Ben and Libby's Happily Ever After - October 2016 *Update 8 days to go, more daily plans!

[oh_darling]

General wedding planning update - 4.5 months to go!

Hi guys! So it’s been a little while since I updated, and we are now FIVE MONTHS OUT! Like, 5 months today we’ll be married. I know I start every update with this hahah but time is honestly going so quickly! So, lets crack on, I’ve got so much to share!

Fireworks drama

Okay, so, the number one thing that has happened in the past couple of weeks is FIREWORKSGATE. Let me set the scene for you. As you all know, we took great care to plan our wedding around watching Wishes as it was super important to us. We checked historical MNSSHP dates to make sure the fireworks on our wedding day would be Wishes and not Hallowishes, we chose a Wednesday as they historically haven’t been party nights, and then once we got our date we were super excited and just had to wait for MNSSHP dates to be announced. Which they were, in April, and 19th October was NOT a party night. YAYYYYYY! However. Mid-April I saw that October party hours had been released so I checked the TA calendar as it’s updated faster than the official site, and is generally pretty accurate. Something weird was happening October 19th. There was no Wishes listed, and MK was scheduled to close at 8pm with EMH til 10pm. That’s like, super early for MK in October. Every other non-party night was like 9 or 10, and even though I know these early calendars are always updated nearer the time, it was still really odd! I immediately went into panic mode as no one online seemed to know anything about it, and all I could think of was that it was a company or convention who’d bought it out and were planning a private event. ON OUR WEDDING DAY! I took solace in the fact EMH was listed, but still, I thought that could have been an error. I emailed Lisa, our WP, and asked if she could find out anything about it. I also asked if we could be penciled in for an Illuminations DP as a back-up, as I just had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good news. I wrote a pleading post on the Dibb to see if anyone could shed any light, and one Dibber made me feel loads better because she said she’d been able to book a Wishes cruise that night! Yay! She was so sweet and we messaged a few times, but then she messaged and said she’d called again to query the calendar and that everyone in the office said how weird it was and after putting her on hold for ages, advised her to change her cruise to a different night! Nooooo! I got really upset then I hadn’t heard back from Lisa and I was getting really worried that because of F&W, we wouldn’t be able to get a DP spot in Epcot as it’s such a busy time of year! Anyway, to cut a long story short, with lots of refreshing of both the TA calendar, my Gmail account, and the Park Hours thread on the Disboards, Lisa emailed me back. She was going to find out what was going on with the fireworks as she agreed it was really weird, and in the meantime she had penciled us in for UK Lower. Well, I can’t tell you how much better I felt after getting this email! Like, instant relief! I was gutted that our Wishes plans may have been scuppered, but at least we would be having fireworks on our wedding day! I then threw myself into researching Illuminations DP’s and UK Lower in particular, and I began to really come round to the idea.

Fast forward to today, and the TA calendar has now been updated and is showing Wishes as 10pm on our wedding night! Eeeeeekkkkk I can’t even tell you how happy this made me when I saw it! However, I’m not 100% getting my hopes up yet. I haven’t heard from Lisa yet, and it isn’t on the official Disney park hours. When it appears on there I think I’ll be happy! So please all keep your fingers crossed that we’ll get our dream fireworks and dessert party!

UPDATE: It’s now like 2 weeks later and I haven’t finished writing this update yet hahaha but Wishes is now appearing on the official Disney website, YAY! I had a little moment of thinking would an Epcot DP actually be better!? I know, crazy right, it’s just I know it would turn out cheaper! However we’d have to leave our reception at Whitehall earlier to get across to Epcot, pay for transport for all our guests etc. But now I’m 100% sure Wishes is the way forward and I am so so so happy that it now appears to be an option for us We did so much research for this and I am just so pleased that our perfect day will be happening how we planned it now I’ve heard back from lisa and she’s removed the hold she placed on the UK Lochside DP location in Epcot, so it’s all systems go for Wishes




Badges
Okay, onto less stressful things! We’d said all along that we wanted to get badges made up for all our guests to wear on our Stag and Hen Epcot day I found a fab designer on Etsy who made an amazing design for us with me and Ben on, the WP in the background, and our wedding date J In our wedding colours too, pale pink and gold! We were so so so so pleased with the design! I then sent the PDF to a company who makes badges on eBay, they sent me a proof, and literally 2 days later we had 30 badges haha! They look absolutely awesome – I’m afraid I’m not going to share them on here as I think a few of our guests may be reading along and I don’t want them to be spoiled haha! But they look amazing and we can’t wait to wear them I think we’re going to put together a newsletter with useful times/phone numbers/addresses etc and mail them out a few weeks before the wedding, along with their badges to get all our guests excited Rather than us cart them all the way over to Florida and then have to hand them out!

