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!