Complete details on these venues, including pricing and capacity, may be found in Carrie Hayward’s Fairytale Weddings Guide.
© Carrie Hayward
© Carrie Hayward
© Carrie Hayward
© Carrie Hayward
© Carrie Hayward
Jiko: The Cooking Place – Animal Kingdom Lodge
Is this just a restaurant or can someone get married here or have a reception at Kidani Village or Jambo House.
Jiko is the only venue where a reception may be held at Animal Kingdom Lodge. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to have a ceremony and a reception at Jiko because there is nowhere for your guests to go wait while they turn the room from a ceremony setup to a reception setup.
Carrie, your book is so helpful but I can’t tell—is there somewhere to get the ceremony done at Animal Kingdom Lodge or do you think they’d let you do a dinner-seated style ceremony here after a cocktail hour and followed by the meal? We’d love an event where nobody has to go far.
Disney doesn’t offer ceremonies at Animal Kingdom Lodge, which is why there are no AKL venues in the Ceremony chapter of my guide. And there is no catering team at AKL, so they can’t do any kind of traditional catered reception. The best they can offer is brunch/lunch in Jiko before it opens. The Grand Floridian and the BoardWalk are good choices if you want your ceremony and reception close to each other, although transportation is such a standard feature of Disney weddings that your guests don’t have to ambulate far at any venue!