Category Archives: someday bride

Wedding Wednesday: Searching for a Venue

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The very first thing Shane and I wanted to decide on was our wedding venue. In our opinion, that was the most important factor. There’s not much you can plan until you have a date set and you know exactly what kind of space and guest count you can estimate for.

The big downside, though, was that most wedding venues in the central Florida area fall into one of three main categories: ballroom, barn, or beach.

Beach was right out. That was too much of a drive in our opinion, and besides, to quote Anakin Skywalker- “I hate sand. It’s far too coarse. Gets everywhere.” We’re not really beachy people (Shane can barely handle Castaway Cay on our cruises) and it isn’t our vibe.

We briefly considered ballroom. That just didn’t seem like us either. We wanted a formal-ish wedding, but we’re definitely not black tie affair people. And we didn’t want a “wedding factory” vibe either.

(We also looked into a Disney wedding. While it is possible for it to be on the affordable side, the easiest way to cut costs would be to A) have a hotel ballroom reception and B) have 20 people or less. Neither of those things appealed to us, and we didn’t want to spend crazy amounts of money, so Disney was taken off the list. Although…if I could have gone with that, I definitely would have done a ceremony in the UK pavilion garden, a reception at the American Adventure rotunda, and a dessert party at Fantasmic.)

That left us with a barn. Which, honestly, neither of us minded, but we really wanted to find something that was a little more garden-y rather than rustic. Unfortunately, most options veered in the cowboy boots and antlers direction than the flowers and picket fence variety.

So what did I do? I made a Google spreadsheet of every venue that seemed even remotely possible. I sorted everything by cost, amenities (like a bridal suite, parking options, etc.), availability, and ended up with eighty possible venues.

I showed the spreadsheet to my parents, who had agreed to pay for our venue, and my mom said “that one. We should tour that one.”

I was a bit shocked, because the venue she picked was definitely an outlier. In desperation I had searched for “library wedding central florida” and this particular venue had popped up. I had sort of assumed it would be too expensive- my top choices were a couple of wedding barns that allowed for a lot of DIY. But lo and behold, that was the first venue we toured.

Stay tuned to see how the tour went, and if we picked it! How did you select your wedding venue? Did you spreadsheet your options or did you just go with the first one that seemed like the right choice?

Wedding Wednesday: Priorities and Aesthetics

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Because of the Kind of Person I Am, I had a wedding pinterest board long before I got engaged. I’ve always been super interested in weddings, especially after I worked at a bridal shop for a few years right after I graduated from college. Needless to say…I had a lot of different ideas to wade through when Shane and I started planning.

The most important thing was to figure out, well, the important things. A 100k wedding was not in the budget, so we wanted to make sure we made our decisions really carefully. So we narrowed down the top three things we wanted to make sure were perfect.

#1: The Venue. The venue can make or break a wedding. Too far away, too difficult to navigate, lack of parking, not enough shade or air conditioning (a huge concern in Florida!), no rain plan…we wanted to make sure our venue set us up for success.

#2: The Food. If you’re inviting your guests to celebrate with you, you probably should have good food. I feel like that’s one of the things that guests really remember about a wedding, what they ate and if it was good or not. Plus, Shane was really hoping for barbecue.

#3: Photography. At the end of the day, that’s all you have left. Once the wedding is over, it’s over. That might be the only time you have all those people in one place with you. That might be the hottest you’ve ever looked in your life. This is a huge day- it seems important to have great photos to remember it!

At the end of the day, we felt like everything else- the clothing, the decorations, the invitations- could be DIY or budget friendly. If we were going to spend money on anything, it would be those three things. It really made a difference in wedding planning!

When it came to the aesthetic, though, that’s where Shane let me loose. He was like “you can have all the pink you want, all the girly things you want, make it exactly the way you want…all I ask is that I get to wear a navy suit and I get to eat brisket.” Done. Super reasonable. I still asked his opinion on things, and if he truly didn’t like something then we came up with a compromise, but those were his big things.

I knew that I wanted pink. I wanted shades of pink, and a cottagecore princessy vibe. Very garden-y, old fashioned. I knew that would be a tall order for Florida (where am I going to find a storybook garden in a swamp state??) but that’s another post for another day! The aesthetic kept evolving as we kept going, and it ended up being perfect.

Wedding Wednesday: Our Love Story and Proposal

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Shane and I met all the way back in 2013. I had just started back at Disney as a part time cast member at Star Tours, and he was working at Jedi Training Academy. Sometimes we would chat when we were outside at the same time, and one day I mentioned how jealous I was that the JTA cast got to carry lightstabers.

Shane then said “Oh! Do you want one?”

Turns out he had accidentally accumulated multiple lightsabers, and he offered to let me have one. But then…I cross trained at the Great Movie Ride, and he moved on to Dinosaur and we completely lost touch.

In 2016 he happened to ride the Great Movie Ride and saw me briefly, and then he friended me on Instagram…and then he slid into my DMs and asked me out on a date. I hadn’t been on a date in ages and gave myself an early out by telling him that I had rehearsal for Seussical that night- and I warned him that I’m late for everything and I’d probably be late for our date. He told me he had sisters, he’d never been on time for anything. (And yes, I was late). But we ended up really hitting it off, and he walked me to my car, and he kissed me…and that was it! We dated casually for about two months, made it official, and we’ve been together ever since.

(I also found out much, much later that he had a date lined up with someone else after our first date, and he called her up to cancel and basically said “sorry I have to cancel, but I think I met my wife.”)

We started talking about getting married, and originally had planned on getting engaged in 2020…but, well, you can guess what happened with that. His original plan was incredible. I was directing Tuck Everlasting at my home theater (the same theater where I did Seussical when we first started dating!) and he had planned on filling the audience with friends and family for the last performance and proposing during the curtain call, and then the cast party would be our surprise engagement party. And that filled the only guidelines I really had for a proposal! All I really wanted was:

-to look nice (wearing something cute, and preferably have my nails looking decent)

-have someone there to take photos/videos

-celebrate with friends and family afterwards

That was all I really wanted! Unfortunately, the pandemic had other ideas, so everything got postponed to the spring of 2021, and plans had to change pretty dramatically. I was not dressed the way I wanted (and my nails were…not good) and the pandemic meant that a party was out of the question. Shane also…might’ve panicked a little. He got down on one knee, held out the ring, and blurted out “are you going to say yes or what?” No name, no little speech, no…actual asking. But I did say yes, and the ring was absolutely perfect! (I didn’t have a single clue what kind of ring I wanted, and he nailed it.)

I didn’t get a formal wedding band (more on that later), so I’ve told Shane that if he ever wants to get me a new wedding band and re-propose, I wouldn’t be mad about that. But the most important thing was that we formally got engaged after four and a half years of dating!

That’s a very condensed version of our love story- let me know if you want to hear the longer version! What’s your proposal story?