Sarah & Rob's Cruise Wedding on the Fantasy October 2017

[InSearchofMagic]

Hello!

I'm so excited to start a planning journal! I've been reading so many other journals over the past few months and it's been so much fun to following along with everyone's stories. I've been so amazed by all of the sweet love stories, all of the creativity, and how supportive and helpful this community is! I feel so happy to be able to join it and share our story with you all.

After 20 years of friendship and 10 years as a couple, Rob and I are getting married this October on board the Disney Fantasy. I'll post a little more about our story in my next post =)


(This is us last year on our first trip to Disneyland!)

 

[KimChriste]

Yay!! You started your PJ!!! So excited to follow along on your journey and both be getting married on the same cruise. We definitely have to get together onboard and have a nuptial toast.

 

[InSearchofMagic]

Thanks Kim! Yes - will definitely have to find time for a toast!!

 

[adisneyaunt]

Congrats one/all!

 

[InSearchofMagic]

Our love story started about 21 years ago, when Rob and I were both teenagers. I guess you could say we were ahead of our time because we met online before online dating was a thing. We started chatting on one of the early chat forums and haven't stopped taking since then! After several months of almost daily chatting online, on the phone, and through email, we finally met in person. We both felt a connection but we were young and lived 4 hours away from each other, so we couldn't see each other regularly. We talked regularly through the ups and downs of our teens and our early twenties, but the time never seemed quite right for us to date. One of us would be single, but then the other was dating someone, or vise versa. We became best friends, and were there for each other through it all. I think we were both always a little jealous when the other one was with someone, but our lives kept taking us in different directions.

During college, I did an internship in Northern CA, and fell in love with it. (I was living in NY) I decided that I wanted to move there when I was finished with school. When I told Rob about my plans, he was surprised and upset. Although he didn't express it at the time... He had figured that eventually our timing would be right and we would get together, but with me moving across the county.. how would that ever happen? While I knew I had feelings for him, I also didn't know if it would ever be the right time for us, so I felt I had to follow my dreams.



After an epic cross county road trip with my sister, I started to set up a new life for myself in northern CA. I found a job in my field, found a place to live, and started to make new friends. I met someone, and even got engaged - but realized he wasn't the right person for me and we called it off.

About 6 months after my engagement was called off, Rob called me one night and said we needed to see if "we" were meant to be. He was living in MA at the time, and I was living in CA, so I didn't really see how that was going to be possible, but he was determined. I was working at a non-profit and not making much money, so travel wasn't really an option for me, but he was determined that we needed to give it a shot. He started flying out to see me on weekends when he could and that lasted for about a year, by then we knew we really had something special, and being apart was getting harder and harder. At that point, he had his own business, and could work from pretty much anywhere... so we decided to move in together! I had been talking about how much I really wanted a dog, and in August of 2006, Rob and Oscar both moved into my one bedroom apartment and we became a family!

 

[KimChriste]

Awwww...I love your story!!! Life sure has a way of taking the scenic route! Thanks for sharing!!

 

[InSearchofMagic]

How did you decide to get married on a ship?!?!

That's the number one thing people ask us when they find out where we're getting married.

Over the last few years, Rob and I had been talking about getting married. Every time we talked about it, we both agreed it was something we'd like to do eventually, but it didn't seem like a priority. We were living together and happy. Also, whenever we got thinking about it, we couldn't decide on where we'd do it! Our families are both on the east coast, and we are on the west coast. So we would go back and forth about having it in CA or having it in NY or MA where our families were. Neither one seemed like something we were really excited about..

Over the past 2.5 years we've been renovating a house (actually doing the work ourselves.. that's a whole other journal!!) and that has taken up all of our free time and our extra money ;-)... so we weren't in a space to seriously think about a wedding. This summer we finally finished!! We have walls, floors, ceilings, and heat! It's amazing!

So... one night we were laying in bed talking.. and brainstorming crazy destination wedding ideas.. and Rob said how about a ship?.. we laughed and then got serious! We had been on two Disney Cruises and had LOVED them. Next thing we knew we were googling to see if that was even something you could do.. and we found out we could get married on DCL! We knew it would be the perfect thing for us! It brought together our dream of having a destination wedding, keeping our wedding small, and our love of Disney! It also gave us an opportunity to spend more time with our wedding guests which was something we both really wanted since don't get to see our families that often. Once we decided the planning began!!

 

[lorimay]

Congratulations!
You have made a great choice for your wedding, you will be treated like royalty the entire week. Back then when you had a wedding onboard you received concierge privileges, don't know if that is still the case, but be sure to ask.
We renewed our vows for our 25th anniversary in 2012 on a 7 night aboard The Magic. It was very simple for us though, just our kids, their significant others and our 2 grandkids, 8 total. We had a fun simple renewal on deck 7 (which is no longer there after dry dock). But then to have a 7 day vacation all together, that was just amazing.

