The Little Things

Last week I told you guys about all the stuff I crafted and put together for the Welcome Bags. This week I’m talking about the rest of the stuff I made and put together. At some point in February, Lacey told me I wasn’t allowed to take on any more projects, so, of course, I immediately started two new ones. 

Back when I talked about the Transportation to Port Canaveral, I mentioned our wedding programs, but I decided to save that story for another day. Well, today is that day! 

I had been trying to figure out what to do for a wedding program, or if we needed one, for months. It’s not like the ceremony really needed a program. We didn’t have bridesmaids or groomsmen to list, and we had no idea who our officiant would be. So, on Valentine’s Day, Jay and I had gone back to Discovery Cove, where we had had our Bachelor/Bachelorette Day. We were in the Not So Lazy River, talking about wedding programs because trying to relax had just put my brain into overdrive. My Disney heart wanted a program that looked like a Times Guide from the parks, but at the same time that didn’t make sense with a cruise wedding. Better to just forget the program, right? 

“Why don’t you just make a tell-a-cast?” Jay asked, and a light bulb went off in my head. 

If you’re wondering what a tell-a-cast is, it is a weekly cheat sheet Disney puts out for Cast Members. It lists park hours, showtimes, where they can find certain types of food, first aid locations, and more. What could possibly be a better wedding program?  

Chelsea, shouldn’t Cast Members know those things? 

In theory, yes, but when I worked in Adventureland I occasionally picked up stroller parking shifts in Fantasyland, and shifts at Fantastmic at Hollywood Studios. I knew everything about my own area, but I didn’t know the others that well. Also, I rarely knew what time the park closed, unless I was scheduled a closing shift. 

“I hate you, Jay, because now I have to do that.” 

I had Jay bring me home an extra tell-a-cast on his next shift, so I could take it apart. While I couldn’t make an exact match, mostly because I realized tell-a-casts are printed on tabloid size paper, and printed two per page then cut in half, I got pretty darn close. 

I was able to include an itinerary for the cruise, so everyone would always know where they were supposed to be, a brief list of food options, a cheat sheet of locations on the ship, and where everyone’s room was located. While not quite as cool as my working Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom card from the welcome bags, I’m still insanely proud of them. Especially since we didn’t have the idea until February 14th, and our wedding was March 7th. 

I printed them on 32 lb. paper at Office Depot, and picked up a paper cutter at Michaels that I could use to both cut them out, and score the folds. I knew better than to try to do something double sided with the Cricut. 

Don’t worry, I still got plenty of use out of that Cricut for magnets, place cards, and decorations. 

I actually originally asked a friend of ours who had a Cricut to help with the magnets, because at the time I didn’t have a working printer. (In order to use the “Print then Cut” function, the Cricut and the printer have to be connected to the same computer.) However, he turned me down, so I wound up buying my own printer and doing it myself. The good news is I made enough in Office Depot rewards while buying the printer, that my laminator was basically free. 

I had asked everyone’s favorite Disney characters in the Facebook group months ago. I then made everyone magnets with their names on them and their favorite characters. (I also might have gone overboard and made a BUNCH for our cabin.) I used Robby Cook’s art one more time to make Mickey shaped magnets that said, “I’m here for the wedding of Chelsea and Jay.” I took the ship art I made for the invitations, and made cabin labels for some of the cabins: “Parents of the Bride”, “Parents of the Groom”, “Bride and Groom”, “Skipper Squad”, “Best Man”, and “Made of Honor”. (Made of Honor isn’t a typo. The unofficial Maid of Honor was Lacey, but that was also a title that could have been shared by my brother, hence “Made of Honor”.) The last magnets were made to look like Disney Cruise Line Name Tags, except instead of saying where people were from, I put where we met. I also changed the “Where Dreams Come True” to “Happily Ever After Starts Here”. 

If you want to see the rest Well, I say last magnets. The last magnets I made. Jay’s mom also made some really pretty embroidered angels with rings. (I don’t have pictures of them from before the cruise, so you guys will see them later.)

I printed them all one by one, had the Cricut cut them out one by one, laminated them one by one, then cut them out again, and stuck the magnets on them. It was quite the process. 

