ALegrande
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2017
Hello all! Okay, so I have been debating on whether or not to do a planning journal for the past 6 months! Initially I was very hesitant of it because of the time-intensiveness of it all, especially the adding photos and linking everything together. I am very impatient and those tedious things tend to really bug me LOL but I decided to go ahead and just go for it! So, I apologize if this isn't the most aesthetically pleasing PJ haha but I'm giving it my best shot!
Also, so since I've been (officially ) planning for roughly 6 months now, I have a LOT to catch you all up on! I'll do my best to start at the beginning and make it as succinct as possible.
About us:
My name is Ashley and my fiance's name is Matt. We are both teachers in Orlando, Florida, and have both lived here in Orlando for most of our lives. We love Disney and are Annual Passholders. We also love to travel and have been to St. Maarten, France, Italy, and Portugal together, as well as on 2 cruises.
I grew up going to Disney multiple times per year- even when I lived in Chicago as a kid, my parents had annual passes. After college, I lived abroad (in Portugal) and in Louisiana for a few years, and moved back to Orlando when my previous marriage ended. I hadn't been to Disney in about 5 years before I met Matt, but he could tell what a big part of my life it was. For my birthday our first year of dating, he got us Annual Passes for the year, and my love affair with Disney was reignited! Ever since then, we've renewed our passes each year and it's become one of our favorite activities to do together. The "rebirth" of my Disney love also led me to start researching Disney Weddings again, so I started lurking on the DisBoards well before we were engaged. But more on that later...
The proposal
So I've known my fiance Matt for almost 3 years now, and we got engaged this past March at the Polynesian Resort! We had been dating for a little over 2 years when the proposal happened. We met online and have both been married before. One of the best things about our relationship is our silliness and the goofiness we share. We are always laughing and kidding around which each other, and I love the light-heartedness of our relationship.
I had been subtly bugging matt for quite a while about the proposal LOL and he definitely knew I was ready. I knew he was going to propose at SOME point, but I honestly was not sure when. He and my family were REALLY good at throwing me off and making sure I really had no clue. I did have some hint that it was coming on the day of as he had planned this very extravagant night at the Poly, seemingly for no reason at all. I'm extremely intuitive so I figured- "this has to be it!"- but I wasn't 100% sure...
So the plan was to go to the Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show as a belated Christmas gift (again, very random- why wait til March if this was a Christmas gift? They didn't have ONE sooner reservation? lol). We arrived at the show and it was awesome. It was my first time there and I didn't know what to expect. We both loved it! During dinner, I noticed Matt kept taking his jacket with him when he went to the restroom, so I started feeling more and more like it might happen that night. After the show, he started walking me in the direction of the Grand Floridian. I thought "hmm, this is odd!". The thing to know about Matt is: he is TERRIBLE with directions. I mean absolutely, God awful. He will get lost going pretty much anywhere unless he has step-by-step directions. So, I could tell he was searching for somewhere that he just wasn't finding LOL. He kept walking towards GF saying "there's a bar this way my coworker told me about". Well, I'm a Disney guru, so I knew that just simply wasn't true LOL. He stopped and called his "friend" Gina to find out where this restaurant was (it was really my mom). Finally, we turn the other direction and head onto the Poly beach. As we're staring off looking at the castle, he mumbles something about all of the amazing memories we've had together, and then FINALLY gets down on one knee! It was an amazing moment and it ended up working out perfectly. It was so very "us" and so quintessentially "him" to get lost trying to find "the spot" my mom had scoped out the prior weekend.
Another piece to this story was that he and my parents had planned a sabotage story that they were going to Tallahassee to see my sister and BIL for the weekend. He knew how important it was to me to have my family there to celebrate the engagement with us afterward, so that was part of the cleverness of the "plan" was that I would think it couldn't possibly be that weekend since my parents were "out of town". After the proposal, he said that he was sorry we couldn't celebrate with my parents, but that we would celebrate with them the next weekend. Lo and behold, we walk up to Trader Sams to grab a celebratory drink, and there's my whole family- grandma included!- there to celebrate! It was a magical night and the staff at the Poly was amazing. We felt on cloud 9 and really had an amazing night. We stayed up til 2am that morning talking about all of the planning I had already (not-so-secretly) done and the ideas I had. It was a night I'll never forget!
