Welcome to the Mickey From The UK Disney World Wedding Series, where we share some of the details and experiences planning our Disney World wedding from the UK. We walk through some key aspects of why we are doing it, and answer reader questions as we go along our journey. Keep in mind Disney change their policies, prices and packages regularly, our experience described here is correct at the time of our booking from 2018 to 2020.
On September 2018, we got engaged at Disney World. As soon as we got back home, we began planning out Disney World wedding.
Why a Disney World wedding?
Groom - Disney World is our favourite place to visit. So much so, that this website exists (with 45k+ followers and counting)! Aside from a few terrible restaurant servers here and there, most of the experiences and memories we have are generally very good to fantastic over the years. So much so, a year doesn't go by where we don't visit at least once. On the flip side, getting married isn't something I've been yearning for, and the idea of a traditional wedding at home was something that really never appealed to me. The thought of a Disney World wedding though, peaked my interest. After seeing pictures and videos of some past Disney weddings, something latched onto me, and I knew if I were to get married, that's how I'd want to do it. So you can be comforted with the fact that this isn't a groom being dragged by the wishes of his bride. If anything, it's the other way around.
Bride - I was never one of those girls who planned out their dream wedding at a young age so when people starting asking us literally HOURS after we got engaged, what the wedding plan was, I had no idea what we wanted. We knew you could get married at Disney but never imagined it would be an option - I remember seeing a news article and it was describing how it was something like $750,000+ just to use the space in front of the castle and we just couldn't imagine spending that sort of money! After researching a bit we found out there was more options than we could ever imagine and started to think it could actually be possible. I absolutely love the idea of being able to enjoy our favourite place with our closest friends and family members, some who have been to Disney before and some who I can't wait to see their faces when they are there. The other huge bonus is we don't have to do much ourselves, (for example we don't have to spend months DIY'ing our own centrepieces etc), after a face to face planning session, all we have to do is email our planner if anything changes or we think of anything else, nice and easy! We know Disney are amazing at organising events so it's easy to have total faith in them for making sure our wedding day is perfect.
Why 2020?
We originally planned to get married in May 2021. However, after looking at some of the wedding prices and how prices have been creeping up in the last few years, as well as the overall cost of going to Disney World going up on an annual basis, we decided for our wallets - and the wallets of our guests - to pull it back to September 2020. I think another round of price hikes would likely price us out or at least make us cut some things we really don't want to cut. With Disney World's 50th being in 2021, we didn't want to risk the demand and subsequence price increases, as we're already fighting poor exchange rates at the moment. We made the snap decision to bring it back (ironically after printing out invites saying May 2021) to September 2020.
Our favourite time to go to Disney World is around September. We get to enjoy the Halloween atmosphere, Food & Wine Festival, the kids are back to school, and more. We originally decided on May because it's the same sort of climate and temperature as September, and we didn't mind paying a little bit more to not have the risk of hurricanes! However, as stated before, the cost-benefit-risk analysis we made ended up with us changing to September. We figured it'll be fun to be able to celebrate our anniversaries on our future trips, and if we get a hurricane, we'll make the best of it. (Wedding pictures in ponchos maybe?)
Destination weddings
Coming from the UK, getting married at Disney World has all the benefits of a normal destination wedding. Those benefits appeal to us greatly. Those include a stress-free wedding day. You have organisers and coordinators that run the day for you, and are always several steps ahead. All you have to do is turn up and go with the flow. Another benefit is we're already at our honeymoon destination. Even if we weren't getting married at Disney World, we'd be having our honeymoon there, this way we can start celebrating straight away without that lovely 8 hour flight. Another benefit is less family drama. With most destination weddings, you can invite just handful of close family and friends. You don't need to worry about catering for your second-cousin's partner's sister and whether or not she'd be offended not getting an invite.
Isn't it insanely expensive?
It's not cheap. However, like with all things Disney, you can be pretty conservative, but there are plenty of options where you can go bonkers. We always knew it would be pricey, and there are some things that are quite an eye opener (which we of course will touch on in future articles). Generally though, it's not as expensive as I thought it would be for what we want to do. For example, we have no desire to do the Cinderella glass coach which can cost north of $3,000. However, that might be a dream of many future Disney brides (thankfully not this one!)
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