Disneyland Paris Wedding Tour + Last Night in the Park!
After
lunch at Auberge de Cendrillon, we made our way back up Main Street to meet representatives from Disneyland Paris’ Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings department at the Disneyland Hotel. Originally we were supposed to meet them on the day we arrived, so that we wouldn’t have to break up a full day in the parks, but they rescheduled due to snow. As it turned out, it was probably snowing even harder when we actually did meet them!
Along the way, I got to do a fun little shopping spree for our pals
the Roots, who had requested an assortment of Peter Pan, Thumper and/or Muppets-themed baby clothes for their adorable son, Ollie. After scouring every boutique in both parks, I’d discovered that Disneyland Paris sold NONE of those things. Fortunately, they did still have this fabulous ensemble, which made him a LOT of friends when he eventually wore it to Chef Mickey’s!
After getting such a lovely VIP
tour of wedding locations at Tokyo Disneyland, I was excited to be able to do the same in Paris. We were also interested in learning about the new options for weddings and vow renewals at Disneyland Paris for a possible future anniversary celebration. Until now, Disneyland Paris hasn’t really been in the wedding business due to France’s stringent residency requirements for legal marriage (you have to be married in a civil ceremony at the French county office where you live, and you need to have been living there for at least 30 days). Even the couple I interviewed on my Disney Wedding Podcast who
won a Disneyland Paris wedding had to arrange for a special ceremony at their country’s consulate in Paris.
But Disney finally figured out that they can sell weddings to foreigners if they are technically vow renewals—you just have to get legally married at home before your trip. So they’re building up their wedding department and partnering with Disneyland’s Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings team to create a new set of offerings. One of the folks we met with is actually from San Diego, but she’s been in France for three years and now has the dream job of living in Paris and planning Disney weddings!
We met the DFTW representatives at Cafe Fantasia, the bar inside the Disneyland Hotel. They were super-friendly and so enthusiastic about planning a fantastic event for us. I was excited too, but I couldn’t seem to pin them down on specific pricing. Unlike Walt Disney World, where there are flat-rate packages or at least minimum expenditure requirements for each type of wedding, Disneyland Paris appears to treat every wedding as a bespoke event with completely customized pricing. So you can have whatever you want almost wherever you want it, but they won’t be able to tell you how much anything will cost until you actually start planning.
Eventually I was able to pry out an estimated starting price for an event of any size, and—hang on to your butts—it’s €19,000! There’s no budget vow renewal package like the
Memories Collection here, folks! They do have a
PDF of sample wedding ideas, so if your eyes aren’t watering at that number, this is a good way to see what you might get at various price points. But, again, these are all just suggestions.
Due to the weather, we weren’t able to visit more than one wedding venue, but one of the DFTW reps gamely hoofed all the way out to the Newport Bay Club with us in the snowstorm to inspect the wedding gazebo.
Huh! I guess instead of a Unity Candle ceremony, in France they have a Unity Cigarette ceremony, and then you stub out the butt in the ashtray atop this trash can!
View from the gazebo toward the hotel
Granted, we were seeing the venue at what you might consider its worst—nobody’s actually going to get married out here in the freezing snow!—but I couldn’t believe anyone would want to hold a wedding at this glorified bus shelter even in the best weather! Brides sometimes complain that Walt Disney’s World’s
Sea Breeze Point is too close to the path from BoardWalk Inn to Epcot, but this place doesn’t have a lawn or hedges or even a step separating it from the main walkway to Disney Village and the parks.
Here, maybe this Google Street View will show you what I mean…
Which is all to say that if we ever stumble on 21 grand and want to blow it on a Disneyland Paris vow renewal, it ain’t gonna be at the Newport Bay Club!
The resort itself seemed pretty nice. After thanking our DFTW guide profusely for venturing out in the blizzard with us, we poked around in the lobby briefly.
We thought about taking a resort bus back to the park but decided we’d better at least take some photos of Disney Village, so we walked back that way.
WHOA… Is this the World’s Largest Earl of Sandwich? I’m saying that it is. No lines for a Holiday Turkey sammich here, I’ll bet!
Let me consult my notes to see what we thought of Disney Village…. Ah yes, here it is: “Disney Village looks like GARBAGE!”
“It is a very bland, with huge empty restaurants and ugly shops.”
Apparently these pillars are remnants of a Frank Gehry fever-dream involving America’s railway-adjacent power stations (always great inspiration for an inviting entertainment district!).
I guess they used to have 3,600 low-wattage bulbs strung between them to create a starry sky effect, which sounds gorgeous! Now they just seem like a vaguely sinister physical manifestation of the ’90s looming overhead, reminding you of all your bad fashion decisions.
“Why did I wear Zubaz—why?!!!”
Starbucks is like, “Yeah, I don’t know these guys. I’m just here doing my own thing…”
The snow was working overtime trying to pretty up Disney Village.
We stepped into the
Disney Store, hoping it would sell a different assortment of merchandise the way ours and Japan’s Disney Stores do. No such luck—it was all the same stuff we’d found in every gift shop in the parks.
The camera thinks that railing is the most interesting part of this photo….
I do like how unafraid of color they were in the ’90s!
I have absolutely NO idea what is supposed to be happening in these decorative vignettes, but I love how bonkers they are! At least they shout (in an Ed Wynn kind of voice) “Disney!!!” Meanwhile, the recent drab, factory-chic makeovers of the World of Disney stores at Disneyland and Walt Disney World make it seem like the company is trying to trick customers into thinking they’re anyplace BUT at Disney!
I mean, of COURSE Daisy and Minnie hang out with Launchpad McQuack in space!
They’re trying to stop maniacal Mickey from exterminating the world’s population remotely from The Moonraker!
Meanwhile, Uncle Donald has a foolproof plan for avoiding nuclear winter involving hot air balloons and way too much luggage….
And Clarabelle Cow is too busy laughing her patootie off at Frank Gehry’s plans for Disney Village to even care!
At this point, Goofy may be humanity’s only hope!
Back we went, out into the theme roulette that is Disney Village: Put a castle next to a mural of Hollywood Boulevard? Sure, why not?
I’m guessing that adding the Jonas Brothers and the stars of
Twilight to this mural was somebody’s idea of a Disney Village renovation back in, like, 2009.
These guys were having more fun than anybody else at Disney Village that day!
“Alors j’ai dit, ‘Manger? I hardly know her!’ Ha hahahahaaaa!”