Anyway, I saw you ask on the cruise bride board about breakfast options before you leave for the port.
There is a bagel place here in Florida called "Einsteins Bagels" they have a nice catering menu and there bagels are delicious.
My son is getting married next month in Ft Lauderdale and we are catering from there for the girls while we all get our hair and make-up done before the ceremony.
I'm not sure if they deliver or not, but its an option for you. If you're interested you can see the menu online!

Happy Planning!!

 

[InSearchofMagic]

First Project: The Invitations!

A strange fact about me, I love stationary. I don't know too many other people who would say that, but I do! I also really love neat packaging. If I have an option between two products and one has cute or innovative packaging, I'm definitely going to go for that one. I guess that's why I started with our invitations when we started planning our wedding I also really love branding and theming, maybe that's why I love Disney so much! If anyone can carry a theme - they can!!


So the first thing we started with in planning our wedding was the invitations. We weren't sure what style or colors we wanted, so we looked a tons of ideas online at Esty shops, google images, retailers, etc. We got some good ideas, but didn't find exactly what we were looking for. I decided to reach out to a woman I had worked with before for my sister's shower to see if she would be interested in working with me on a custom invitation. She was! We started working on them with just some basic ideas about colors and style - I wanted to take inspiration from the ship we are going to be married on - the Fantasy - and her art nouveau design and colors. After several drafts, we came up with these!

 

[KimChriste]

I absolutely LOVE your invitations, Sarah!!! They are AMAZING!!! Love the creativity and colors so much!

 

[InSearchofMagic]

Thanks Kim! I'm loving them too!!

 

[InSearchofMagic]

Congratulations!
You have made a great choice for your wedding, you will be treated like royalty the entire week. Back then when you had a wedding onboard you received concierge privileges, don't know if that is still the case, but be sure to ask.
We renewed our vows for our 25th anniversary in 2012 on a 7 night aboard The Magic. It was very simple for us though, just our kids, their significant others and our 2 grandkids, 8 total. We had a fun simple renewal on deck 7 (which is no longer there after dry dock). But then to have a 7 day vacation all together, that was just amazing.

Anyway, I saw you ask on the cruise bride board about breakfast options before you leave for the port.
There is a bagel place here in Florida called "Einsteins Bagels" they have a nice catering menu and there bagels are delicious.
My son is getting married next month in Ft Lauderdale and we are catering from there for the girls while we all get our hair and make-up done before the ceremony.
I'm not sure if they deliver or not, but its an option for you. If you're interested you can see the menu online!

Happy Planning!!

Thanks so much Lorimay! Your vow renewal sounds like it was great - Congratulations on 25+ years!! That's an amazing accomplishment. How wonderful that were able to celebrate with your kids and grandkids!

Thank you so much for the tip about Einstein Bagels - I just checked it out and I think it's the same chain we have here in CA but it's called Noah's Bagels here. I think that might be a good solution. They even have coffee! They do deliver so that might work out well =)

 

[InSearchofMagic]

Finding a Dress

Since all of my family is on the east coast, and I'm on the west coast with most of my friends, I'm not planning to have any big events like a bachelorette party or a bridal shower. I decided that I wanted to try to plan a fun weekend to go dress shopping for my mom, my sister, and my future mother-in-law. I thought it would be a good way to do something all together and have some fun quality time together while involving them in the wedding preparations. I decided I would fly to NY for the weekend and rent a hotel suite and invite them to join me!

I planned some ideas for the weekend that would be a good fit for everyone and sent out these invitations! My sister who lives in NY found Bar Nine for us to go to after dinner on Friday night. It's a dueling piano bar and I thought that would be a great place to have a night out that would be a good fit for me and my sister as well as the moms. My sister wanted to find a brunch place for us on Sunday. So I left that her capable hands!




When the weekend finally came I was so excited to go to NY and see everyone! Even though I had planned the weekend myself, there were a few surprises in store for me! My sister stocked our suite with all of my favorite snacks! My mom baked fresh cookies and muffins! And my sister got us all coordinating robes! Oh and my mom knitted everyone matching slippers!!



That night we had an amazing dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in NYC and then headed to the piano bar. At the bar, I saw that my sister had secretly invited my NY friends to join us!! Some of them live in NYC and some of them came from over 2 hours away! I was soooooo surprised!! We had the best time.. and I even got called up the stage area to do a dance and a shot because my sister got me a "Future Mrs. Vaccaro" sash! It was so embarrassing!! My sister also surprised me with cupcakes from my favorite NYC bakery! I had the best time- it was so much fun!!