Then I made packets for each stateroom, labeled with the room numbers and who was staying in them, so it would be easy for our friend, who was in charge of getting them on everyone’s doors. The only exception was the unofficial Best Man’s room, because they were staying in a concierge room and concierge doors don’t accommodate magnets, so their magnets were in their bags. 

Once I had so much fun making the gift tags for the welcome bags out of cardstock, I picked up a bunch more cardstock and got to work. I made paw prints of Duffy and all his friends out of cardstock to go around the Outlook Lounge, which is where the wedding took place, and on tables as wedding decorations. I was also stressed, so Duffy and Shellie May have the wrong number of toes, proving that wedding brain is a real thing. I kept going until I ran out of the right cardstock colors, leaving me with 30 of each. Probably too many. 

I also used the cardstock and the Cricut to make place cards for dinner each night. This time, I also used the Cricut write function to put the names on the cardstock. For the first night at Animator’s Palette, I made little painter palettes. For Enchanted Garden, I originally made flowers. Then I realized it was also Pirate Night and flowers were not very piratey, so I made new ones that looked like ships. I also had some cardstock left over, so I used it and some aluminum foil to make washboard place cards for Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue during the Welcome Party. (I can’t find a picture of the pirate ships or the washboards before the cruise, so you’ll see them in the wedding photos.)

For Palo on the last night, I didn’t use cardstock. Instead I made little Jungle Cruise boat signs for the fourteen of us who were going. Our boats at Magic Kingdom are all named, always combining the name of a river and then a person’s name. For example, we have “Congo Connie” where Disneyland has “Congo Queen”. So, I found river names to go with everyone’s names. I did my best to pick a river that would be special to them. Morgan’s came from Ireland, where Scott’s came from Greece. 

In a perfect world they would have all been mounted on little boats and stood up, but I had to settle for printing and cutting them out. 

Honestly, making the place cards was so much easier than figuring out the seat assignments. I knew no matter what I did, someone was going to be unhappy. I finally settled on putting the people we see the least often at our table, the Skippers at one table since they all knew each other, and the others at the last one. At least this way, I managed to put the Universal and Disney VIP Tour Guide together, so they could talk shop. 

Early in our planning, I had been trying to figure out a guest book. I was talking to my friend Alexis, who was also in the process of planning her wedding, and she said, “Oh, I just assumed you guys would use a life preserver.” BRILLIANT! I searched the internet for DIYs and options, and wound up ordering one on Wish.   

Then I decided we needed a different guest book for the Celebration at the Boardwalk, and I wound up buying a gorgeous wooden one off of Etsy. I do wish I’d gotten a smaller number of wooden Mickeys for people to sign because then they would have been bigger, but our thought was we could get Disney characters to sign any leftover ones. We’ll see how that goes. They’re REALLY tiny. 

My mom had recently been to a wedding with a sign that read, “Choose a seat, not a side, you are loved by both the groom and bride.” I thought this was a great idea, but I came up with my own wording. I tried to cut it out on poster board using the Cricut and stencil it onto canvas that way, but it was too messy. Then I printed out the wording backwards and used tracing paper to transfer it to canvas, and painted it by hand. Thankfully I have a lot of canvas laying around my house, so this was a cheap way to do it. I also wound up making signs for the guest book and reserved seating this way. 

My mom says the wording was hard to read on the canvas, so here it is because I’m rather proud of it: 

“For seating there’s no right or wrong side, 
it doesn’t matter if you know the Groom or the Bride. 
There’s no crates to cross, so use both sides of the aisle. 
Keep the boat balanced and remember to smile.” 

At the World Famous Jungle Cruise, we spend a lot of our lives telling guests not to cross the center crates, and we have to have the boats weighted evenly on both sides. I thought it was cute. I also decided to bring my biggest Duffy to hold the sign since they couldn’t tell me if they’d have an easel to use for the sign. I packed an iPad stand for the Guest Book sign, and decided the reserved seating could just lay on the chairs. 

