Our Disney Wedding: Port Orleans Riverside Welcome Event

Over the next few weeks I am doing a series all about our Disney wedding! We got married at Walt Disney World back in October and it was the most amazing experience. Of course, everyone's wedding is amazing to them but for a Disney nerd like me it was just so incredible to get to marry the love of my life in front of our loved ones at our favorite place on the planet.

When I began planning our wedding I became obsessed with reading about other people's Disney weddings. It is definitely a unique experience and planning process so it was so helpful to learn from other peoples' experiences. I'm breaking the series up into individual events so I'll start with the first, our welcome event!

This is actually one of our engagement pictures. We did the shoot at Port Orleans Riverside!

Ummm...what is a welcome event?

In the world of Disney weddings a welcome event is a time for all wedding guests to get together in a less formal setting prior to the wedding day. Of course, this can be accomplished to some extent at the rehearsal dinner but many couples (ourselves included) do not invite all wedding guests to the dinner as they are not a part of the rehearsal itself. In our case, we had a lot of non-wedding party guests traveling long distances to be at our wedding and we wanted to spend some time with them before the craziness began. It was the perfect way to welcome our guests to our wedding weekend!

Being the bride you get called up on stages a lot! This happened at my bachelorette, too!

Where was your welcome event held? 

We had our event at Disney's Port Orleans Riverside Resort. More specifically it was in their River Roost Lounge, a bar/lounge in their main building. River Roost features an incredible performer named Yeeha Bob many nights out of the week. His piano singalong comedy show is free and a total blast! Ryan, my husband, and I had been to see him a couple of times and thought it would be so much fun to see him again with all our friends and family. Turns out, we were right! Yeeha Bob's show is incredibly interactive and entertaining and our guests all seemed to really enjoy themselves. Can I mention again that this was all free?!

Spending this more casual special time with the ones that are close to us was so amazing! The kids had fun, too!

How did you plan this?!

When you're planning a wedding, I wouldn't say it's the best idea to add extra events with lots more planning to do to your list of things to worry about. With that thought in mind I wanted to plan the welcome event as simply as possible. We basically only had to worry about these two things:

• The guest list and getting the word out: We had the event two days before the wedding, the day we arrived in Orlando. We sent an email out to all of our wedding guests letting them know we'd be having a "casual pre-wedding get together" and that anyone who was in town by then should come out. No guest list to worry about!
• Food/drinks: The show started after dinner time so that took off the pressure to provide any sort of big meal. The River Roost lounge had drinks and food you could buy if you wanted but there was no obligation to so it was the best of both worlds!

That was pretty much all the planning it took. We didn't rent out the bar or anything so we did have to get there about 45 minutes before the show to reserve enough seats for our friends and family but other than that all that was left to do was have a blast with our wedding guests! 

Disney wedding or not, I think everyone should have a casual welcome event like this. Some of my favorite memories were made that night! Nothing beats singing, dancing, and making a fool out of yourself with all of your favorite people during such a special time. <3

Yeeha Bob is an incredible entertainer! After every show he gets pictures with people in the audience and then he puts them on his Facebook page. He called up our entire group! This wasn't even everyone that was there ;)

- Lindsay