Wedding Chronicles - Location Location Location

We've been working more and more with our Disney Wedding Planner to try to get the site for the ceremony nailed down. We've requested something they've never done before, so we're hoping it comes through!

The whole sh-bang is still going to take place in the Animal Kingdom park, and we're looking at October 18th, 2012 as a tentative date, so save your pennies! When we have something more permanent, we'll get those "Save the Dates" mailed out.

That said, I thought I'd give ya'll a sneak peak at our Reception Venue! I think we're pretty much settled on a place in Africa called the Tamu Tamu Courtyard. Here's a short video and slide show for those interested:

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

A few things to keep in mind when using a Disney park venue:

All events must take place outside of park hours. So we're planning an evening ceremony, most likely around 7:30 pm with dinner and the reception kicking into gear around 8pm at the latest. This may change up to a month before the wedding depending on what the actual park hours are. If there are Extra Magic Hours that night, it might be pushed back, or moved to the day before. Whatever happens, we'll let you all know as far in advance as possible.

We will be doing a "first look" at a resort. A "first look" is a relatively new tradition where the bride and groom see each other before the wedding. (I know, I know, 'gasp', right?). It makes a lot more sense for this type of situation. We can see each other and take pictures together before the wedding, so ya'll won't be standing around wondering what to do between the ceremony and reception. I'm actually really looking forward to this moment. We might just end up inviting everyone to come along and take a peek as sort of an early cocktail hour thing, but nothing is set in stone yet. Which leads me to my next point...

We will be providing Transportation to and from the site. You CAN NOT drive yourselves to and from the location. Disney's rule - not ours. Since many people are opting to stay off property, we will probably all meet up at one resort on Disney Property so that our private bus can pick everyone up and drop everyone off at the same time. So if you choose to stay off property and rent a car, that's up to you. If you stay on Disney property, Disney will get you around by bus for free - so there are a few perks to staying on property. So if you are LATE, this could be an issue - once we announce the time, please give yourselves PLENTY of time to arrive at the designated meeting location, or you could miss out!

We're NOT doing a traditional rehearsal dinner. We do have some ideas on what we're going to do in place of it, but nothing is solid yet. We're going to be giving out a schedule of events that are completely optional if you want to hang out with us that week. Please don't feel pressured to show up at all (or even any) of the events. After all, we hope you make this your "excuse" for a great vacation too! I may ask for some RSVPs in advance of these events due to Disney's requirement to make reservations early.

Group Rates May apply and Free Dining may be going on! More about this later, but Disney is opening up a NEW Value resort during this time frame! We may be able to qualify for group rates. This resort also specializes in themed family suites, so if you have a little one and don't want to rent a car or be confined to a hotel room, these have more room, a kitchenette, and more comforts for families with little ones. If you are staying on Disney property, you may qualify for Free dining, which would include your food for something like $35/day/person (excluding alcohol). I can hook ya'll up with a travel agent if you have questions on this one, or feel free to email me (jdarlingmusic@aol.com). Which brings me to my next piont...

Guest list IS FIRM at 50 people. That may sound like a lot of people, but really it's 36. Oh wait, that's just including the wedding party and us. Subtract a few more for immediate family members and the spouses and kids of our wedding party -  and that brings us to 24 Guests. So, while we have been blessed with large families and friends who love and support us it's not feasible to include EVERYONE, so please clear any special requests with us prior to inviting anyone via word of mouth. We will make sure those who are unable to attend get pictures and an announcement at the very least. Thanks!

We have to use Disney services for most things. Since it's taking place in their theme park, Disney wants to oversee all the quality and such for this type of event. I trust them so I'm not too worried. However, if you'd like to contribute, we will be posting registry stuff once the honeymoon is booked (probably around Feb/March of next year) or you can contact either one of us privately to discuss.

And that about covers it! Enjoy the Sneak Peek at Tamu Tamu Courtyard!

Tour of the Tamu Tamu Courtyard at Disney's Animal Kingdom from Carly Morgan on Vimeo.

Happy Birthday to Sean!

Yesterday was Sean's birthday. He's officially 2 years away from 30 now. I can't wait for his 30th.

Anyway, how did we celebrate? Well, it was pretty low key. He'd just gotten off duty, had to study, had a Fantasy Football draft, didn't want birthday cake, and we both had to work in the morning. Birthday dinner was a delicious Papa Murphy's Gourmet Chicken Pizza. Yum! All in all, it was pretty low key, but he did get his present! I got him a 3rd generation Ipod Touch. I figured it'll be handy during deployment! (So if anyone wanted to get him a gift, you can send some itunes money/gift cards so he can load it up before he deploys. His paypal account is the same as his email (if you're in the know, you know, so I won't post it on here) and feel free to email me if you need our street address.

With the insanity that is my schedule and his schedule right now, we're planning on actually celebrating this weekend -most likely on Monday (which we both have off -yeah!).

Silver City Brewery - Silverdale, WA

We've found a few places we really like out here, and the Silver City Brewery is one of them.

