I Got Married at Disney World — Here Are 11 Things I Didn’t Expect

Have you ever dreamed of getting married in front of Cinderella Castle? How about at night surrounded by the beauty of Pandora, or in front of Spaceship Earth at EPCOT?

Disney offers a lot of wedding venues to choose from, and anyone can book their celebration there. You don’t have to be rich to get married in Disney World, Disneyland, on a cruise ship, or even in Hawaii at Aulani. It’s an amazing experience that’s available to you. I know, because I got married in Disney World, and I want to share with you a few things that I didn’t expect while going through the process.

It’s surprisingly simple to start the process of getting married in Disney World. When I got the idea, all I did was Google “getting married in Disney World” and Disney’s Fairytale Weddings popped up. You simply fill out a form on the website, they contact you, and before you know it, you’re signing a contract and getting married in the Most Magical Place on Earth.

I sat down with my husband, and we created a list of all the things that surprised us from our experience, and we wanted to share them with you! So here are 11 details that we didn’t expect but might help you if you decide to get married through Disney.

Variety of Options

One thing we were not prepared for was the large variety of options we were going to have. From venue to transportation and everything in between, Disney makes your wedding totally custom for you.

In Disney World, you can pick from 48 different venues. Some are in the parks, while others are at the resorts, but all are magical. I’ll be discussing the venues a bit more later on.

Once you pick a venue, you’ll be matched with a decorating team. You can give them a theme and your inspiration, and they’ll make it a reality. We chose Alice in Wonderland as our theme, and they sure delivered!

You can pick from a variety of seating, flowers, transportation (including Cinderella’s carriage!), and so much more. We did not expect them to be so open to creating exactly what we imagined. We thought that since it’s Disney, they would have more rules and limitations, but that was not the case at all.

As we go on, you’ll see many of the other available options!

Day of Coordinators Handle Everything

You are allowed to use certain services from outside of Disney. Which services those are depends on your venue. For example, if you’re getting married in a park, they make you use their floral vendor. But if you are getting married at a resort, they don’t particularly care which floral vendor you use. One thing you can hire outside of Disney is a wedding coordinator, however, Disney will also assign a day of coordinator to you.

You will meet your Disney coordinator the day before your wedding or the day of. Disney’s coordinator is there to be the liaison between you and, well, Disney. They get you around your venue, take care of transportation, and just about anything else you can imagine. We did not hire a wedding coordinator, and everything went perfectly because of our Disney coordinator. He was amazing! My husband still raves about him to this day.

If any of our guests asked us anything we just said, “Go talk to him,” and he handled it with grace. He was a ring leader and the true hero of our wedding day. We were shocked by how much he did for us; we didn’t have to worry about a single thing all day long.

Pricing

Ok, the part you’ve probably been waiting for — pricing. The pricing of a Disney’s Fairytale Wedding is kind of difficult to explain, but we found that some things were comparable to any other wedding location, while others were shockingly high.

So, initially, you pay a wedding venue fee. This includes the wedding venue itself, a musician, set up, and a speaker system. We got married in the U.K. pavilion in EPCOT, and the price of the venue when we got married in 2022, was comparable to booking a venue outside of Disney World.

Then, there is a minimum cost required to be met based on that venue. The venue fee goes toward it and so does nearly everything else.

Certain decor items are inexpensive or even included in the venue price, while others are considered upgrades and can get wildly out of hand quickly. For example, it was my dream to have these adorable, whimsical couches for our guests to sit on, but they cost over $200… each.

We quickly scratched that and spent the nearly $4,000 on something way more fun (we’ll get to that later). So we picked chairs that were at no additional cost, and I think they were still beautiful in the end.

You can pay extra for fun add-ons such as Mickey ears for the guests or bubble wands for the exit post-ceremony — this is what we did!

If you want to have a reception, there are several options for that, too. You can do a full reception or a dessert party. We opted for a dessert party to save a little money, but either is a great option! The price varies on location, food, entertainment, and decor here as well.

What surprised us the most about pricing was that you could get crazy and spend over $50,000, or you could keep it relatively inexpensive and spend under $20,000. It all just came down to what you chose for your details. (Of course, these were the prices in 2022, and Disney tends to increase them each year.)

You Can Pay to Have Characters

Remember, the money we saved by not getting couches for the ceremony? We decided to use that to have a character hang out with us and our guests instead! Disney will give you a selection of the “normal” characters like Mickey and Minnie, but if you ask for someone special, they might be able to accommodate your request. That’s what happened to us. Since we had an Alice in Wonderland-themed wedding, we asked for the Mad Hatter — and Disney delivered!

I’ve normally seen people ask for the characters to come to their receptions, but since we were having a dessert party in the park during park hours, they could not do that. Instead, we were able to have him surprise everyone right after the ceremony!

