Communication, Customization, Certification

There's been so many things happening on the wedding front this week!

On Monday, Sam and I went to see our pre-marital counselor. Her name seemed very familiar, and I had some suspicions as to who she was. Turns out, I was right - our counselor was my high school math teacher for two years! I was in her class for Algebra II/Trig and PreCalculus. It was initially a very weird experience. She was very nice, and much more pleasant as a counselor than a teacher, in my opinion. (More pleasant as in less strict, more approachable, and not teaching math... LOL.) We talked a lot about my somewhat precarious situation with my mother, who actually still doesn't know the wedding date because she refuses to have anything to do with Sam. Anyway, our counselor gave us some homework (homework again??) - I have to tell my mom (which I was going to do this weekend anyway), and we as a couple have to practice some "feeling-based" communication methods. I thought it was a pretty good session. We have to do 2 more in order to be "prepared" for marriage, so we've got another appointment with her in two weeks.

Yesterday, I finally ordered my gown. Yay! It's the Ebay Courtney dress from the link down below. I'm having it custom ordered to my measurements with some design customizations as well. I'm pretty nervous about the custom designing... I hope it turns out well. I ordered the dress in white with pale pastel blue embroidery and matching corset lacing. I'm hoping the blue turns out to be very light and springy. I think I'll be happy with the color so long as it isn't too bold or bright. Really, the thing that I'm worried about is whether the colored details will look good. I don't want it to look loud... It's nice, though, cuz I can use their online system to see their progress on the dress. Like I know that they started processing my order today, so I can expect to receive the dress by early March. Then I get it bustled, dry cleaned, and pressed, and it's ready for the wedding day!

And today, I finally called the LA Cathedral (Our Lady of the Angels, I think) to get my new baptismal certificate mailed to me. Hopefully, since they're the cathedral, they'll already have all the communion and confirmation information on the back like Deacon John said it should... They must do this kind of stuff all the time, right? The lady on the phone sounded really nice and no-nonsense, so I think it should be okay.

So, other things that need to happen this week in no particular order: tell Mom about wedding, set up another appointment at David's Bridal (this time for bridesmaids), go bridesmaid dress shopping, finish designing and laying out the invitations, do some test prints of invitations. Next week: print and send invitations. That's a lot of invitation stuff. (I should have done most of it this past weekend...) I've got to start tonight!