Lightinthebox pending order

So! I currently have a list of wedding jobs that I’m working through, it’s a big document on our Google docs drive and I’m just trying to tick stuff off here and there I’ve also got a huuuge order sat in my cart on LightInTheBox.com – has anyone used it before? I found it while searching for veils, and they have so much affordable wedding stuff! I’ve got my wedding hairband/headpiece, a couple of pairs of earrings, a veil, cake cutting set, some giant gold LOVE balloons for our UK reception…and some other stuff I’ve probably forgotten! Shipping is quite high which is why I want to make sure I have everything I want from there, and I only have to do one order. My goal is to buy this little lot this week though so I can tick a bunch of stuff off my list at once, as that will be so satisfying haha!

My hairband!



Ordered wedding rings

So this is a big one! I ordered my wedding ring last night We went to town a few weeks ago and went in a few jewelers to try on rings and get a feel for what we wanted. We went in Beaverbrooks hahah…..woahhh! we had a lovely experience to be fair, but holy moly those rings are expensive. I guess it’s just down to personal preference though – we aren’t huge jewellery people - I pretty much exclusively buy jewelry in Primark and New Look, and Ben doesn’t wear any! I really am not a showy person or into diamonds at all, and I’d much rather put money into the actual wedding day and our honeymoon. Unfortunately, my gorgeous fiancé buying me a platinum engagement ring put paid to that haha! Because it’s platinum, if I buy a wedding ring that’s a softer metal, it will basically wear it down over time. I thought this was just something jewelers say to get you to buy the most expensive rings, but apparently it is actually true. So! My dreams of a nice but cheap white gold ring were out the window and we found ourselves staring at Beaverbrooks’ range of platinum wedding rings and feeling slightly sick! Haha ohhhh. I am joking, we were aware of it before we went to BB, but still. I asked about palladium (a cheaper alternative to platinum) but they only had like 1 and I didn’t like it. We also looked in H Samual etc but again, they just didn’t have the range of palladium. I decided pretty early on that I wanted diamonds in my wedding band, so that, plus the need for it to be palladium and an amount we were comfortable with, meant our search was limited pretty quickly! Fear now though, I am an expert Googler. I took to the internet and eventually found a slightly dodgy looking website that had some gorgeous rings for amazing prices. Thinking it was too good to be true, I searched for trusted reviews, and it’s got like 9.8 out of 10 on the watchdog review shopping site! Amazeballs! After emailing them to enquire about warranty/insurance etc and receiving an adequate reply (a few typos, but what can you do! ) I placed my order last night I’ll add a photo when it arrives, assuming it’s nice and not falling apart! I joke, but seriously. Keep your fingers crossed for me here too please!

In terms of Benjis ring, he does not have an engagement ring that’s going to eat his wedding ring, so we’re just gonna get the most affordable nicest ring he sees I believe he wants brushed effect as he felt the shiny was a bit full on, and he also wants it to be curved as he said the non-curved ones looked like he’d just cut a bit of pipe on and stuck it on his finger (LOL at him whispering that to me in Beaverbrooks) So he pretty much knows what he wants, he just needs to order it!

Another update here as it’s been so long since I wrote this...my ring arrived! Yay! And its beautiful! YAY! Unfortunately, it’s way too big! So I’ve sent it back this morning and they’re going to send me a smaller size, and also a thinner band as we felt it was too thick

Here’s the ring!



