Wanna Have a Destination Wedding? No problem mon! PTR - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Wanna Have a Destination Wedding? No problem mon! PTR
Well, I'd like to start off saying that I'm part of a destination wedding discussion board, but they don't allow for people to write things like PTRs. Only a planning thread a couple weeks before your actually wedding. Well, planning a wedding certainly takes more than a couple weeks! I feel like not being able to write a full PTR about my wedding suppresses my excitement for it! I'm thankful that I can write about it here with my PassPorter friends, so my first statement is THANK YOU for making me able to share my excitement with anyone who wants to hop along my happy wagon with me
To get started, my fiancé's name is Gary. We met in May of 2007 at work, fell in love, and have been practically inseparable since. I have some background about our relationship in my first ever Disney TR (link is in my siggy). Gary asked me to marry him at 2:00am on April 4th, 2009, and I, of course, said yes!
Gary and I are DJs, mainly in bars, and secondly for weddings. We've been to almost every venue in the area. My choice for ours? The casino. It was absolutely beautiful. Not long after our engagement, we got a tour of the facility, and although it was extremely impressive, and would have been perfect, elegant, and fit for a princess, approx. $40,000 just for the venue itself wasn't quite going to fit in our budget.
It was one Saturday night when we had Gary's two boys for the weekend (see PTR for the Disney December Surprise )when I was messing around on my laptop, trying to find somewhere else to have a wedding. We already knew what was in Utica. What about Syracuse? Albany? Rochester? Buffalo? NYC? Finger Lakes? Wow wouldn't a DISNEY wedding be cool?
Disney wedding was our next endeavor. We Disney, so wouldn't that be perfect? We didn't want to do anything more than an escape wedding... Oh. Guess that won't work. We have WAY too many people for that... Okay what about a Wishes wedding, that looks beautiful! We started mentioning it to some of our guests and we started to get "Gee that's going to cost me a lot of money to go..." Yeah. Not only do we have to pay for the wedding itself, our stay, park tickets, meal plans, hair, makeup, EVERYTHING, our guests ALSO have to pay for their stay, park tickets, and a meal plan. And if we decide to go out for some FABs one night, that's going to cost a ton too...
Guess we're looking to be cheap-Os but still try to be classy and elegant...
Then I remembered when I was in high school, I once asked a friend "What do you see for my wedding?" and she replied "Honestly, I see you barefooted on a beach."
Remembering that, I went for it. My mom gave me some insights about how when she went to Aruba, they were at an All-Inclusive resort, and they had these really reasonable wedding packages. So I started with Aruba. Couldn't find any packages I really loved for the price. Mexico? Well they're good packages and prices, but man you have to go through a LOT to get married there... Then I came across Jamaica... good prices, GREAT packages, and fairly simple to get married there... Now to just find a resort...
Once you have the country finding the resort is pretty simple. I found the Iberostar Grand Hotel Rose Hall near Montego Bay. Oh and look at that! JetBlue flys into Montego Bay too! How convenient!
The initial decisions started to all fall into place... but what happens when Grandma doesn't want to go?
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
great start! you will love jamaica!! my hubs and i were married at the couples resort in negril!! we've been back to jamaica many many times since and LOVE, love, LOVE it!!
So when we were thinking Disney, we were thinking immediate family, grandparents, first aunts, uncles and cousins, and bridal parties. Disney wouldn't have been a big deal, because it's inside the continental US, and if people didn't want to fly, then they could drive down.
I decided that I was going to open up the option of going to Jamaica first to my Grandma (mom's mother) and wait to see what her answer was before opening it up to my Nonnie (dad's mother). Grandma wasn't very keen into flying, and neither her nor Grandpa had Passports so they were a big Therefore I never gave my Nonnie the option, and just told her that it was only going to be the parents and bridal parties.
Well that proved to not really be true, but we really couldn't help it. One of my cousins is the Maid Of Honor and her sister is one of my bridesmaids so how could I not invite my Aunt and Uncle and then it wouldn't be fair if I didn't invite my Aunt and Uncle from the other side of the family... So it turned into immediate family, first aunts, uncles and cousins, and the bridal party.
