jan 4, 2013

Week 9, Dec 29, 2012 to Jan 4, 2013 (all photos personal)

Step 1: choose your photos

First I pick out my photos to see what I’m working with. Lots of photos mean a template with more spots, fewer photos mean bigger spots to take up more space.

Step 2: Pick your templates

Then I look through my templates to see which ones I want to use. In the back in a Project Life template and in front is a template from eNKay Design’s Project 365 line. Then I decided which would be the left side of the layout and which one the right.

Step 3: Start placing your photos

I rotated the 365 layout to get the photo spots in the orientation I wanted them, then added my first photo to fill the large, vertical block on the page, sizing it up to fill the space or maybe a little bigger. Make sure the photo is above the layer you want the photo to fill and clip it (Ctrl+G on a PC, Mac is Cmd+G, I believe) to that layer. This makes the photo (or whatever) show only where the template shape is “active” so it trims it to shape without actually cutting the image, and you can nudge it around to get the best view.

Step 4: Finish putting your photos in place

Place your photos wherever they best fit so you can see how much space you still have to work with.
You can combine different layer elements by merging them, like I did with the 4 3×4 slots in the upper right, then clipping the image to the merged set. It’s a nice little trick when you want to use larger pictures in smaller slots for effect. And it’s so much easier than cutting and corner-rounding 1 picture into 4, right?

Step 5: Save your work!

Right about now is a good time to do a “Save As” and name your file something other than the template name (you don’t want to overwrite your original template files with the changes you make, since you might want to use them in their original form sometime later).

Step 6: Pick out some papers and embellishments

Then I pick out some papers and embellishments to clip to the background and blank template spots

Step 7: Add your papers and embellishments to the pages

Now the fun part! Clip the papers to the template areas and start to place your embellishments on top of them. For efficiency’s sake I like to merge layers and them clip the paper file once, unless I need some of the elements overlapping others. The more layers, the bigger the file size, you know? But embellishments just need to be positioned above the layer you want them to rest on, they usually don’t get clipped (again, this is a bonus of digital–not everything had to fit exactly in the “pockets”).

Step 8: Add journaling spaces

I like using a mix of patterns, but patterns aren’t always great for journaling on, so I use the shape tool to make “clear” areas filled with a lighter version of one of the colors already in the layout (and then added a texture fill to it because I have issues with flat colors). Remove any layers you don’t want in your final layout (like journaling place-holders and title bits).

Step 9: Add the wordy bits and additional embellishments

Use your words! Add journaling to the open areas, titles, and then any additional embellishments to finish out the layout. That’s it!

And that’s just how simple it is.

Whether you’re saving the wedding planning memories, putting together a photo-book of your engagement photos, or even scrapbooking your honeymoon pictures, templates can make the process much smoother. Templates (Project Life or otherwise) are also great for learning composition skills and branching out of your usual style.

So, have I swayed you over to the digital template side of scrapbooks?