He took tons of pictures with us, and then with our guests while my husband and I were off getting more photos around the pavilion. It was an amazing surprise, and he was probably my dad’s favorite part of the entire day (that and him getting a virtual queue boarding group for Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind seconds before walking me down the aisle).

You Can Add Rides for You and Your Guests

Another option you have is to pay to ride a ride after the park closes! You and your wedding guests can walk right onto the ride without a wait (or even other people on the ride).  We did this as a surprise to our guests, and we rode Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure!

Not all the rides in Disney World are available to add on, so you’ll have to ask your planning coordinator, and they’ll find out for you what you can ride. This was a fairly inexpensive way to thank our guests for coming!

Odd Ceremony Times

If you are getting married in a park, you have to be a bit flexible. Weddings in the parks take place while the park is closed, so that means you’ll either have a super early or very late ceremony. For example, we got married on a Wednesday at 7 AM.

I woke up at 2 AM the morning of our wedding to start the getting ready process. This is certainly not normal for weddings. If you get married after the park closes, you can have a little more normal wedding timeline, but it can get very late. The time of your wedding is completely dictated by the park hours for that day. In EPCOT, on the day of our wedding, we didn’t have the option to get married after it closed; it was only before opening. If you want to get married at a resort, you have far more options for times.

Pixie Dustings

We were so surprised to be pixie-dusted throughout our day! Pixie dusting is when Disney Cast Members do something extra magical for you that is not required of them. We were gifted with a beautiful commemorative board game set by the Cast Members at Disney’s Beach Club, which is where we stayed.

Cast Members at the Starbucks in Hollywood Studios gave us our treats for free when they realized it was our wedding day, and the Cast Members at Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure let us ride the ride as many times as we wanted (even though we only paid to ride it once). These were amazing surprises that you can never expect at Disney, but when they happen, you can truly feel the magic. If you’re celebrating something, Cast Members have a way of making your day extra special.

Date/Time/Location Determine Price

If you want to get married in front of Cinderella Castle, you’ll pay a lot more than if you want to get married on the beach in front of Disney’s Beach Club. Where and when you want to get married determines the minimum price you will have to pay.

Getting married on a Wednesday, like we did, is a lot cheaper than getting married on a Friday or Saturday. And getting married before the park opens may be less expensive than getting married after hours. These small details can have a big impact on how much you’ll pay for your wedding.

Not Guaranteed a Specific Location

You can start planning your wedding with Disney between 12 to 16 months in advance (depending on event types). The sooner you start planning, the better chance you have at getting the date and location you want.

If you want a specific location, you may have to be flexible with the date. And vice versa, if you want a specific date, you may have to be ok with not getting your first choice of venue.

There are a lot of things that can affect if you can get the venue and date you want, such as other weddings that are already booked. Our best advice — start planning sooner rather than later.

Weather Can Change Your Plans

Ok, so the weather can change your wedding plans regardless of whether you get married in Disney World or not, but hear me out on this. Disney has backup locations for your events in the case of bad weather (if you’re having outdoor events) at no extra cost. Since Disney World is in Florida, be prepared for rain. Unfortunately, I’m telling you this from experience.

Our dessert party was supposed to take place loch side in the U.K. pavilion, so we could watch the fireworks show. However, the weather had other plans. We got moved to an indoor location (which was backstage, and I never knew it existed, so that was pretty cool), and the fireworks ended up getting canceled. Everything was moved and set up indoors for us, and the chef ended up bringing us a special treat of Mickey ice cream bars (maybe he felt bad for us).

We were refunded our fireworks viewing fee, and we still had a great time. Plus, the rain lent itself to some pretty amazing pictures! All of that to say, even on your wedding day, the weather can trump your plans. But hey, rain on your wedding day is good luck, right?

Guests Don’t Have to Have Park Tickets for Park Events

Finding out our guests didn’t have to purchase park tickets to come to either of our in-park events was awesome! Some of our guests were purely there because they loved us, not Disney.

If your guests want to come to your wedding, but they don’t want to pay for a Disney World park ticket, it’s no problem! Our guests without tickets were still able to come to our wedding ceremony and dessert party. If we had been able to see the fireworks they would have gotten to enjoy them, too. And they got to ride our ride-mix in, as well! Some guests simply don’t care to visit the parks outside of the wedding, so this is a great thing to note.

Getting married in Disney World and having your fairytale dreams come true is absolutely available to you. You can visit the Disney’s Fairytale Weddings website for all the updated and current information. We hope you have a magical fairytale wedding!

For more Disney news, keep following AllEars!

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I used a few of our personal wedding photos in this post and wanted to give credit to our amazing photography team. That First Moment is based in Orlando.

Have you dreamed of getting married in Disney World? Let us know in the comments!

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