KTTK
Another exciting thing ticked off our list - we’ve booked the KTTK tour for my parents as a gift! I was umming and ahhing about this - I thought it was something they’d both love and they are helping us out so much with the wedding that I thought it would be the perfect gift. My Mum then mentioned a few times how much she was interested in the history of the parks and Walt’s vision etc and I got even more excited about how much she’d love it! My Dad was getting really into the planning though and he was booking all his ADRS (They’re staying at SSR with the DDP) so I didn’t want to like book it for a day and risk him schedule something else soooooo I decided to tell just him I told him all about the tour and asked if he thought Mum would like it, and obviously if he would like it, and he seemed so so excited! I was so chuffed So that’s all booked now and we’re keeping it a secret from my Mum for now! Ideally we’d like to give gifts out on the rehearsal dinner, but as their tour is only a few days after, I’m not sure if I should tell Mum about it after. OOooh I don’t know! Need to give it some thought I think



Hoop de Doo
Now this was an exciting one! We’ve got a whatsapp group with a few of our friends who are coming to the wedding, and we’re constantly sharing exciting stuff we’ve found happening at the Disney parks, or wedding stuff, or just general excitement haha It’s awesome! So anyway. We were all chatting last month and my friend Lucy piped up and said would anyone be interested in Hoop de Doo? Well, that was if. We were off! She used to work in Epcot during her CP and she said that one time all her friends went to HDD but she couldn’t go as she was working, and she was liteally gutted as they said it was like the funniest night ever! o nce all our other friends found out there was unlimited beer and wine hahah they were sold! Me and Benj were also sold, cause although HDD hasn’t been something we’ve particularly wanted to do, we figured we’d want to do it one day, and it’ll be sooooo much more fun with a big group of friends and this is probably the only chance we’ll get to do that! So I called up the other day and booked for 9 of us haha, it’s going to be such a fun evening I can’t wait! We’re doing it on the Saturday after our wedding, just before our cruise (on the Monday)





Planning evenings - completed successfully, and upcoming ones
So this leads me nicely into talking a bit about the planning evenings we’ve hosted/attended during the last few months. As anyone knows who’s planning a wedding abroad, there is a LOT of potential planning to be done for family and friends who are joining you on your special day. I think it’s up to each individual bride and groom how much they choose to get i nvolved with everyone elses planning - for us it was important that we try and help everyone as much as we can, as it means so much to us that they’re joining us With that being said, I know it’s a lot to take on though and although I do love planning and we know a lot about Orlando/Disney, we aren’t taking toooooo much on. It’s mainly just family we’ve been really helping and the nice thing is everyone has got soooo involved with it all, and we’re finding that everyone is putting their own schedules and plans together on their own now! It’s so nice I’ve helped them out by creating mini streamlined duplicates of mine and Ben’s holiday spreadsheet, just with their travel dates and when the wedding events etc are. I’ve found these have really helped everyone visualise the wedding week and see where they need to be and when, and they can then plan their own events around them. As they’re all on Google Docs and fully editable, it’s nice because people can just amend their own versions. A couple of our friends have even created full-blown spreadsheets on their own which i was SO excited to see, and I have to see I got little butterflies in my tummy when I was reading one friend’s and seeing what they’ll be doing the morning of the wedding etc, and the fact they had ‘WEDDING’ written on the wedding day It’s the little things but it just got me so excited! I also got ridiculously excited the other day reading Lottie’s pre-trippie and seeing that her and Rich are breakfasting at the Grand Floridian Cafe the morning of our wedding, arghhhhh it’s just so amazing to think that they’ll be doing that as we’re getting ready! And then we’re going to all have the most amazing day together! It really is just so so exciting, I wish I could bottle the excitement and anticipation I’m feeling so I could feel it forever

You might remember last year we had a couple of planning eves with both sets of parents (Ben’s parents are divorced, so 2 x sets of parents on that side!) to help them with their initial bookings. We also had a planning evening with Ben’s godparents who are staying at the Dolphin which is awesome In my last update we were getting ready for a big evening with a bunch of our friends coming to our flat for American food and drinks and Florida chat and that was such a hilarious evening It was just really lovely to chat with everyone and see them getting so excited We’ve now got a planning eve in the next month or so with Ben’s Mum and Stepdad, and his godparents just to discuss which tickets they’re going to buy as they aren’t staying on site with Disney tickets and DDP. So that will be super fun

I thought you might like to see some photos of the planning session we did for our friends back in March

The food! Veggie pulled pork and meaty pulled pork, broccoli salad with cranberries and cashews (AMAZING) SW french fries and random pizza!



