Wedding Planning Archives - On the Go in MCO

Planning a Disney Wedding: The Menu Tasting

Previously I shared my experience at a Disney Wedding Planning Session. In that post, I mentioned that couples can also request a meeting with chefs that will be preparing your reception meal. This can be scheduled the same day as your planning session, or at another time. We chose to have our planning session in the morning and our menu tasting in the afternoon on the same day.

In the months leading up to the planning session, your Disney wedding planner will send a menu tasting checklist where you can request the dishes that you wish to try. There are eight slots available and you are allowed up to three proteins (entrées). Your planner will also provide sample menus from Disney Catering. For the tasting, you can choose any of the items from these menus or you can even ask to try the chef’s interpretation of your favorite dishes at Disney restaurants. Tip for future bride and grooms: don’t waste a tasting spot on a dish that you know how it tastes. For example, Mickey waffles taste the same everywhere. We want to have them at our brunch reception, but we didn’t need to try them at our tasting.

Since our reception will be held at the Boardwalk Resort, that is where we had our tasting. We were scheduled to meet back up with our planner at 2:15 at the Boardwalk Convention Center.

Convention Center Disney Wedding — Convention Center

We got there a little early and wandered around a bit before our server, Manny, saw us and showed us to our room. Yes, we had our own server for the tasting! He was awesome and got us sodas and water while we waited.

The tasting itself actually took place in a sectioned off portion of a ballroom. There was a table set up that was decorated and had several napkin folds on display.

At the far end of the room, the buffet was set up. This was mind-blowing to me, that they set up a buffet like to would be for our actual reception.

Once our planner arrived, the first order of business was to choose a napkin fold.

Our napkin fold Disney Wedding — Our napkin fold

Then Chef Redgie arrived. He introduced himself and told us about how he started as an intern three years ago and did so well that he was offered a permanent position. He told us that the BoardWalk Catering Department is the smallest of all the resorts with six chefs. He brought us over the the buffet stations and described each of the dishes the had asked to try. He held off on preparing the pasta dishes so that we could see those prepared on stage. He told us we could customize as we go. As we tried each thing, we talked about what we liked or didn’t like and Chef Redgie took notes. He told us that they love to customize the menu and work with couples to make sure everything is exactly they way they want them. They will even prepare your favorite family dishes if you provide them with a recipe. I thought that was a pretty cool option.

Here are the dishes that we tried, minus the pasta dishes that I didn’t get a picture of:

From left to right: parmesan-crusted chicken with creamy tomato sauce, seared salmon with pancetta marmalade and dill cream, maple ginger pork loin with fig compote, cinnamon bread pudding (picture taken before the warm vanilla icing was added), truffle-scented macaroni and cheese with lobster meat. Not pictured are penne pasta with cognac cheese sauce and artichokes; and genelli pasta with asiago cream sauce, roasted tomatoes and spinach.

Everything was delicious and it was really difficult to decide on our final menu. In the end we cut the pork, lobster macaroni and cheese, and the penne pasta dish. We were also given a couple of parting gifts which was so nice and really made us feel special.

Parting gifts : whisk and heart cookie cutters Disney Wedding — Parting gifts : whisk and heart cookie cutters

This was such a cool experience and I am so excited for our brunch reception. Huge thanks for Chef Redgie and Manny for being so amazing!

And with that, the majority of our wedding planning is complete. We just need to get a few last minute details together in the next four months and then it’s wedding time!

Other than the actual wedding day, brides and grooms planning a wedding at Disney probably most look forward to planning session day.

I’ve mentioned before that planning a Disney Wedding follows a unique schedule. Beginning at six months out from your wedding day, couples (and parents/family members if they are part of the planning process) schedule a planning session with their assigned wedding planner. These can either be held in person or over the phone if couples aren’t able to make the trip to Florida. This is the time when you can finally give voice to all those ideas you’ve pinned to your Pinterest board for your wedding day!

You can also schedule a separate menu tasting with the chefs that will be preparing the meal at your reception. I’ll discuss that in another post.

For now, I’ll tell you how our planning session went when we met with our planner a few weeks ago at Franck’s Bridal Studio.

Franck's Disney Wedding — Franck’s Bridal Studio

We got to meet in the Merryweather room! Disney Wedding — We got to meet in the Merriweather room!

Depending on the size of the wedding and number of events taking place, sessions last around 3-4 hours. During this time, our planner basically took us step-by-step through our wedding weekend beginning with rehearsal. We talked about where and what time we would prefer to hold rehearsal. They won’t guarantee a time and place until 30 days before so we had to give a couple of preferences.

Then we moved to the actual wedding day, starting from the time we wake up. This was important because we had to make sure that we had our photography set up for the right time to cover everything based on the hourly package that we picked. Since we are having an Epcot ceremony, our day will be starting very early.

We then made decisions on everything from transportation (if you want to use Cinderella’s coach for your wedding, now is your chance!) to song choices and favors and linens for the reception. Nothing is set in stone at this point. Essentially this is the “blue sky” phase of wedding planning. We were told to include everything we thought we might want. In the following weeks, our planner will prepare a Banquet Event Order (BEO) and then we can make cuts or adjustments from there, once we recover from the sticker shock! We had done a lot of research prior to our appointment so we had a very good idea of what we wanted. However, if you don’t, they have lots of displays and pictures to show different options. Basically anything you can think of – this is Disney after all!

Disney Wedding Display — Fall wedding decor

The final thing we discussed during our meeting was the most fun – cake!! We could taste four different flavors of cake and four different fillings. We got a couple of bonuses because they included the buttercream icing and a slice of cake to show us how the layers would be. This was really fun and so hard to choose! I almost wish we were having a bigger wedding just so we could have more layers on our cake! In the end we chose marble cake with peanut butter cup filling for one layer, and almond cake with amaretto crunch filling for the other.

Disney Wedding Not the cake we chose — Not the cake we chose 😉

Flavors we tried Disney Wedding — Flavors we tried

After cake, our floral designer came in to meet with us and discuss any flowers and décor we wanted for our wedding events. Lucky for us, our venues don’t need much extra decoration so that part was over pretty quickly. Plus, I came prepared with pictures and paint chips of our colors so that helped to make sure we were all on the same page.

Bouquet Examples Disney Wedding — Bouquet Examples

Going into our meeting I was pretty anxious. I was worried that maybe we wouldn’t connect with our planner or that she would try to talk us into getting a bunch of extras that we didn’t want or need. I’m happy to report that everything went very smoothly and everyone was really helpful and kind. Our planner really took the time to make sure we came up with the best options. It was really fun to finally do some official planning! Throughout the day I kept think about how lucky we are to be there. It’s still a little surreal!

Now we just have to wait to get our BEO and hope we don’t need to make too many adjustments! Stay tuned for my report on our menu tasting, which was probably one of the most special experiences I’ve ever had.