(my ring is my dream ring from Tiffany's. We went to Flower and Garden the next day as a fam, and I got this awesome photo in the butterfly tent!)
Up next, I'll get into how we decided on Escape and our venue choices, followed by our engagement photos and my dress!
Also, so since I've been (officially ) planning for roughly 6 months now, I have a LOT to catch you all up on! I'll do my best to start at the beginning and make it as succinct as possible.
About us:
My name is Ashley and my fiance's name is Matt. We are both teachers in Orlando, Florida, and have both lived here in Orlando for most of our lives. We love Disney and are Annual Passholders. We also love to travel and have been to St. Maarten, France, Italy, and Portugal together, as well as on 2 cruises.
I grew up going to Disney multiple times per year- even when I lived in Chicago as a kid, my parents had annual passes. After college, I lived abroad (in Portugal) and in Louisiana for a few years, and moved back to Orlando when my previous marriage ended. I hadn't been to Disney in about 5 years before I met Matt, but he could tell what a big part of my life it was. For my birthday our first year of dating, he got us Annual Passes for the year, and my love affair with Disney was reignited! Ever since then, we've renewed our passes each year and it's become one of our favorite activities to do together. The "rebirth" of my Disney love also led me to start researching Disney Weddings again, so I started lurking on the DisBoards well before we were engaged. But more on that later...
The proposal
So I've known my fiance Matt for almost 3 years now, and we got engaged this past March at the Polynesian Resort! We had been dating for a little over 2 years when the proposal happened. We met online and have both been married before. One of the best things about our relationship is our silliness and the goofiness we share. We are always laughing and kidding around which each other, and I love the light-heartedness of our relationship.
I had been subtly bugging matt for quite a while about the proposal LOL and he definitely knew I was ready. I knew he was going to propose at SOME point, but I honestly was not sure when. He and my family were REALLY good at throwing me off and making sure I really had no clue. I did have some hint that it was coming on the day of as he had planned this very extravagant night at the Poly, seemingly for no reason at all. I'm extremely intuitive so I figured- "this has to be it!"- but I wasn't 100% sure...
So the plan was to go to the Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show as a belated Christmas gift (again, very random- why wait til March if this was a Christmas gift? They didn't have ONE sooner reservation? lol). We arrived at the show and it was awesome. It was my first time there and I didn't know what to expect. We both loved it! During dinner, I noticed Matt kept taking his jacket with him when he went to the restroom, so I started feeling more and more like it might happen that night. After the show, he started walking me in the direction of the Grand Floridian. I thought "hmm, this is odd!". The thing to know about Matt is: he is TERRIBLE with directions. I mean absolutely, God awful. He will get lost going pretty much anywhere unless he has step-by-step directions. So, I could tell he was searching for somewhere that he just wasn't finding LOL. He kept walking towards GF saying "there's a bar this way my coworker told me about". Well, I'm a Disney guru, so I knew that just simply wasn't true LOL. He stopped and called his "friend" Gina to find out where this restaurant was (it was really my mom). Finally, we turn the other direction and head onto the Poly beach. As we're staring off looking at the castle, he mumbles something about all of the amazing memories we've had together, and then FINALLY gets down on one knee! It was an amazing moment and it ended up working out perfectly. It was so very "us" and so quintessentially "him" to get lost trying to find "the spot" my mom had scoped out the prior weekend.
Another piece to this story was that he and my parents had planned a sabotage story that they were going to Tallahassee to see my sister and BIL for the weekend. He knew how important it was to me to have my family there to celebrate the engagement with us afterward, so that was part of the cleverness of the "plan" was that I would think it couldn't possibly be that weekend since my parents were "out of town". After the proposal, he said that he was sorry we couldn't celebrate with my parents, but that we would celebrate with them the next weekend. Lo and behold, we walk up to Trader Sams to grab a celebratory drink, and there's my whole family- grandma included!- there to celebrate! It was a magical night and the staff at the Poly was amazing. We felt on cloud 9 and really had an amazing night. We stayed up til 2am that morning talking about all of the planning I had already (not-so-secretly) done and the ideas I had. It was a night I'll never forget!
(my ring is my dream ring from Tiffany's. We went to Flower and Garden the next day as a fam, and I got this awesome photo in the butterfly tent!)
Up next, I'll get into how we decided on Escape and our venue choices, followed by our engagement photos and my dress!
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