Second meeting at St. John's

Jack and I met with Fr. Brendan at St. John Cantius about a week ago to begin completely the paperwork for our wedding.  I am pleased to say that all went well.  He walked us through each step of their Wedding Guidelines, answered a few questions, and double-checked that we are on their books for September 27th.  For a portion of our meeting, he met with each of us individually in order to ask us a set of questions without the other person in the room.  He then checked off the answers and these will be given to the pastor for his review just in case he sees anything of concern.  Fr. Brendan said he did not see anything that looked like a problem to him.  WHEW!  But I had this wonderful adult moment as he was asking these questions.  One of the questions he asked was if I entering into this with the understanding that this is for life and to say "yes" and feel so confident about that answer was such a wonderful feeling!  I had this sense of relief and joy to know that this is exactly what was in the plans for me and that I could not be more excited to be taking this next step in life.

Fr. Ron

I am a little behind in my blogging.  So much has been happening, it is hard to keep up with it all.  And as you can tell from Jack's last blog, we both truly do have a LOT going on.  But I have more good news to share!  Jack and I recently asked our dear friend, Fr. Ron Galt, to preside over our wedding mass and ceremony.  To our delight and honor, he is free that day.  We are truly grateful for his friendship and guidance and could not be more excited that he will be there to bless us on the day that we start our lives together as husband and wife.  Thank you, Fr. Ron! 

A Busy Year

While Mary and I have known that 2008 is going to be a busy year, it's just starting to sink in for me now.  Aside from all the wedding planning we have to do, we have other weddings, family gatherings, and work trips tentatively scheduled.

 

Mary's cousin, Linda, is getting married this June in Washington, and we've been planning on attending it for months now.  One of my best friends from school just told me he is getting married in July in Wyoming.  My mom's side of the family is planning a family reunion sometime this summer in Pennsylvania.  We both have to travel for work; Mary is in Seattle right now and I'll be in Las Vegas in March.  On top of all this travel, we have both committed to walking in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer this May in Chicago (donations welcome!), which involves walking 40 miles in two days and raising at least $1800 per person!

 

Finally, since for some reason we don't feel as if we have enough on our plates, we're trying to decide if we want to buy a condo before the wedding or just rent an apartment until we can catch our breaths!  Are we crazy?  I think so.

Dresses

Maybe some girls dream of what their wedding dress will look like since they are children.  Maybe some women begin to have a vision of what their dress will be once they get engaged.  I do not fall into either of those categories!  Thankfully bridal magazines are full of ideas!  But really - almost too many.  I do not know if other women have felt this when flipping through these magazines, but it feels like dress overload.  It is not that each dress starts to look the same, but for me, it begins to get difficult to decipher what I like for me and what I think is just a pretty dress.  There are so many options that after a while of browsing the pages, I need to take a break.  It starts to almost make me glad when I hit a number of pages with things that I do not like because it gives me hope that I will be able to narrow this down and make some decisions.  For now, I am still in the browsing stage and am working to collect pictures of both complete dresses that I like and of those that just have details that catch my eye.  I am hoping that when I go back to look at them all, there will be some kind of pattern or reason to what I have selected.  Wish me luck!

The Knot

When my best friend was getting married, his fiancee and he used the Knot to host their personal website with wedding details and registry information.  At the time, I thought that was pretty much the extent of their services.  Now that Mary and I are engaged and are almost into full-force planning mode, I'm realizing that it really contains a wealth of information!  They have a checklist of tasks we should be doing at a certain time, the ability to search for vendors like caterers and florists, gown and tux resources, and articles on almost every topic related to weddings. 

 

We have more or less secured St. John Cantius for our ceremony and are awaiting word from the priest we'd like to perform the ceremony.  The next big step is finding a reception hall.  The Knot had a lot of information on their preferred venues in Chicago, and they included information we might not have thought about right away, like the maximum number of events that can occur in a night.  So Mary and I decided we'd start by looking through the reception venues on their site last night.  We selected several possible candidates.  We've also got a few specific places we're thinking about that weren't on the Knot.  We're hoping to set up some appointments within the next couple weeks and hopefully within a month, we'll know where the reception will be held!