Well, there was more to it than that... namely our wedding roughly one year ago and the entire of planning that went into it before hand.

To begin with, we picked a date and our colors for the wedding. Our choices, ice blue and lavender, would set the color scheme for the rest of the items in the wedding.

We looked all over for a reception site location, as well as for a ceremony location. We looked at the Disney Weddings option of course, which would have been nice, but we decided to go somewhere else and use more funds for the wedding itself versus paying more for the venue site. In the end, we picked a very elegant meeting facility for both the ceremony and reception. In fact, the facility was cheaper and nicer than several hotels we looked at! Remember: always take a look at the total inclusive price (given in "per person" format) before dismissing a venue. Ours included all of the food and beverage service, and I'd be surprised if a hotel or commercial meeting facility allowed you to bring in your own food and beverage. Most of the time, you have to use their services.

Now that we knew when, where, and with what color scheme the wedding would have, we started to brainstorm about the wedding itself. We learned very quickly that by far, more effort would go into the reception than the ceremony. Of course that makes sense: there are more activities going on then and the guests will spend more time there then in ceremony area.

We knew we wanted a Disney theme, but we wanted to also incorporate some traditional themes as well. So, we decided that the reception would pretty much be all out Disney, whereas the ceremony would be more traditional (on the surface at least).

The first song we did was the waiting music, or rather the "please be seated while the entire wedding party collects themselves from being nervous wrecks" music. For this we picked what is possibly the best song for this purpose: the Impressions de France Medley from the Official Walt Disney World Soundtrack. This song is over 10 minutes long, has beautiful changing segments of music and best of all, ends with a large pipe organ segment. This not only fit into our traditional wishes perfectly, but it made the place reverberate like an actual church, and was a three minute warning that the processional was about to start. To really feel the effect of it, I instructed our Disc Jockey to slowly crank up the volume during this last section to get everyone's attention that the ceremony was about to start. It was incredible!

For the rest of the wedding party, we took a less climatic version of "Some Day My Prince Will Come" from a CD called "Piano Disney," which I haven't been able to find online since we bought it. It was a very soft version of it, with a single piano playing.

The most important song of the ceremony was, by far, the song she would walk down the aisle to. She picked "When You Wish Upon a Star", and we used the version from a CD called "A Disney Spectacular." It is classic Disney music but just with orchestra, and this song got a lot of people crying before the ceremony even began. It was the perfect song choice, and even builds up to the point where she arrived at the altar.

In fact, I’m so impressed by that track and this CD, I really would like you to go over to Amazon.com and listen to the track right now. Then come back here and tell me you didn’t get a little teary-eyed!

For our recessional (when the wedding party exits the ceremony area), we had the Fantasy in the Sky Medley play also from the Official Walt Disney World Album. The great thing about that is that the version on the CD is pretty exciting when it begins, and then goes into nice background instrumentals from classic Disney songs, for a LONG time. That was perfect, since we wanted an upbeat tempo going out, but a long music time period for our guests as they went into the reception room.

When we were done taking pictures immediately afterward, we had our wedding party enter the reception room (as the DJ announces each pair) to the Fantasmic Medley, from, you guessed it, the Official Walt Disney World Album. This tune is so upbeat and celebratory, it was a great choice for the introductions. Keep in mind I’m not talking about the version on the Fantasmic CD: that’s the whole show. I’m talking about the short medley they cropped from the show that’s on the Official WDW Album.

My wife and I wanted to enter in a more grandiose scale, though, so we had our DJ cue us to the next-to-last part of Illuminations: Reflections of Earth before the fast ending section. This part has some heavy percussion sounds, and comes across very regal.

That was pretty much the extent of our Disney music fest; although I think we picked some hilarious songs for the other events of the night. Forgive me if I get the artists wrong/misspelled; this is as best as I can remember:

When the Cake was Being Cut = How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) by James Taylor

Garter Taken Off of The Bride = Smooth Operator by Sade

Bridal Bouquet is Thrown = Man! I Feel Like A Woman by Shania Twain

Garter Put on Bouquet Catcher by Garter Catcher = What's Love Got to do With It by Tina Turner

Well, I hope this gave you some ideas for creating a melodic mood in a Disney way, without stepping on tradition if you want that too.

Make sure to check back here next week when we go into the REAL Disney Wedding stuff: the Reception!

Until then,
Thanks for stopping on by, and I'll see you next week!