Disclaimer: I had to hold this article until now for reasons that will make sense later.
Around 4:45 am, the phone rang. It was our photographer Michael confirming our pickup time, and I think making sure that we were awake. Stacie was extremely excited that we had Michael, and she knew we would be in good hands.
After we booked our photography session, they sent us a questionnaire with some basic questions about what we wanted, including if we had a request for a specific photographer. I gave them a list of six names. I didn’t have my heart set on any one photographer, I had a look I was going for, and I sent some example photos too. Well, it turned out Michael was the one who had taken most of our example photos!
I hastily shoved my phone and my Magicband into my purse, grabbed Duffy, and we made it down to the lobby right on time. Michael and his assistant were waiting for us with a passenger van. (I am a terrible person, but Jay and I have both forgotten the assistant’s name, because it took me so long to getting around to writing this article.) Jay helped me climb in, but my dress ate up the whole first row of seating, so he wound up in the back.
Now I’m going to pause for a little bit of backstory. The ENTIRE reason we had a Disney Fairy Tale Wedding in the first place, was because it is the only way to be able to have the bridal portraits taken at Magic Kingdom. You can do the other parks without a DFTW, but for Magic Kingdom, it is a requirement. That’s how we decided on doing a Disney Fairy Tale Wedding on Disney Cruise Line, because it gave us the most options for the most reasonable price point. So, everything I had done in planning our wedding for the last year had been leading up to this point.
I booked our photo session on May 1st, 2019 for March 10th, 2020.
On February 17th, 2020, the Disney Parks Blog announced the grand makeover of Cinderella Castle, starting in the next few weeks. I will never forget the horror I felt staring at that article.
Two days later, I emailed Disney Fine Art Photography.
So I’m sure (or at least I hope) I’m not the first bride emailing about this, but the announcement that they’re going to make over Cinderella Castle has me a little freaked out. https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2020/02/cinderella-castle-at-walt-disney-world-resort-to-receive-royal-makeover/
I know everything is also subject to change because that disclaimer is on everything Disney does, but the only reason we are having a Fairy Tale Wedding is so we can do these photos, and while I love the Haunted Mansion and Pirates, all I truly care about is the castle. Like we were seriously planning on a courthouse wedding until I wound up getting my dream wedding dress at such a low cost, and that snowballed into a whole cruise line wedding we never would have dreamed of two years ago.
Inside the Magic and WDW News Today are saying it starts in a few weeks, which is exactly when we’ll be doing our photos, and I’m freaking out.
Feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions. We look forward to seeing you real soon!
I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I didn’t know what else to do. There was a part of me that swore I offered to reschedule since we’re local, but now reading through my emails, I see that I didn’t. That’s on me. I didn’t hear from them again until March 6th, when they left me a voicemail that I didn’t hear until we were off the cruise on the 9th, asking us to push our start time up half an hour, due to the construction that I was told would not be a problem.
We drove through the parade gate over by Splash Mountain, and parked where Frontierland meets Liberty Square. This was my first time being driven in a vehicle through Magic Kingdom, so that was kind of a neat experience. We got out of the van and started to make our way towards the castle. I picked up my dress to keep it from getting soaked from the pressure washing that was happening.
“Are those cowboy boots?” One of the photographers asked.
“Wonder Woman actually. They’re the heels I walk the best in.”
Admittedly, the last time I wore these heels to Magic Kingdom, I wound up buying flip flops half way through the night, but I’d gotten some more practice in since then. They advise you to bring comfortable walking shoes so you can switch as you move around the park, but I knew my heels take too long to take off and put on, so I just stayed with them the whole time. I also don’t know where you would sit down to change, because everything is soaking wet in the mornings.
I kid you not, right as we got to the Castle, the cranes went up. The timing was like something out of a movie. This wasn’t that one lone crane that constantly haunts the Magic Kingdom. This was five or six of them, all raising into the sky at once.
My heart sank into my stomach, but we made the best of it. I was crushed, and doing my best to hide it. We took pictures at angles Michael had shot before, because he knew he’d be able to replace the background and hopefully remove the cranes. Then we decided to move on and come back to the Castle in hopes the cranes might have moved slightly, but I asked Michael if we could try a different photo first. He seemed excited I had an idea.
The whole morning was kind of a weird dynamic, because we didn’t want to be too pushy and demanding, so we probably weren’t giving them enough to work off of. Once I spoke up more about what I wanted, we started getting into a better groove.
“So, you know those shots everyone does with the shoe Cinderella style? Can we do that but instead of a shoe, it’s Duffy?”
“Yes!”
Then we moved on over to the Haunted Mansion to take some of the ghostly photos I had included in my requests. To my surprise, this involved multiple exposures and us moving to different positions, as the camera fired on a timer.
“I know how to do this in Photoshop, I don’t know how to do this with a camera!” I joked.
We did a couple of pictures outside the Mansion, and then a few in the exit hallway.
Now that the sun was starting to come up, we made our way back through Fantasyland to come up behind the Castle. We started to walk through the hallway that runs through the Castle, and we passed a group of construction workers and a couple of managers, all wearing hard hats and vests. One of the managers said, “Congratulations!”
Chelsea, how do you know they were managers?
I worked for Disney for two and a half years, and I’ve spent seven years in Orlando. I worked for a dog groomer for a while part time back in 2015, and I would always trip people up because I’d ask what they did for Disney, based on how they were dressed. No name tag, no ID, just business casual. Disney Look is a thing, and I can spot it a mile away.
We got to the end of the hallway and found our way blocked by a lift platform, and a construction worker telling us we had to stop. We stood there for a moment or two trying to figure out how to get through, but she kept signaling for us to turn around.
So, we turned around and walked back through the tunnel, back into Fantasyland. I could hear the construction workers laughing at us.
I cannot even begin to put into words what that felt like. I spent thousands of dollars on these photos, planned an entire wedding so I could take these photos, only to be at Cinderella Castle in my wedding dress, being laughed at by construction workers. Not what I would call a Fairy Tale.
I was seething. I was embarrassed. I was heartbroken. The only thing that kept me from crying, was my determination not to ruin my makeup for whatever other photos we could get.
We walked down the pathway that runs alongside the Castle back to the front, which we would have done in the first place, if the group of construction workers and managers had had the courtesy to tell us the hallway was blocked, instead of wasting our time.
We tried to take a couple more Castle shots, in hopes the cranes could be removed, before giving up and moving onto Adventureland.
The assistant talked to Jay about how disappointed I was. They could both tell, and they felt awful about the situation. They knew I was angry, and I think they were relieved my anger wasn’t directed at them. I was a little louder than I should have been, but I did my best not to take it out on anyone.
We went over to Pirates, and started taking pictures out front, and in the queue. This was where it got interesting because we started seeing familiar faces. There were some excited Skippers watching from a safe distance, and a Coordinator hurrying by did a double take before calling out, “Congratulations, Jay!”
Taking photos in Adventureland was amazing and fun. It wasn’t quite enough to take the sting out of what just happened, but being in the place where we met, in our wedding attire and taking photos of the place we consider home, was fantastic.
We took our last photos and got back in the van to head back to the Yacht Club. I realized we’d run over the hour they give you for the photo shoots, but no one had said anything, so I guess the earlier start time had worked in our favor some. They dropped us off with a “See you guys tomorrow!” and we headed back to our room. The lobby was now full of people getting ready to head for theme parks and we got lots of stares and calls of “Congratulations!”, which gave me a nice warm and fuzzy feeling. Thankfully no one tried to get in the elevator with us, since my dress took up most of the space, and we headed back to the room to change for our breakfast reservation at Cape May Café.