 

[lorimay]

How sweet of your sister!
Looks like you had a great time!!!

LOVE NYC!

 

[InSearchofMagic]

Dress Shopping!!

After a fun night out, the morning came very quickly the next day... but I was so excited because it was my dress shopping day!! I had been looking at dresses online for months trying to imagine what kind of dress I wanted. My favorite dresses were the ones at BHLDN, which is Anthropologie's wedding selection. I have always been a fan of their clothes, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that I loved their wedding dresses. My sister had gotten her dress at RK Bridal in NYC two years before, and they had a huge selection, so we also made plans to shop there. Depending on how the day went, we also planned to look for my sisters MOH dress, and the Moms dresses if we had time since we were all together.

The first appointment of the day was at 10 am at BHLDN. It was actually it's own section inside of a huge Anthropologie store. We arrived a little early for our appointment, so we browsed in the store a little bit and then checked in for our appointment. Everyone was very nice and made use feel very welcome. A consultant came out to meet us at the desk area and brought us around the corning to look at some dresses that were hanging. She also asked me if there were specific dresses I was interested in trying on. I pulled up my Pinterest page and showed her the ones I had been looking at. She showed me a few of them on the rack and a decided I didn't want to try one because the color looked a lot different on the website than in person. I ended up pulling 3 dresses to start with.

We went downstairs the trying on area - it was very nicely decorated, spacious, and comfortable. Each try on space had a huge curtain for privacy, seating, and huge mirror. We got a space at the far end of the area with a beautiful velvet sofa right outside. My mom, future mil, and sister were invited to make themselves comfortable and offered something to drink. They all chose champagne! The champagne was the most adorable little Sophia Coppola pink cans (which i had seen before but never tried!) and they were thrilled. I also gave them their "voting" paddles that I had made to make the shopping trip more interactive.. lol On one side they had a positive "love it" message and on the over side something like "let it go"... lol See below..



I was a little nervous about the whole process because this was my first time trying on wedding dresses and I wasn't sure if I would get the "I know this is my dress!" feeling.. or if any of them would even look good!

 

[InSearchofMagic]

The Dress

I tried on the first one, and it it actually looked pretty good! One thing that was pretty cool was that one of their "sample" sizes was pretty close to my size so right from the start it fit pretty well. While the first dress was pretty, it didn't wow me. The rest of my group felt the same way.. so I tried on the next one.. and WOW! I LOVED IT!! When I came out to show everyone, I was beaming from ear to ear. Not only was it beautiful, but it was so comfortable! It just felt perfect! I was pretty sure that was going to be my dress and the rest of my group agreed! I decided to try on the third dress I had in the room just for fun, and it was ok.. I just really wanted to get it off so I could try on the second one again!! I put it on again.. and I still loved it. I tried it on with shoes and a veil (which I didn't think I was going to want) and I loved it all! I couldn't believe I had found my dress after only trying on three dresses.. but I was sure it was the one =)

 

[KimChriste]

Love your dress Sarah! It's gorgeous!! So happy to hear your dress shopping was a success.

 

[InSearchofMagic]

Thank you so much! I'm so excited about it!! =) And it came in the mail yesterday!!!! It's all I can do to not put it on and twirl around the house... lol I feel like a little kid!

 

[InSearchofMagic]

Accessories

I'm starting to think about accessories to go with my dress, and having some trouble deciding what I want to do. I think I'm probably going to do more statement earrings and no necklace because of the beading around the neckline of my dress, but I'm not totally sure. And maybe a bracelet? My normal style is pretty laid back, so I'm not even sure where to shop for more sparkly jewelry! My sister has a really beautiful hair comb that she's offered to lend me, and I think I'd like to wear it.

Shoes presented a little bit of an issue for me. I really love shoes, and I was looking all over the place to find a pair that seemed right, but couldn't find anything I liked. Finally I found a place that does costume shoes, and I thought it would be way out of my price range, it turns out, they aren't that much more expensive that fancy shoes at a department store.. soooo I'm getting custom shoes and I'm so excited!! They sent me the "template" shoes in the style I want so I could try them on and make sure they fit well. They fit perfectly!



They also sent me some color swatches because I was having trouble deciding what color I wanted to go with. I was going to get a more "bridal" color of light pink, but was also drawn to this blue color they had so I asked for a swatch of it just to see how it looked in person. Now that I've had a chance to see the color swatches and the shoes, I'm going to go with a blue color (because I just love it!! - even though it's not the most bridal looking color) and do some appliqué on the the toe with some beading that matches my dress. I can't wait to see the finished product! I think they should arrive in about 4 weeks!!