Today’s prompt in the blogging series I’m doing with my friends Jay of The Scented Library and Julie of The Redolent Mermaid is to discuss how we’d put together our perfect Fall event or vacation. For our dreamer purposes, the real fun in this hypothetical planning process comes from the fact that we are unencumbered by any real world concerns – money (or a lack thereof), professional and personal schedules, ANY of the usual obligations. So please do check out both Jay and Julie’s blogs to see what sort of autumn shenanigans they’d get up to completely off the chain!
As for me, come on, you know it all begins and ends with Disney’s Haunted Mansion! A wedding – hmm, a Halloween vow renewal for two Disney nerds coming up on their 14th? – the actual ceremony of which takes place in the lobby, in front of the fireplace, beneath the changing portrait of Master Gracey. Afterwards, guests (and did I mention I have a team of makeup artists and costumers on hand to garb our guests in the finest of the Mansion’s moldering fashions?) will pass through the Stretching Room before boarding Doom Buggies draped in swags of jet black roses. Upon reaching the diningroom reception, guests will disembark (please don’t ask me how they’re going to climb down, particularly encumbered by dusty, gothic fashions; this is my crazy, impractical dream!) and enjoy a sumptuous feast of, well, this (this being a strip loin steak topped with balsamic shallot butter on a bed of four cheese pancetta and arugula pasta from Mama Melrose’s in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.)
And for my husband and our other vegetarian guests, there will be a plant-based option that tastes EXACTLY like a steak. Actually, come to think of it, if that were an option, the entire meal would be veggie. I ultimately kind of hope that if such a thing actually existed, the entire world would be veggie, but I digress. No one will drop even a crumb of food down their fronts, and everyone will remain on the responsible, pleasant side of intoxication. Because there be margaritas a-plenty!
After dessert (my mom’s homemade apple pie, 13 tiers of it and miraculously calorie-free) my new-old husband will waltz me around the dance floor, weaving in and out among the ghosts, to the strains of twenty one pilots, who are there because we’re personal friends and I can just call them up like that. Josh will NOT be wearing a shirt with sleeves.
This actually reminds me of the ever-so-hopeful exploratory phone call Mr. Finger Candy placed to Disney event services when we were planning our wedding nearly 14 years ago. He had asked me at one point shortly after we got engaged what my dream wedding looked like, and I gave him pretty well all of the details I laid out above (minus the twenty one pilots stuff, although then – and now – I’d also accept Green Day. Mike Dirnt’s got nice arms for a bassist.) So one day he rang them up and asked real casual-like how much it would cost to actually rent out the Mansion, or a portion thereof, for a private event.
Later on that evening we both nearly laughed ourselves into asthma attacks as he recounted the very pleasant and also very delusional Disney rep who quoted him a figure just north of 50K, including a whole host of guarantees we had to make regarding room, food and alcohol sales. And that was for a two or three-hour event, at best, held in the dead of night after park close, and without any access to the actual ride itself. I suppose if you had REAL money, you could close the entire ride down just for yourself (hell, close the entire park down just for yourself) but for us regular plebs “just” looking to shut down a small portion of a beloved ride in the most popular theme park in the world (!!) we were looking at a solid $75,000 investment.
So it might have taken 13 years to get there, but I’m feeling really quite positive about our decision last year, on our Halloween anniversary, to ride the Haunted Mansion 13 times in one day. It’s the most fun we’ve ever had on our anniversary, a total bucket list item, and it didn’t cost us 75 grand!
Finally, just to keep it wax-relevant, here’s a bit of the Melting Duck’s Foolish Mortal, a Haunted Mansion-inspired blend I picked up some weeks back. It smells like peppermint-vanilla gum, herbal and a little bit tingly, and the shapes and colours are perfection! Love everything about this ghostly lovely.
Finger Candy 
I almost gave a called shot to you writing Twenty-One Pilots would be involved, although Green Day would be exciting too-do they even appear anywhere anymore?
This sounds super fun and festive, a haunted vow renewal, so romantic ❤ I'm down for all of it, especially the make-up artists and margaritas:)
P.S. maybe not the veggie steak
Green Day go pretty low profile in between albums, so I’ve no idea what they’re up to at the moment. A few years back Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones put out an album of Everley Brothers covers and it was pretty great in a very mellow sort of way, but I haven’t heard much from them in a while. All the love for Billie Joe – I love his jacked up teeth so much (something he has in common with Tyler Joseph.)
