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!