Back Post #11 - Archdiocese Annoyance and Twitter Love

I'm getting married in a Catholic Church. Which, consequently, means I need to take Pre-Cana, which are two wedding prep classes. Easy right? No so much. I keep looking on the Archdiocese website, and it says July dates will be posted Mid to Late May. It is June 10th. No dates. So yesterday I began following the Archdiocese on Twitter, and then angry tweeted them that they should post dates. A little childish, yes. But effective? Also yes. I got a direct apology no less than 2 hours later, and was told to e-mail someone directly about the problem. How I LOVE the effectiveness of Twitter! (Note: I would have email someone about the problem in the first place, but there was no contact on the archdiocese website)
 

Now, the class schedule wouldn't be THAT big of a deal, if July wasn't jam packed for me. Classes are only offered on the weekend, and it's usually an every other weekend deal (although, usually one weekend is reserved for a Sat and Sun smackdown of Godliness). On the 11th, we have our engagement party (though we haven't sent out invites yet, just in case this prep stuff gets in the way), The next weekend I'm hopefully going to San Antonio, and the next weekend (last weekend in July) I'm leaving for Florida. Oh, and the only other weekend is the 4th, which I highly doubt they'll do anything on! These classes are like, 5 hours a piece, so they tend to be an all day ordeal. Plus, they tend to be in random churches all over the archdiocese. That's over 300 churches, from Lincoln County to Perry County. So, we could be over 2 hours away for this thing.

Anyways. Hopefully I'll get an e-mail back sometime today from Ms. Rose, the lady whom Twitter directed me to.

Back Post #10 - Reception Option 1

Lake St. Louis Banquet Center

It wasn't bad. Really it wasn't. In fact, it's still an option. If I were having a 150 person wedding (which still is a possibility), I would have signed right there. Anyways.

Pros
-Family Owned. I felt like they would let us do ANYTHING to make it our day. I mean, the wife was cooking dinner for the reception that night while we were there - it smelled wonderful!
-Had our colors in linens. This is actually surprisingly important.
-Had THREE serving lines for food. Seriously. 300 people through a buffet in less than 20 minutes? That's pretty nice. I don't want my last guests getting cold food.
-Include cake. Not Susie G's, but hey, cake is cake.
-DJ package = $450. WOW what a deal.
-Two sets of bathrooms. Within 10 feet of the hall entrance. You know how much it sucks to have to walk 10 minutes to pee?
-Cash premium bar. Everyone can drink as much "house brand" liquor that they want, but if they'd like the good stuff, they're welcome to buy up.

Cons
-Hall is one long room - some of our guests would be REALLY far away from the head table.
-Dance floor is in the middle of the room. Literally. Like, the head table and half the guests would be on one side of the dance floor, and 1/2 the guests on the other side. I think I would feel like I'm telling the other guests that they smell or something.
-I'm not sure how to punctuate this one, but the husband of the family is the one who gave us the tour. Every time he talked about something THEY did, he also talked about other venues and what they did wrong.
-Parking lot. The lot is on a hill, and it slopes. A lot. If it happens to be icy on our January wedding day, that could be BAD news.

Overall, there are more pros than cons. However, the cons seem to be BIG for me. We still have to go see the Stegton, so we'll see how that goes. *crosses fingers* The LSL Banquet Center is not out of the running, but it wasn't "omg-this-is-it" either. It was a neat, but slightly ho-hum experience. We shall see.
 
 

Back Post #9 - Colors

So I keep saying our color is dark green. But, to say dark green gets kind of boring, right? Most definitely. So we've (okay, I'll admit, I've kinda taken control over this one - but Sean has approved it all!) come up with our "palette". Four beautiful colors, that look really good together. First, there's the green. "Holly Green" to be exact. Next, we have black. It's our main accent color, and it adds a very classy touch I think. Then there's silver. Of course, I can't make the picture shiny, but you get the idea. All of our stationary is ivory. The darker colors really "pop" on the light paper too. Our colors are really dark, but the idea is to get a "classy winter" feel.
So here it goes:

You like?

The bridesmaids will be in the green, with maybe? black accents. Definitely black shoes. I plan on getting all the bridesmaids a necklace that goes with the colors too. I'd get earrings but SOMEONE (coughjaymecough) doesn't have pierced ears. So necklaces it is...and maybe matching bracelets or some other surprise *grin*
I love the colors.

Back Post #8 - Second Meeting with the Priest

WE HAVE A DATE!!!
Mark your calendars folks: January 8th, 2011, at 2 pm!

Finally! and thankfully, the date we wanted.

 So our meeting was fairly short. In fact, it only lasted about 20 minutes. We ended up doing phenomenal on the FOCCUS test, and there wasn't really much to discuss. For the most part, we knew about the questions we disagreed on, and they were things that we had discussed before (and agree to disagree on).

We got our date, which is really kind of Fr. Don since he's basically giving up a month long trip to Belize to marry us. We feel loved. He gave us this giant folder of stuff we have to do now, from picking out musicians, music, and readings to going to marriage prep classes, and then he told us to call him when we got the classes over with. He suggested going to a weekend retreat, but that costs $225 (!!!) so I doubt that we'll do that. The classes are only $150, and that $75 makes a difference. Still expensive though. Jeez. That's in addition to the $150 we'll have to pay for the church, the $110 for each musician (at least two), the $25-30 for each server (there's 3 of them), plus a gift for the priest. If anyone ever said that weddings aren't expensive, they lied. That's like $700, just with the church. Oi. 

 Now, I can start planning. I can't wait.

List for the summer:
Wedding Prep classes
Reception Hall
Cake (if they'll let me this early)
Book photographer (KELLY!!)
DJ
 
Start:
Invitations
Centerpieces
Pew things
Dress shopping

Busy Busy Us!!

Back Post #7 - First Meeting with the Priest

So, yesterday we met with Fr. Don for the first time. The meeting was great. We told him about ourselves - our families, childhoods, how we met, etc. We talked about how we knew we loved each other, and how we knew we wanted to marry each other. To know that you love someone and want to marry someone is one thing, but to explain that to someone else - it just really makes you realize how true it is. It was really nice to hear Sean's opinions about that too...it makes me completely 100% confident in us, if I wasn't before. Strange how a simple question of "How do you know?" can make you feel.
We also took the FOCCUS test. It ended up being 156 questions (it would have been more if we were living together/being previously married/had kids). Actually, it wasn't questions, it was statements. With each statement we had to decide if we agreed, disagreed, or were unsure. We each took the test separately, in different rooms (kinda made me feel like a kid, being separated lol). They'll be "graded" and mailed to us later this week. We'll get a "compatibility" score, and it will tell us which ones we chose differently on. We'll discuss those in the next few weeks between ourselves, and then when we go meet with Fr. Don the second time, on May 10th, we'll discuss them with him. It wasn't too bad, though some of the questions were ridiculous.

We still haven't found out if we'll get our date. January is when All Saints takes their Belize mission trip, but this was the first year. Therefore, Fr. Don doesn't know if they'll be going each year, or if he'll be going each year. He said he'd make the decision by our next meeting, but it's still kind of frustrating. Plus, the more I look at wedding stuff, the more I fall in love with the idea of a winter wedding.

Oh. Fr. Don and I spent like 10 minutes comparing iPhone/iPod touch applications. It was hilarious. And he friended me on Facebook. Great!