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happy holidays!

Two days until Christmas...and then it's the start of 2009! Francis and I wish you all the very best and stay safe this holiday season.

Oh, and if anyone out there is in real estate...we're looking to buy. ;-)

We're actively looking in the 91709 area code. Close to home. Can mooch food off of parents. Within a 35-mile distance from Francis' work in Rancho Cucamonga (he's not allowed to live farther than 35 miles). Got my vanpool to El Segundo...so nothing with my commute will change.

yowza

Anyone else think that this year went by super fast? It's almost 2009 folks! It's been an interesting year...we had the Spitzer scandal, an earthquake in China, legalized gay marriage in California (which is then taken away!), astronomical oil prices, the Russion-Georgian conflict, Michael Phelps rockin' the Olympics, the crash of the financial markets, Obama wins the presidency, terrorism in Mumbai, OJ Simpson is going to jail, and the Illinois governor corruption charges. And that's only some of the top stories (I got those from CNN). Can't wait to see what 2009 brings. Hope it's a year we can look forward to...

Oh wait. Of course it is! Not to diminish our economic downturn and the crises of the world, I do have some things to look forward to...and I'm pretty sure all of you have things that are actually going well for you too. Keep your chin up, look for the silver lining, and, hey, give yourself a pat on the back for getting through the year. You got plenty more to get through before you're done :-)

bridesmaids

met with the girls yesterday at alfred angelo, and i had them model some of the dresses that we had picked out of the catalogue. and we decided on one! woohoo! thank you thank you thank you ladies for trying to make this whole experience a happy one for me.

so the dresses are on order, and that's another thing to tick off the list!

down to 10 months!

so i have 9 months, 28 days left until the big day. we took care of the biggest things, including the florist...so why do i feel like we've done nothing? there are moments when i start freaking out because we're not working on the wedding planning. arg! but it's all in my head. francis is essentially kicking back his feet and waiting for 2009 to arrive. boo on him!

so final colors: wine & champagne

we still need to tell all the ninongs & ninangs that we are asking them to be our godparents...and then work on invitations. i already have a good idea of what i want, but i need to get the approval from the person who'll write the check for it! ;-)

just kidding!

so i thought i had found THE dress...PSYCH!

since it was my friday off, i scheduled appointments at two different bridal salons, mariposa (anaheim) and mary me bridal (orange).

mariposa: this boutique was so cute! they got their racks of dresses, but what i like the best was "the stage". i don't even remember how many dresses i tried on, but it was definitely more than 10. two dresses really caught my eye: an enzoani and a maggie sottero. i tried those two dresses at least 3 times each...taking pictures along the way. but i had another bridal appointment scheduled so i had to hold off any purchases...

mary me bridal: so many dresses. it was overwhelming! i got paired up with a consultant, marie, and we started pulling out dresses to try on. i was wowed by another enzoani as well as an angelina faccenda. after trying on a dozen dresses, i was so confused! choices are not necessarily a good thing! then my mom showed marie the pictures of the gowns i tried on at mariposa...and surprise surprise, mary me bridal had the maggie sottero. so i tried on the maggie again...and my decision was made! i felt like a princess...it's unbelievable!

so i placed my order and should be getting my gown in about 4 months. eeeks!

wedding gown...

i put on a wedding dress today. i didn't intend to spend my afternoon doing that, but my mom had nagged me so much to drive her to a bridal store to look at color schemes so she could start looking for HER dress. surrounded my wedding gowns, i wasn't looking around (my nose was stuck in the catalogues), but my mother kept asking me to try some on..."for fun", she said. so i acquiesced and looked around. she pointed a few and i said "sure, whatever". then i figured i might as well participate, and i picked a couple as well. the lady helping us out dressed me in the fitting room.

first one. eh.

second. better.

third. wow.

last. this is MINE.

standing on the pedestal, looking at myself in the mirror...i knew i found the dress. it's going to be hard to beat this one, but i will be going to a couple bridal salons this friday to try some more out. i'll give the other dresses a chance. ;-)

it was so weird wearing those gowns. i'm getting married!

nerves...

ok less than 11 months to go...

you ever get those moments when you start freaking out for no reason? i'm starting to get a little anxious that i'm not moving on the wedding planning wagon as efficiently as i would like. as much as i don't like being stressed out, i work extremely well under pressure, and with the wedding so far off i've been a slacker lately. i bet when there's two months to go i'll be rockin' the wedding stuff. but i really need to take advantage of my time now. time to set some hard dates for myself...all the ambiguity on deadlines for all the stuff that needs to get done makes my skin crawl.

finally...

i mailed about half the save-the-dates this afternoon. it feels good to get that stack off my desk and in the mail. woohoo! and it's only half since i don't have the addresses for the others >_<

we're getting there! less than 11 months to go!

our engagement party...