How on earth can I get married and not share any moment of it with my grandparents though? And that huge Italian side of the family that would probably disown me if they weren't invited to my wedding?
We HAD to have a wedding back at home when we returned from Jamaica. But what should we do? We're already paying for a full out wedding in Jamaica... What are the essentials of having a mini/fake wedding ceremony/reception?
Gary's friend Adam, who is in the bridal party, his uncle is a judge, so we asked him to "re" marry us. Let's see now all we need is a venue with a bar, tables, chairs and possibly a tent, food, a dessert, flowers and some music. Music was easy peasy. Gary is a DJ! DUH! We'll just put on some iTunes playlist. Venue with a bar... how about a bar? Sickenburger holds TONS of people on Saranac Thursdays, and that is the place where we fell in love, why not have it there? They even have a TENT in case it rains! We looked into tables and chairs rentals through Taylor Rental, and they told us to book Jan/Feb of the year we need them, because they have good discounts then. Food... my goodness we LOVE Dinosaur BBQ out of Syracuse and they have a BBQ pit that they can bring anywhere and cook up your food! Perfect! A dessert? Well we're all really Italian in Utica so let's just do some trays of mini cannolis, pusties, and lobster claws. Flowers? Gary's got an in at the flower shop in Rome so that's done. Anything else? Anything? Oh favors. I still don't have anything for that. I'm thinking possibly going to make bottles of wine and making a SpearFredo wine, a couple different kinds for each table.
Well that's coming along smoothly... it's just all in my head though... We're just going to have to pay for things as the money comes along.
Back to Jamaica now, we start to wonder what it's really like down there. We start to hear some bad things from certain people and that we should be careful. We started to plan for a "scouting" trip for June of 2010, to see what the weather will be like in June, meet the wedding coordinator down there, and just get an overall feel of how it is at the resort.
BTW, I had booked the date at the resort July of 2009. All booked for June 15th, 2011!!
WDW Oct . 2012
Since Minnie's chair is gone, I had to find a new place to have our photo taken this past Oct. Not sure this will be the permanent place.
I didn't know you started this TR, so I'm glad I happened to stumble upon it before I got too far behind!
First, I absolutely love the day you got engaged...it's a very good day...it's the day I got married, but 5 years earlier (April 24, 2004)!
It sounds like you have a lot to plan. It's basically like you're planning two weddings instead of one, and I so don't envy you right now. Been there, done that and don't want to do it again!
Can't wait to follow along to see how everything falls into place!
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
OMG, I just started reading your TR and about how you planned to do a scouting trip this month!!
I can imagine that you may have changed your mind with all that is happening in Jamaica at the moment! My coworker who is from there and has family there isn't even going back this summer because she doesn't want to endanger her little girl.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
About This Page: 
for making me able to share my excitement with anyone who wants to hop along my happy wagon with me 
)when I was messing around on my laptop, trying to find somewhere else to have a wedding. We already knew what was in Utica. What about Syracuse? Albany? Rochester? Buffalo? NYC? Finger Lakes? Wow wouldn't a DISNEY wedding be cool?
Disney, so wouldn't that be perfect? We didn't want to do anything more than an escape wedding... Oh. Guess that won't work. We have WAY too many people for that... Okay what about a Wishes wedding, that looks beautiful! We started mentioning it to some of our guests and we started to get "Gee that's going to cost me a lot of money to go..." Yeah. Not only do we have to pay for the wedding itself, our stay, park tickets, meal plans, hair, makeup, EVERYTHING, our guests ALSO have to pay for their stay, park tickets, and a meal plan. And if we decide to go out for some FABs one night, that's going to cost a ton too... 
*Melissa
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Kristie
Flowers? Gary's got an in at the flower shop in Rome so that's done. Anything else? Anything? Oh favors. I still don't have anything for that. I'm thinking possibly going to make bottles of wine and making a SpearFredo wine, a couple different kinds for each table. 
PassPorter Guide Author
Linear Mode
