Festival of Brides- This Weekend

Festival of Brides- The "Magic" of Disney is taking place this weekend at the Disneyland Hotel! According to the website, the Cinderella carriage is going to be there and there will be surprise appearances by Disney characters.  Plus there will be lots of info on weddings!
I'm pretty excited about it!  I'll try to take lots of pictures to share later!

Wedding Packet

After picking our location and date and then putting down a deposit, we received a wedding packet in the mail.  The packet had all sorts of questions for us to look over, a menu of items we can have at our reception, and more!  We were very excited when we got it.  Disney always seems to add those extra special touches and the wedding packet was no exception.

All of the pages of the contract and packet came on Disney themed paper with the Cinderella carriage on it.

All of the paper was held together with a Mickey paper clip.

The packet came with a recommended vendor list that included photographers since Disneyland Weddings doesn't offer photography services. In addition the list had information on other vendors around Disneyland such as bridal attire and officiants.

  

There were also a couple fun items in the packet such as bride and groom pens and a Fairy Tale Weddings pin.

The pens are really cute and the pin made a great addition to my Disney pin collection.  After getting our packet we took our time looking over it and making choices on what we want for our wedding.  When it was done we sent it to our coordinator and made our planning session appointment! 

Update- Where's the time gone? & the Wedding dress blues

It has been a busy yet productive couple weeks!  Jared and I have really started taking action on the wedding planning. We filled out our wedding packet, met with our wedding coordinator, and have started brainstorming on the stuff we still need to do.  A couple weeks ago, I looked at a calendar and counted the months we have until the wedding and realized it's not as long as I'd thought.  We're getting married in October so that only leaves us a little more than 6 months.  We got engaged over a year ago and decided we'd give ourselves plenty of time to save for the wedding and for the planning.  It's been pretty relaxed because the wedding always seemed so far away but now it's started to hit me that it's right around the corner.
The thing I'm most nervous about is the dress. No, I haven't gotten one yet.  I didn't think it was a big deal but the past two weeks several people stare at me in disbelief when I say I haven't picked one out.  I wasn't planning to until the end of May.  I don't have anything in mind, just that I'm leaning towards trying to get something at Alfred Angelo because I want to look at the Disney dresses and also the other dresses there because I like what I've seen in pictures and on the website. A coworker got a dress from there and she recently told me she loved it and really recommended Alfred Angelo.  (She looked amazing in it too!)  That just further got me set on going to one of their stores.

The one thing that is keeping me from going and getting one right now though is that I really and I mean really want to go with my mom and my sisters.  They live in Texas and I'm in California so to make this happen there's a little more work involved.  I was planning on visiting in May and looking then but now I'm wondering if I should go sooner?  I was going to look with them and see what I like and then order the dress here in California.
So yeah, the wedding dress is the big challenge for me right now and the whole thing feels like it's looming over me.  Honestly I'm not big on clothes shopping of any kind so I'm also a bit nervous about the whole thing and not as excited as other people might be.
On a happy note though, all the other planning is going great!  I've got several posts planned talking about some of the things we've been able to decide and accomplish the past few weeks so stay tuned!

A Day of Silence for Japan

The Proposal- Hotel Del Coronado/Grand Floridian

Jared proposed to me at one of our favorite places in Southern California, the Hotel Del Coronado.  I was completely surprised when he did it. In fact the whole weekend was a complete surprise!

He led me to believe that we were going to be spending the weekend at Disneyland.  We live near it but we still like to stay at the Disney hotels once in a while and have a mini vacation.  I packed my bag for the weekend and we headed off to the train station to catch a resort bus to Disneyland.  Instead of stopping at the bus stop, Jared continued to the train station where to my surprise we got on the train to San Diego.

We got off the train and Jared told us the place we were staying wouldn't let us check in until later that day so we decided to take the ferry to Coronado Island to get some lunch and then get a drink at our favorite spot on the island. 

Our favorite spot on Coronado Island is the Hotel Del Coronado.  It is a gorgeous hotel right by the ocean that has a lot of history.  It was also the location where one of my favorite movies, Some Like It Hot, was filmed.  

It turned out that Jared had gotten us a room there!  My last and greatest surprise was when we went for a walk on the beach by the hotel and he proposed!  It was perfect.

We spent the rest of the weekend celebrating and enjoying the beautiful hotel.  One of the things about the Hotel Del Coronado that a Disney fan would enjoy is how it looks very much like the Grand Floridian.  This is because the Hotel Del Coronado is what the Grand Floridian is modeled after!  Take a look at these pictures and see if you can tell which ones are the Hotel Del Coronado and which ones are from the Grand Floridian.

The first, third, and fifth pictures are all from our engagement weekend at the Hotel Del Coronado.  The second, fourth, and sixth are from our trip to Disney World last year.

We had a wonderful time at the Hotel Del Coronado and even considered it for our wedding.  I love that Jared proposed there so it will always be very special to me!

Bride and Groom Kooky Pens

Check out these Kooky pens I saw at Off the Page in California Adventure last week. I thought they were cute!

They are a Limited Edition Pen Set so I'm not sure how long they'll last.  If they still have some left I may buy a set this weekend.