I did not make our cake topper, but a good friend of mine did. The day Jay and I got engaged, one of the phone calls I made was to my first job, back in Knoxville, to tell my boss and my friend Jeremy. Jeremy and I were best friends in high school, and he came to work at Doggone Pretty with me. Well, he still works there now, and while I love him to death, trying to reach him, when he’s not at work is difficult sometimes, so I usually just call the shop to talk to him. While I had him on the phone to tell him the good news, I asked him if he could help take care of a Duffy and Shellie May cake topper. He said yes, and he actually had most of the materials on hand already, so he gave it to us as a wedding present. (I also feel I should add he was super busy at the time of the wedding, and was still willing to watch my parents’ dogs for them. My mom wound up boarding them, to make it easier for everyone, but it still means the world to me that it wasn’t convenient for him, and he was still willing to do it.) 

Seeing as he got the date of the wedding wrong in the first place, this shouldn’t surprise me. However, we had a nice long chat that was pretty wonderful, so I won’t complain. My brother has a way of driving me crazy and taking weight off my shoulders, all at the same time. He explained that he was going to have to drive to Florida, turn around, and drive back to South Carolina, to then fly to Tennessee, so he could drive a moving truck back to South Carolina to deal with some personal matters. I wound up checking the flights, and suggesting he fly to Orlando and then fly to Tennessee instead, because that just sounded like an awful lot of driving. He did, so it all worked out. I wouldn’t have known to suggest it, if we hadn’t had that phone call to talk about it. 

He also asked if I’d rather have cash, or a present from the registry, and I said a present. I realize it’s materialistic, but I love when people give me something, because then I can look at it and go “So and So got me this,” for the rest of my life. It’s not just a present; it’s a memory. 

“I was going to get you something big, so do you want-” I was about to say the LEGO Train Set, but he finished with “the bar set or the ceiling fan?” 

“The bar set.” Adulthood wins this time. 

The good news is Duffy’s letters accomplished their goal. Robby was the only one I had to have a conversation about the itinerary with. 

Thankfully, most of these crafting projects cost me very little, since I had a lot of supplies like paint and canvas on hand, assuming you exclude the cost of the Cricut itself, the printer, and the laminator. Like I said before, the laminator was basically free after my Office Depot rewards. Most of the printing was free too, because it took place during my HP Instant Ink trial. I am not factoring any of those things into the budget, since I’ll be able to use them for many years to come. I am including the paper cutter though, because I don’t see me using it any time soon. 

Out of pocket expenses so far:

Cruise Fare: $4,944.06 
Invitations and Postage: $89 
Disney Fine Art Photography: $2875.50    
Fairytale Hair and Makeup Deposit: $100    
Hair and Makeup Trial: $180    
Hoop-Dee-Doo: $444   
Park n’ Cruise for 6 Vehicles: $256.94  
Wedding Party Outfits: $125.43 
Wedding Dress Materials: $300 
Wedding Dress Garment Bag: $15.99  
Groom’s Suit: $527.18  
Groom’s Dress Clothes and Shoes for the Cruise: $79.14  
Groom’s Accessories: $73.04  
Suit Garment Bag: $13.99 
Lanyard Supplies: $64.89 
Robby Cook Art: $100 
Duffy Tsum Tsums and Buckets: $28.50 
Duffy Bottles: $20.29 
25 Canvas Bags: $47.49 
Stainless Steel Tumblers, Glitter, and Cardstock: $123.89 
Sunscreen and Bandaids: $178.96 
Sorcerers Cards, Buttons, and Custom Tie: $107.08 
Magnets: $5.99 
Chapstick: $17.23 
DIY Supplies: $14.26 
Sunglasses, Kleenex, Sleep Masks: $57.97 
Card Protectors and Sharpies: $15.51 
Cricut Vinyl: $74.39 

Boardwalk Guest Book: $114.28 
Cardstock: $30.88 
Life Preserver: $4.60 
Tell-a-cast Printing: $14.06 
Paper Cutter: $12.94 
Total: $11,049.28 

Chelsea, you bought a printer, why did you pay Office Depot to print the tell-a-casts? Because I decided paying to print them would be cheaper than buying a pack of 32 lb. paper that I would never use again.