Me and Benj



After Disney chatter wrapped up the evening turned a bit more adult with a rousing round of cards against humanity!



Current projects
So on my to-do list there are a few DIY bits and bobs I’ve set myself as little projects. The most pressing one is to create invites for our UK reception and get them all printed off as we’ll probably start sending them out next month. I’m also designing wedding day programs/order of service (except it’s more than an order of service because I just want to make sure everyone is aware of the plans for the day - I hate at weddings when you don’t know when you’ll get to eat etc hahaha! ) So I’ve started working on the designs for both and I do more or less know what design I’ll be doing, but we had a slight set back the other day haha! Basically we had an iMac at home that was from Ben’s work for him to work at home, but it needs to go back so now I’m stuck for using InDesign and Photoshop etc! It’s like really expensive to buy, so we need to look into what to do there really. Damn it, haha! I’m going to try downloading a couple of free layout programmes tonight and see if I can get anywhere. I really want to design them myself I’ll update you if I have any updates haha, we’re both racking our brains about what we could do!

Booked wedding and holiday insurance

We booked both our wedding and holiday insurance last week! We got our wedding insurance through Debenhams and got a £10 gift voucher in the post which is exciting! They seemed reasonable and covered everything we needed Benj sorted our holiday insurance so I’m not sure who we’re with but it’s such a relief to have got that sorted

Weight loss
This is something that’s been bugging me for a while, like its been on my to-do list but i haven’t done anything about it! However, I am now, and I’m feeling so much more in control and like i”m actually making progress I lost nearly 2 stone following Slimming World last year - I got to 2lbs to go until my target the week before we went to Florida in December I was so pleased and felt amazing. When I got back i got straight back to group, and while I haven’t gained any weight (aside from 4lbs ish over Christmas) I wasn’t losing any. However, I’ve been super motivated the last few weeks and I’ve lost 4lb, and now have 2.5lbs to go again until target This Bank Holiday weekend we’ve got a lot of social occasions planned which I’ll enjoy, but try to stay on plan where I can. I would love to get to my target, and potentially lower it another 7 lbs too depending on how I feel So wish me luck guys! I really don’t want to look back at my wedding photos and have any regrets, and while I am so proud of how far I’ve come, I definitely won’t look amazing in a bikini on our cruise at this weight and that’s something only I have the power to change!



I think I’ll leave it there for now! I’ll probably have another update very soon as we’re getting so much done at the moment! I need to update you on our final ADR choices and talk about the restaurants and snacks we’re excited for

Hope everyone has a lovely long weekend! X

[Bouncing Tigger]

Wow, super exciting! You're so organised

[christybell]

Wow Libby, I cant believe you had 2 stone to lose... So pleased to hear that wishes is a goer ..so much planning has gone into your day it would be awful for your plans to be scuppered. So looking forward to reading along, thanks for sharing with us

[mobeckwith]

majorly excited for the updates,i was wondering how the wishes or not debarcle was panning out,thankfully its on your date.i must admit i love real wishes over hallowishes,but to be fair both are good.glad to hear that the rest of the planning is going well mo x

[Redrach1903]

So pleased wishes will be on for you yay!

Love your wedding ring too! Great find!

Can't believe how soon it is now! I was thinking of you guys when we saw the wedding pavilion a couple of weeks ago <3 xxx

[madhatter3]

Libby great updates, you will have such an amazing honeymoon... We saw the Disney Magic in dock yesterday while it was in Liverpool.. Such a beautiful ship.

[mick]

Another great update you seem very well organised it will soon be here


Joan

[Yorkie Girl]

Phew, I'm so glad that it looks as though Wishes will be on for your wedding day x

Your ring is beautiful

I'm really looking forward to reading about your trip once you're back and married (eek) x

I've not purchased from light in the box, but plenty of people on a wedding Facebook group that I'm part of have used them and have positive things to say about them

[jcourt39]

Yaaaaayy to Wishes!
I can't imagine how exciting it is to have all those people join you in the most magical place in the world, especially first timers! What an absolute dream, they must have no idea what's ahead of them 😊😊 toooo exciting!
I've 12 weeks till Flo ancient it's flying by...it'll be here before you know it 😁😁
Rachael x X x

[Sweets]

What a great update. It's all coming together! X