After our disastrous Magic Kingdom photo shoot on March 10th 2020, I decided to wait until Disney sent us our photos to say anything about what a miserable experience it was. Then the parks shut down, and I knew I wasn’t seeing my photos any time soon.
When you do the Disney Parks Premier Photo Package, you are supposed to have your photos in 4-6 weeks. Well, all of April 2020 came and went, and I didn’t even bother trying to contact anyone. On May 26th, I finally got a call that our castle photos weren’t usable without hours upon hours of photo editing.
NO REALLY!??! Let me die of not surprise.
I did ask them to include one of the castle photos just so I could prove to my friends I wasn’t exaggerating.
Once I said we were local, I was told a reshoot was possible, but we had no idea when that would be. They told me to call back when reopening started.
We got our photos on June 2nd, with a single solitary castle photo with five cranes in it. I have got to say, it was really nice to have visual proof that I wasn’t over reacting and that I wasn’t being a bridezilla about it, because after a while you start wondering if you made it out to be worse than it was.
Spoiler alert: I WASN’T.
The end of June rolls around and Disney is getting ready to reopen, so my mom calls the photography guys back with my requests:
1) For a full reshoot and not just the castle, because we look so miserable in many of the photos
2) To not have to pay the makeup artist again because none of this was our fault
3) For a hotel room so said makeup artist would not have to come to our house, and so I would have a place to get ready, since I’m not sure that my dress would fit in either of our cars.
Well, they agreed to the first two but refused the third. They said instead that we could use a room at the Grand Floridian wedding building to get ready that morning. Okay, cool, works for me. So, we wait to hear when they start doing photoshoots again.
In October, I heard through work that Disney weddings had resumed and we started calling. I get an email from the same guy who had agreed to my requests in November saying we only get a half hour shoot for the castle. I argue that’s not what he told my mom and apparently, he didn’t realize I was her daughter. (Which leaves the question how many photoshoots got ruined by those cranes that they’re having to reschedule?) We get that straightened out and I have to pick a date in mid-March since Day Light Savings Time ended. I’m supposed to hear back from them in January about our makeup artist.
I didn’t get an answer until early March. No one would answer the phones or their emails, I tried every phone number and email I could think of before we finally got an answer, less than two weeks before the shoot, asking where we were staying, so they could pick us up. Several emails later, I finally got everything confirmed, just days before the shoot. We were going to be getting ready in a convention center room at the Contemporary.
Fine. I’ll take it. Anything to make this happen. I got Jay’s suit dry cleaned and had another encounter with my arch-nemesis, the acrylic nail. Since wedding dresses are so expensive to clean, my mom and I just did the best we could cleaning it ourselves. I borrowed Morgan’s bathroom to try to steam the wrinkles out of it. (The bathrooms in my house aren’t large enough for a dress that size and there’s husky fur to consider.)
Unfortunately, Stacie from Fairy Tale Hair and Makeup wasn’t available, but her friend Jenn was. I am happy to report Jenn is equally as awesome as Stacie, and she seemed to like us too! I double checked that she had reference photos from Stacie so I didn’t need to worry about sending them.
We arrived at the Contemporary a little after 3 am. We were supposed to be there at 3:30 am, but I wanted to give us extra time, in case we had trouble parking, since we weren’t staying at the Contemporary, and were randomly showing up in the middle of the night. We met one of the Fine Art Photography managers, who took our temperatures and walked us down to “Sorcerer’s Apprentice 2”, where we hung out until Jenn got there closer to 3:30. I would have liked to hang up our clothes instead of laying them on a table, but I was trying not to be picky. A clothes rack or even a bell cart would have done wonders. I wound up just wearing my Wonder Woman boots the entire time because I decided it was easier than carrying them to put on there.
So, Jenn arrives and we get started on the makeup. She already knew exactly what I wanted and our conversation was way more fun than any conversation at 3:30 in the morning should be. When it came time for the hair, Jay helped her move the table and chairs over to the wall where an outlet was, so she could plug in her curling iron.
Stephanie, our photographer, called to check in right after 5:00 am, and she wound up showing up early and hanging out with us. Turns out she and Jenn are friends, and Stephanie gets her hair done at Jenn’s hair salon. (I also plan on getting my hair done there in the future.)
When she called, she wanted to know if we had flowers, and I said, “No, but I have a teddy bear.” No one had ever offered us fresh flowers, but we didn’t ask for them either.
The big drawback to having one big room to get ready in, was there was nowhere for Jay to get ready. So, he had to wait until I was done for them to leave the room so he could change. Jenn asked if I needed help with my dress and I said thankfully no, Sammi’s genius design let me step right in and zip it up. It actually took Jay longer to get all his suit pieces in place, and we desperately missed Zym trying to get his shoes buckled. (I guess he did it for him on the ship. All I know is me and my fake nails were USELESS.)
