For Rich or for Poor
It’s a recurring joke between Mr. Burt and me that the first time we vacationed at Walt Disney World, on our honeymoon, we were too broke to eat.
That was the truth. We could only afford the trip in the first place because Mr. Burt’s parents took all the other Burt kids and Burt grandkids to Cancun that summer and gave us the money that would have been our portion of the family vacation. Due to our marrying right out of college (literally, a few weeks after Mr. Burt graduated and before he started his job) tight would be a generous word to describe our budget: Mr. Burt worked at Olive Garden all four years at Baylor to pay for room and board, textbooks, and student fees, and even with the IT job he took his senior year in addition to waiting tables, only managed to scrape by on his living expenses with a very little left over for dates (his entire savings up to that point had gone to buy my engagement ring–which was perfect for my tiny ring finger, but by no means a rock by anyone’s standards); I worked on and off at department stores but, to my chagrin, brought all of $70 into our marriage because I have no self-control when working around clothes.
When Mr. Burt and I arrived at Walt Disney World, we had X dollars in our budget with absolutely no wiggle room, because that was all there was in the bank. We didn’t even have a credit card, though if we had, Mr. Burt was smart enough to know that starting your marriage broke was less than desirable but not the end of the world when you had a good job lined up, but starting it in debt because of your honeymoon was not a good financial precedent to set.
So, we made like Oregon Trail and limited our rations to bare bones. We splurged on a character breakfast buffet our first morning at the Magic Kingdom, but the rest of the week our first stop was an Epcot cafe where we could get cheap (by Disney standards) pastries and breakfast burritos. And split an orange juice. We’d skip lunch, maybe share an ice cream early afternoon if we were desperate, and ate a late lunch/early dinner, frequently splitting that meal. Not exactly taking advantage of the many unique and delicious dining opportunities Walt Disney World affords honeymooners, but it was what we could afford that won the day, and anyway,we didn’t really care that much about eating because…it was our honeymoon.
Thus it was that when our hunger pangs subsided and faded, as did all but our very best memories from that wonderful first week of marriage, being too poor to eat on our honeymoon became a joke.
There’s nothing like old photos to give you a shocking dose reality.
Take, for example, one of the few pictures of one of our honeymoon meals (indeed, one of our few honeymoon pictures, period, as we were also too poor for a proper camera and made due with four 27-exposure disposable cameras, the developing of which also pinched):
Two drinks. One blob of mashed potatoes. One prime rib. Oh, and not pictured, a minuscule Caesar salad. For two adults who hadn’t eaten anything all day except a cheese Danish and a breakfast burrito and possibly an Lemon Chill because we were about to die of heatstroke standing in line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. And that was a splurge.
“Remember how excited we were?” Mr. Burt said as we boggled at the picture last night. “We sat there at that table and said, ‘All right, we’re gonna have prime rib tonight!’ A little bit of prime rib. Geez, I feel so bad for us!”
I didn’t feel bad for us. I was too busy laughing at our naïve, dazed-by-our-own-happiness newlywed selves till my stomach hurt and tears tracked mascara down my cheeks.
It’s little wonder when we returned to Walt Disney World five years later for our second honeymoon, our package including a Disney Dining Plan, that we reacted to our first meal like this:
While we may feel a little sorry that First Honeymoon Mr. and LR Burt didn’t get to fully enjoy all Disney has to offer, we thank them for having the good sense not to have made that honeymoon a financial 
burden, or else we might not have been able to go back five years later for seconds.
We definitely wouldn’t have appreciated what it means to have full bellies. (Too full; eighteen months later, we’re still trying to work off the pounds we put on during that trip! Luckily for me, I also had a baby during that time. Children: the eternal scapegoats–but that’s another post…)
