Candice’s Weblog

Mark your calendars for 5/15/10!

Ryan and I met with our priest a few days ago and set the date. I’m excited about that. I was worried before because our window of days was slowly closing. It had to be on a Saturday because you can’t do weddings on Sundays in the Catholic church (could you imagine trying to squeeze a wedding in between 5 masses?). That Saturday also had to be after FSU graduation and before Ryan started med school, which was looking like the last week or two of May. Then I had to worry about Tony’s graduation. That left the 8th and the 15th of May. Justine, one of my bridesmaids, goes to a private college and her graduation is May 8th…so there you go. And behind all of that, my best friend Gina is hoping to enter into religious life and she didn’t know when she would be able to take a few days off. I had to decide to just take the date that was available, otherwise we might have to wait a long time. But, I know that God will provide for us. He has already blessed this relationship so much, I know and trust that He will allow Gina to be there, considering how special she is to me. I think it is a good date, I kind of wanted one that was numerically interesting, like 8/9/10 or 5/2/10 or something like that, so 5/15/10 is pretty cool–five one five one oh. But don’t be waiting for your “save the date” cards yet. Its still way early in the game. I think I want to send them out exactly one year in advance.

So not only did we set the date when we met with our priest, we also took this test, its called Focus (or something like that) and it was 156 questions long. We each took it in a separate room. Some of the questions were sort of silly–do you ever worry that your future spouse might hurt you–I mean, if you answer yes to that question, don’t get married. And if you were in a fearful relationship, you would probably lie anyway. But most of the questions were good, like have we discussed and agreed upon certain financial things, or how do we feel about the involvement of our in-laws in our day to day life, etc. Things we need to discuss but just haven’t because the opportunity never arose. The point of the test is not to see how compatible or not you are, but to make the transition into married life as smooth as possible. We go back in a week to talk about the results. It should be an interesting experience because Ryan and I were talking about the questions and our answers and there were a lot of them that we interpreted differently.

More on that later.

Ryan and I were at the mall, killing time. We started at one end of the mall, walked to the other end, didn’t see anything interesting, and walked back. When we got back to where we started, I got a call from my aunt. She said she was at J.C. Penny’s and saw some candles she thought were the right color and she wanted to buy some for us, since they were on super holiday sale. She told me I should try to go there to see if I liked them and I said, “actually, we’re at the mall now, I’ll check and call  you back.” So, Penny’s is on the other side of the mall. We got there and I found the candles, they were beautiful but not quite the right color. However, there were silver ones in the same style that I liked. See, my aunt and I are alot alike…when we see something we like, we want to buy it. And I knew it would mean something to her to be able to get me those candles, so I gave here the option to get the silver ones. She said she would get 4 tall ones and 4 short ones. So I got some too, 4 tall and 4 short. They were very pretty and 70% off. When we were in line, my aunt called me back and said she got them all. Turns out they were even cheaper at the register so she went back and got two more big ones. I decided to keep it to the 8 I had because they had a bunch of the tall candles back there and no more of the short ones.

Looks like I’m doing a great job so far with this whole stuff on sale thing!

Yesterday Mom and I were out Christmas shopping and we saw that this craft store was going out of business, everything in the store 70-90% off! Man, am I getting lucky or what? So far, everything I’ve bought has come from a going out of business store. Maybe I can keep this up and find a florist who is going out of business, and a caterer that is going out of business, and a reception hall that is going out of business! Anyway, back to the shopping. I said, “hey we should go there because maybe they’ll have glass vases on sale.” I was thinking reception decor. They didn’t have any glassware, but we went down the wedding isle and they had invitations galore. I had seen, at a few places, this one type of invitation that I liked. It was like a half sheet of card stock, white with a silver border in a flower motif. I found a box of those and we spent a long time looking for more. Finally we found 4 boxes of 50…200 invitations. We were about to leave but somehow I ended up back in that isle. There were a whole bunch of the one brand of invitations and a whole bunch of these Martha Stewart. I skipped right over the Martha ones…I’m not big on brand names and especially Martha Stewart! But I noticed this one box that had the invitations with this wrapping sort of thing, I don’t know how to describe it, but it was like daisy flower cutouts. I liked it but I decided it was too girlie. I want the wedding decor to be guy friendly, not manly…but not so frilly that guys will be uncomfortable. So I saw this other set, it’s called the Heirloom set and I liked that one too. It is smaller than half a page, which is more of what I wanted. It has a silver scroll like border. And it came with response cards and had other coordinates that matches it. Which could be my downfall because I’m a little OCD about things that match. I want it all! I bought the thank you cards, but I didn’t like the programs and placecard set, the placecard was too plain and the program was trifold.

Ok, so I bought those invitations and I want to write in dark green and overlay it with light green vellum, tied at the top with a dark green bow. In my mind, that looks very classy and it ties all the colors together and will set the tone for the rest of the ceremony.

So, no need to buy a plane ticket yet, the big day won’t be until early summer of 2010. But the details I’m pretty sure of are:

The color scheme is light and dark green

The church will be St. Thomas More Catholic Co-cathedreal

And it will be in 2010

We can’t pick a day until I hear from my friend Gina. She’s going to join the sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist and she won’t know when she’ll be home until she gets there. But she is very special to me and barring some unforseen problems I will do what I can to make sure she’s included.

So I have a beautiful ring, that’s usually the first step in engagement. But before I even got engaged I had my dress. So here’s the story: My parents came up to Tally for my birthday in November. This Wedding dress store next to my work was going out of business, bank liquidation, 55% off everything. My dad had some work to do so it was just my mom and I killing time so I suggested we go check out the dress place, see what was out there and kind of get an idea about pricing. Since the store was closing everything was just off the rack, nothing was for order so we could only choose from the sizes and styles available. We looked through all the ones on the racks, I had a style in mind, but not much was jumping out at me, or it was obviously too small. I found one though, and it was very pretty. I tried it on and…the zipper wouldn’t come up, it was too small. So I came out of the fitting room and put it on the rack of dresses that were to go back out into the store and I saw another dress. It looked pretty and similar to the style I was looking for. I tried it on and it was a perfect fit. Not only that, I looked gorgeous! It was love at first sight and I knew it was the right one. I was like “Mom, do you think I could stay the same size for another year and a half?” and she was like “sure, probably.” I had a bit of a moral dilemma then because, was it right for me to buy a wedding dress when I wasn’t engaged? But I reasoned with myself that if I gained or lost a hundred pounds or (God forbid) we never got engaged I could sell the dress on e-bay and make a profit. So, I told you the dresses were 55% off, and no tax on top of that—I got out of there with a beautiful wedding dress for 225$. I’d give you a detailed description but I’m afraid of who might read this. I can tell you that it is white, and it’s dress shaped.