...will probably not happen. sorry! since we already announced our engagement to all our important people, and i'm just about ready to start mailing the official save-the-dates, having a party to commemorate our engagement seems unnecessary. yes, it's a great excuse to get together, but, hey, we don't need an excuse to get together if we wanted to, right? it's not that i don't want to plan or budget for the party, but i seriously can't justify why we would have one in the first place. soooo let's just save up and plan for the bridal party/bachelor(ette) parties/whatever else comes our way!

so here's what's up...

church = done. reception = done. photographer = done. videographer = done. bridesmaids = done. a big hi-five to cristalle for getting us to have dinner last night, so i could have the opportunity to wrap up the bridesmaids. :-) francis just needs to get on the ball on asking the rest of his groomsmen, and then we need start bugging people to be our primary and secondary sponsors. but that's something we want to do in person, if possible.

ok, so i said i'd talk about the pre-marriage experience. it was hosted at st. elizabeth ann seton from 8:45am-5pm. the speakers were two couples, and they each shared their marriage and family experiences...how they communicate...what worked and what didn't. there were several couples attending this session, and we'd pull together for small group activities every so often. honestly, i didn't pay attention half the time...so i KNOW francis didn't either. not to be overly critical, but the examples the speakers used were un-relatable. i don't want to disregard what they said, because the core of what they were saying can be applied universally, despite the generation gap. but seriously, the way the topics were presented and the manner in which that content was delivered was not the best approach for the audience. i understand the message they were trying to convey, but it came across as simplistic and idealistic...which is a far cry from what reality is. *shrugs shoulders* doing this was a requirement, and we fulfilled it...so yay for us. but what we "learned" from the session were things that we had already discussed: keep the lines of communication between us open; sometimes we do need some personal space; and love, love, love...we're making a choice to love each other, and it's not going to be an easy road, but we're making that commitment. so it's up to us to make or break it.

sorry!

ok i PROMISE i will update this soon. it's just been crazy the past couple of days. in short, we have reviewed our photography and videography options. we have selected harvard photography for photos (which means we need to get our $50 deposit back from bella pictures) and we're most likely going with robles video for our videography. we're still negotiating with robles, so things are not yet set in stone. i'll also talk about our pre-marriage experience hosted at st. elizabeth ann seton. that day was LONG.

details to come!

wedding dress

so i finally started looking at all my bridal magazines and placing post-its on all the dresses that caught my eye. good grief. i have a lot of filtering out to do...

next steps

so two major hurdles are completed. we got the church (i paid the deposit last friday), and we got the hotel for the reception (we signed the contract and paid the deposit last saturday). that takes a load off! this saturday we are actually going to a pre-marriage experience. here's what it encompasses:

These one day sessions are for engaged couples who are being married for the first time. Engaged couples who attend these sessions have not been previously married to each other civilly nor have they been previously married to another party (e.g., annulment, widowed). These sessions address such topics as:

1. Sacrament of Matrimony
2. Family of Origin
3. Communication
4. Decision-Making

These sessions provide an opportunity for engaged couples to assess their readiness for marriage and to assist them in understanding that marriage is a Vocation, a Covenant and a Sacrament.

it's only one day, unlike those engagement encounters that last an entire weekend. but i do hope we learn more about each other, or at least how to better communicate. both of us have very different ways of expressing ourselves, and maybe we can broach that through this experience. i wish we were doing the weekend encounter, because i think those delve into more self-development and introspection, but, we do what we can. maybe we can do the engagement encounter some next year...we still have plenty of time.

other than signing the contract for the reception site, i took a break from wedding stuff this weekend. it was GREAT! but i'll get back to it again as i start looking through magazines to find my dress... :-) :-) :-)

updates

woohoo! just got the shipping notice that the save-the-date cards we ordered through costco are on their way. in the meantime, i sent an email (using apple mail's stationery) requesting for our friends and family to save the date. so some people will get both an email and a notecard. we're trying to imprint the date in their heads so they won't forget! oooh i just realized that i forgot to put our website on the save-the-date cards. oh well!