I used to live near the Stone Ale brewery. while I only went a few times a year, it was a beautiful place to visit. While Silver City doesn't have a beer garden so to speak (Stone's garden is stunning), but they do have wonderful food!

This week, we went out to see Conan with a friend of ours and followed it up with dinner at Silver City. We shared a salad and a Greek Pizza (feta cheese, non-greasy crust, artichokes, and other good stuff).

Sean put the left overs in a box - and wrote on the front of it. I thought it was funny and cute enough to share!

Adventures in Netflixing aka Good Times with Bad Movies

Since this summer has been full of great movies (which we'll no doubt cover once summer officially draws to a close), I thought it would be fun to share a little B-movie awesomeness with you folks. Sean and I love B-movies, and most of them just happen to be horror flicks.

You may already know that Sean and I spent a lot of time long distance. One thing we did to stay close was to have "Netflix dates".  We'd dial up some TV shows or movies on Netflix and watch them at the same time, either texting each other through them, sitting on speaker phone, or Skyping one another. When you're long distance, you get creative! At first, it started out with good shows like Farscape, Firefly, with a few random anime's thrown in from time to time. Until we hit a major snag - it didn't take us long to get through most of Netflix's more desirable film library. So I turned to Mail Order Zombie (a fun podcast I listen to regularly - and call in as "The Darling Dead") to find something new and exciting. Some of them were total hits, like the B-movie awesomeness without anything more than the "fun scare" factor. For example, this little Norwegian gem, Dead Sno. 

I mean, what isn't amazing about a movie full of invariably clueless college kids, buried treasure, and, oh yeah, Nazi zombies that pop out of the snow like daisies! It was comic genius in some places, and cringe worthy in others - a great B-horror movie.

Another MOZ (Mail Order Zombie) movie recommendation that was a winner was The Horde. We've had some good times with some cheese-ball movies, but even some Golden Oldies (like the 1974 film, The Towering Inferno) made it onto our computer screens. I'm a particular horror movie fan, as long as it's a fun scare, not a true scare.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we've discovered plenty of movies that were just plain bad too. In fact, we watched a streak of them so we developed a 45 minute rule. If the movie still bites after 45 minutes, we turn it off. Life is too short to sit through BAD movies. In all fairness, many independent horror films are pretty awful, so probably more than half of our bad movie experiences have been from films that were my choice.

ANYWAY, one film in particular was so bad, that it's turned into a running joke. Naturally, I felt I had to let you folks in on the joke. Here's the Trailer...

Sean had been wanting to check out this B-Made-For-TV movie since last Spring, so finally, on the recommendation of a fellow shipmate, we decided to give it a try. Now, I'll admit to having been mildly entertained in the past by some of the crazy creatures the SyFy channel has put out there in my youth. Some days there was just nothing like checking reality at the door and getting lost in a world of bad computer generated monsters and even worse acting.

But this film seriously took the cake. It was funny enough in the first 45 minutes to pass our rule, so we figured it would be an okay B-horror movie.

We were wrong.

This film makes Anaconda look like Oscar material...

But it did leave us with a sense of humor. Whenever something bad happens, we say, "Well, at least it wasn't as bad as Sharktopuss."

Board game night - Zombies!!!

Sean and I have gotten our hands on some unique board games. While we haven't had time to play them as much as we'd like, we did check this one out about a month ago, and it was fun!

Every turn, players play a "Map Card" that has buildings/streets on it. Each Map card has a few numbers on them. These numbers dictate how many Zombies appear on the card, as well as how many health units and bullets appear on it. The player of the map cards adds the appropriate number of Zombies, bullets, and health units. (Above, the Zombies are the gray/green figures, a health unit is a small orange tab, and the player appears in blue.)
Players roll a dice to see how many squares he/she can travel.

Our map by the time we were done! (The small black chips are bullets.)

The winner either reaches the Helipad square (which would eventually be played by someone, so it's never in the same place twice) OR the first to kill 25 Zombies.

In case you didn't now, you REALLY SHOULD tag along with Sean, should the Zombie Apocolpyse ever come to pass!  He killed 15 zombies in record time! I can't wait to play it with more people. There are LOTS of different installments to this game. We also picked up the version that takes place in a multi-level mall instead of a town. Hopefully we can break it in someday soon.

Enumclaw Higland Games and Clan Gathering 2011

The Craziest event ever...

Getting some Vitamin D! It felt AWESOME!

 Last Saturday, Sean and I actually had a FULL DAY OFF together! It doesn't happy very often these days.

So we hopped in the car and took the trek to the other side of the sound and saw some beautiful country. And then we found the kilts! It was a BEAUTIFUL day (in the 80's! A high for us!).

 Though they were out of Haggis (yes, out, we looked) they did have some delicious meat pies! Sean tried one of them and I opted for cinnamon glaze pecans (a FAVORITE snack of mine). We nibbled on the pecans the whole drive home.

Hurtling! It's like Shotput, only cooler.