Speaking of, I got tickets to see their Banditos show in May. Last time they were here I missed them by DAYS – not this time!
And now I’ve ordered that album, Foreverly. It is pretty sweet and melancholy.
Wow, that’s exciting! I assume 21 P live is a stellar experience. I couldn’t help feeling mega-old but they’d be a worthy experience.
Oh, I’m going to feel the OLDEST, and their shows look utterly mental. I had toyed with the idea of getting general admission tickets, because I’ve probably seen over 100 shows, and all but two of those were general admission, but yikes, their shows look like total circuses – not sure my old ass can handle that pit, if it ever could (it could; I’ve been knocked unconscious more than a time or two at a show.)
Enjoy the Foreverly, it’s a sweet album. A little samey, but sweet and gentle. The softer side of Billie Joe Armstrong. 🙂
A former speechie of ours just attended their concert in Cleveland and mentioned being surrounded and hounded by kids in the pit making her feel old, spoken from a 22 yr-old lol. She had a great view though and posted a sweet drum solo and looked rad all decked out with yellow tape on her wrists, shoes, under holes in her jeans. Made me nostalgic for youth.
I find the only tracks I’ve listened on repeat are Cut my lip, Bandito and Legend. Still waiting for the hook of Blurryface to sink it’s teeth in my psyche. Totally different feel from this album though.
Oh lord, when the 22-year-olds are already griping about “the kids nowadays”! It’s a different scene from when I was a kid, that’s for sure. Like, I went to all of these shows by myself, with my friends. Our parents would undoubtedly drop us off, but man, they were out of there afterwards so, so fast – they didn’t want to stick around for that craziness! Outdoor festivals, big concert events, little shows at the universities…I went to them all, and never with my parents or an older guardian. But the shows now are packed with kids there with their parents. I think it’s super cute, and I love that parents are involved enough with their children’s lives to want to share this experience with them, but it’s definitely a weird, kind of noticeable shift in the scene. It really makes me feel ancient. I’m expecting to come out of this show feeling like Methuselah.
Leave the City, Leave the City, Leave the City – it’s my favourite, so good, how do just two guys manage, like, a four-part harmony? And then Cut My Lip and Pet Cheetah (“pet cheetah, chee-tah!”)
Sounds like a dream wedding alright!
That would be so much fun!! I honestly expected it to be even more money to rent out a portion of the Mansion. I was in a bridal party of a friend who had a six figure wedding budget and it was mind boggling. Adam and I spent about $7K on our wedding on the beach and that was stretching it for us. But we mostly wanted good food and booze and that is exactly what it was.
I like your swags of black roses touch. And that meal sounds incredible. I love the menu at the French restaurant in Epcot too. I heard something about pumpkin churros at Disney and now that is all I can think about.
Ugh, how did I miss this? I’m sorry, Julie, for the tardy response, because I really just wanted to sit here agog at the thought of a SIX FIGURE WEDDING. Was your friend perhaps Chinese or Indian or Jewish? Mixed bag of cultures there for sure, but those tend to be the groups that turn it out with the big, delightfully over-the-top weddings. I used to love to check out the Disney Wedding Blog, all sorts of fantastic behind the scenes photos of places you don’t normally get to see, plus it’s just nice to peruse beautiful wedding pics of loved-up couples on their big day. I don’t think any Disney wedding is inexpensive, but there were a couple in Shanghai Disney that were probably pushing the mid-six figure range. Wowza.
Your wedding sounds perfect, and I thoroughly approve of the good food mandate. Food is not prioritized at weddings enough, in my estimation. Usually it’s pretty awful, but ours (a Thanksgiving dinner, actually) was soooo good. People actually came up to us afterwards, surprised and delighted, to tell us how great dinner had been. We also had an open bar and a signature cocktail (Candy Appletinis!) and I really drank so, so much that day (there was always someone shoving a glass of champagne into my hand, seemingly!) but somehow didn’t get the least bit intoxicated. I think the adrenaline that had been powering me all day was just completely negating the effects of the alcohol, which is good! No one needs to see the bride throwing up into a patch of decorative pumpkins. 😉