Dean --
First off, a GV only counted as one room for both my wedding and DSisIL's wedding. We had no problem making the minimums for our wedding -- she married an Orlando native, so for them it was a little tougher. Do you have many people you'd invite that are local to Disney? The discounts my family got were excellent and made it well worth the money to stay on Disney property instead of trying to "save" by staying off site. You could canvas your families ahead to see if they're interested in going, etc. And remember, it's room nights, not rooms. We stayed for 12 nights including pre-wedding through honeymoon nights and they counted all of it. Don't fret about that too much -- and you might want to check with the Disney Weddings folks to see what they say about that now. Since the GV has three bedrooms, they might be willing to count it for more. We didn't even pursue that option with DSisIL because, we found the room nights we needed by using two studios for my family instead of a two-bedroom (saved points and we were barely in the room anyway!).
Also, my wedding was 12/28/98 -- right after Christmas. We chose this time because a) we had many small children and teachers in the family and wanted to accommodate their vacation schedule and b) the Christmas decorations meant we didn't have to decorate the wedding site at all. We were married in the Italy Pavilion in Epcot -- the decor was lots of white poinsettas, gold angels, etc. It was absolutely stunning -- we just added chairs and a small altar with a floral arrangement for the candle lighting ceremony.
Our reception was at Atlantic Dance -- we used boats to move everyone from Epcot, which was awesome!
Didn't know about the new wedding pavilion at SSR! I'm already trying to convince my niece and nephews they want to marry at Disney (the oldest is only 14). SSR would be a great option!
HAPPY PLANNING!