as far as the "planning" meeting with the parents...it went really well. they really want this day to be what we want it to be and they really want to help us out with that (aka expenses). so we worked out what our package would be for the reception at embassy suites, and we will be signing the contract with the hotel tomorrow morning.

one requirement from the church is that we attend either a one day saturday experience or a weekend engagement encounter. considering we are not sure about our schedules (especially since francis is in the middle of transitioning to a new job), we're opting for the one day, which we have scheduled for early october. we may do the engagement encounter, but we'll see how our schedules develop over the next few weeks.

so what's next? francis wants to take a 3 month sabbatical from any planning. yeah right, like that's going to happen! we still need to review florists, djs, photographers, videographers, attire, transportation, etc. and we still need to finalize our bridal party! we've got plenty to do...so no vacation for him!

mark your calendar!

ok i don't know how good i am going to be about updating this blog. i will try to have at least weekly updates. so we'll see how that goes...

we have a date! OCTOBER 3, 2009. so mark your calendars now! fr. dennis mongrain will be our priest at st. denis. our interview with him went really well. of course introductions are made and he asked us what we do for a living. me: aerospace engineer; his reponse: that's great. francis: criminal investigator; his reponse: woah officer! LOL. he kept referring to francis as officer/detective the entire time...and made numerous references to law & order and csi. you could tell he was very intrigued by francis' career choice: "do you carry a gun? do you arrest people?" when not discussing law enforcement, he asked us some questions, like how long have we known each other, the story of how we started dating, as well as how did francis propose. after the q&a, he gave us some paperwork to take home to fill out, and then he asked us when we wanted to have ceremony. that's it! sure we have to fill out the forms that state both of us are free to marry and get witnesses (using our parents is recommended), as well as provide our completion certificates for the sacraments of baptism, communion and confirmation. but essentially, we're set for saturday, october 3, 2009 at 3pm! woohoo! this wedding will actually take place! i'm still trying to adjust to the idea...

so the church is secured, now it's time to secure a reception site. over the weekend, we looked over various reception sites: marriott, sheraton, hilton, pacific palms, doubletree...we want the reception to be pretty close to the church, so we were limited in our selection. we happened to be in ontario on sunday, so we dropped by the hotels in that area. it was a no brainer. NO! so our other option was the anaheim area. the hilton and marriott were both booked due to a convention happening that weekend. NOOOOOO! so i got scared that there wouldn't be ANYTHING available since the hotels we were looking at were within walking distance of the convention center. but lo and behold, embassy suites and the doubletree off of harbor blvd. were available. we sat and talked to each hotel's catering manager and discussed our options. as gorgeous as the doubletree is, we're going with the embassy suites. we don't want to blow ALL our savings on this wedding...we do have to live somewhere after the ceremony. i am NOT living with either of our parents. hahaha that's the one thing i'm absolutely sure of. love them all, but NO! ;-)

so tonight we have a family meeting since we have numbers to present to the 'rents, and saturday we sign the contract with the embassy suites!

and a big THANK YOU to april and ron. they have been a big help through these initial planning stages...giving us ideas for reception sites, how to "pass" the interview with fr. dennis ("children of god" and "soldiers for christ"), and april even provided me with her box of wedding stuff (magazines, planners, etc) for ideas! thank you sooo much!

darn social networking sites...

i underestimated how quickly people would respond once i changed my status from "in a relationship" to "engaged" on both facebook and myspace. it's a good thing i waited until after i told the people who i needed to tell in person before updating because i'm believing the whole adage that "news travels fast".

so as more and more people know, that makes me want to really get cracking on all this planning up ahead. but first things first...interview at st. denis tomorrow...and then figuring out the date so we can start looking at reception sites.

Wow...

I am actually engaged! We are actually planning this wedding! I'm somewhat still in shock...I haven't caught up to the news yet. After our weekend in Vegas, it has been non-stop as we have been busying ourselves with telling our friends and family the good news. First, we told our parents over dinner at a restaurant (under the pretense that we were celebrating Francis' birthday and job change). We told our coworkers, then some friends, and then, last Saturday, we announced it to most of our friends while we were at our friend's birthday celebration. Now I only have a couple more people to personally break the news to, and then I can publicly share the good news on all those social networking sites, like MySpace and Facebook.

I'm really glad that we're shooting for a late September/early October wedding. There is just so much to plan, and I don't even have a color scheme yet! We are meeting with the priest at St. Denis Catholic Church this Wednesday for our initial interview. Hope it goes well! We got tips from our friends who recently got married, and we simply have to remember: "Children of God" and "Soldiers of Christ". LOL!