So, it was a couple moments after 6:00 am when we were ready to go, but we didn’t lose too much time. It would have been better if Jay had been able to change while I was getting ready, but unless he lugged all his clothes to a bathroom, that wasn’t happening.
We went out to Stephanie’s big silver SUV and I had to awkwardly climb into the back. I am a lot of things, but graceful is not one of them. We met her assistant Dawn, who reminded me of Darcy from the MCU, back behind Main Street, and started taking photos on Main Street.
I had had so much stress and anxiety about this for the last year, from the moment the cranes went up during the photoshoot, and it was suddenly like none of that had ever happened. This was the experience I had expected the first time around. I can’t say it was a perfect fairy tale moment though. The first few times I wore my wedding dress I felt like a princess and it was amazing, but now it was just sort of surreal putting it on for the fourth time a year later. People walking by congratulated us and I just said, “Thank you!” but it felt weird and hollow. Ironically after just wanting people to congratulate us while staying at the Beach Club instead of saying, “Happy Anniversary!”, now getting congratulated felt strange. I didn’t feel like a Disney princess, I felt like an imposter. The good news was I finally had the hang of walking in the dress and boots.
Stephanie was great at telling us how to pose, except I kept turning too far. She referred to Duffy as “Bear”, until I said his name was Duffy, and then she called him Duffy every time, which made me happy.
My intention had been to spend most of our time at the castle and the Haunted Mansion, since our Mansion photos are where we look the saddest. We spent probably three fourths of the shoot at the Castle, and got a handful of photos at Mansion. We did make it over to Adventureland, but by that time, guests were in the park and taking photos suddenly got much harder, because we couldn’t take our masks off. We still managed to get some out of the way by Pirates and finished up right as the park officially opened at 8:00 am. Which left us making our way out of the park as guests poured in.
“Get ready to get ogled,” Stephanie warned me. I laughed. “I’ve been here in my Wonder Woman armor; I’m used to it.”
Several guests congratulated us on the way out, and I did my best to give an enthusiastic “Thank you!” Then we climbed back into the SUV and Stephanie drove us back to the Contemporary. I had heard her mention running her business to Jenn before, so I asked her about it. It turns out she’s a full-time wedding photographer in addition to her work for Disney. Based on our experience with her, I cannot recommend her enough, and if you don’t believe me, check out her Instagram. She is amazing!
So, she dropped us off, and we made our way back to Sorcerer’s Apprentice 2 to change back into our street clothes since there was no way I was going to fit in my car in the dress. A housekeeper proceeded to open the door on us, but then didn’t say anything and just left, but thankfully we were mostly dressed at that point.
Then we went home and took a nap, expecting to see our photos in 4-6 weeks.
My biggest takeaway from this experience is that at $2,500+ after tax, the Magic Kingdom photos probably aren’t worth the price. I’m glad I got them because that’s what put me on the path to the Disney Cruise Line wedding, which was the best experience of my entire life. My advice to future brides is do the two parks shoot like we did. Doing Animal Kingdom meant we had to do a second day and pay for another day of hair and makeup, but you could do Magic Kingdom and Epcot in the same day. I feel like you get a lot more for your money that way with two parks worth of photos for $3,100 instead of one park for $2,500.
We also should have walked around the Contemporary Convention Center and taken our own photos on our phone after the fact, but I didn’t think of that until we had already changed.
It cost me $24 to get Jay’s suit dry cleaned for the shoot, and my nails cost me $65. Having just lost my job at the time of the shoot, I didn’t have money to tip Stephanie, Dawn, and Jenn, which I feel absolutely terrible about. I’m hoping to be able to make it up to them down the road when my employment status has changed.
I wrote this a couple days after the shoot, weeks later, now that I have the photos in hand, I will say they are STUNNING. Stephanie is beyond talented and there’s a part of me that desperately wishes she had been on the cruise with us. $2,500 still feels steep, but I have already have a couple of these photos framed and up in the house and I get the warm and fuzzies every time I see it. I also went to see Jenn to get my hair colored and cut (because I couldn’t stand it anymore the way it was). She is fantastic and no one else is ever, EVER cutting or coloring my hair ever again. If you’re in Orlando and you need hair or makeup, please go see her. I’m hoping one day in the future I’ll be able to use Stephanie’s skills again too. Here’s her website.
Bonus photo of my new hair!
All in all, I am happy with the results but not happy with how Disney handled this mess in the first place. Next week comes the second to last article in the Disney Dream Wedding series as I talk about the expectations and realities of having a Disney Fairy Tale Wedding.
