To Russia, With Love

Dre's parents cant speak english well. It makes my heart melt when they try their best to speak to me via telephone. They're so so adorable. It means a lot that they LOVE me even though they have not met me.

It's such a kodac moment the way Dre looks at me when I'm trying my hardest to speak to his parents with the little Russian I know, "Da" (yes), "Nyet" (no), "Prevet" (hello), "Speciba" (thank you). It's one of those "I'm crazy about you" type of looks. It feels good. But I cant wait to meet the future in-laws.

Premarital Counseling

We had our first Premarital Conseling yesterday. It was interesting. The pastor gave each of us a 100 question scantron survey. The questions get intimate but our results will show areas we need most help on. The pastor helps our weaknesses become strengths.

During the conseling session, the pastor asked, "Have any of you read the book, The Five Love Languages?" The pastor looked at me thinking I might have read it, but Dre comes out and says, "Yes, I read it," followed by verbalizing the five types of love languages. That was interesting. It raised a brows. *smile*

When the pastor left, I made fun of Dre for reading more relationship books that I had ever read. He laughed and responded with, "Why do you think our relationship is working?" Exactly! But it also takes two... to tango!

Another thing I learned from this conseling session is the art of cheating in the work place (now also online), followed by a divorce. Usually when a need is not met at home, the need is longed for elsewhere. In this scenario, the husband or wife, would verbalize their problems to the opposite sex (at work, at the gym, online chatting, etc). This leads to an emotional attachment of a need being fulfilled by someone else other than the mate - which thus leads to immoral trysts. So the couple who previously made a commitment to each other no longer functions as a team, but functions as a separate entity void of love and a broken marriage. Marriage that was pure to begin with had become tainted because the couple lost focus on what was really important - their commitment, respect, and marriage to each other.

So the lesson learned is to never to voice out frustrations to any of your friends or to the opposite sex about your mate. True that relationships aren't always riding on cloud 9, but everybody doesn't need to know.

As for me, I'm trying to keep our problems to ourselves. Why does the world need to know? Our business is not the world's business. Likewise, the world's business is not our business. We work on our problems together. I guess this is a reason Dre and I are still together. :-)

Photographers

It's been a difficult process choosing a photographer. Dre, my parents, and I want separate things. To settle, we all decided that we'll have two photographers present at the wedding: one professional wedding photographer, and one professional (non-wedding) photographer who is a friend of the groom.

But one day I went shopping at the mall and there was a display with gorgeous, dramatic, glamorous wedding photos. The monologues in my mind, "I think we have a winner" was automatic. My mom liked it too so we're going with that photographer in addition to Dre's friend. I guess it worked out pretty well.

I want the photos to capture the moment, the emotion, with lots of depth and glamour. Plain pictures are just bla. So are candid amature pictures. I'm just so picky.

As for the florist and the musicians, we're still looking around. Not too thrilled with the ones we've had contact with. So more on that later.

Cake, Cake, Cake

The wedding planning is moving along. We got a lot done in one month of planning. The wedding is in June 2008, but our goal is to have everything done and settled by December 2007. But tomorrow is dedicated to the WEDDING CAKE alone!!!

Believe it or not, I'm not super prepared for tomorrow's excursion. Picking a baker and a wedding cake is harder than picking a wedding gown. We've looked through at least 2,000 cakes online and we didn't like anything. We came up with one design similar to Jessica Simpson's cake (google it) - but even hers is far too flamboyant. We had to tone it down a lot, then we ended up designing our own - taking bits and pieces of what we liked from several other cakes. The cake in this blog is just a general cake for picture's sake - not our dream cake.

There's something wierd about the cake though - we need to fall in love with it. It has to be LOVE at first sight. Even the invitations are an issue - which is why Dre and I are designing pretty much everything because we're extremely picky. We like simple, minimal, modern designs - but not ghetto, cheap looking, flamboyant, or ugly. It's going to be a fun project for us.

I guess we'll see how it goes.

Engagement Bliss

They say that one year is the perfect time span to plan a wedding. They also say that one year of preparation will "go very fast". With all the hoopla from bridal magazines, family, friends, flowers, decorations, invitations, wedding favors, musicians, and the whole prenuptial shebang – how could it ever come sooner?

The perfect proposal, the perfect engagement, the perfect unstained love; what a dream come true! There's an enthusiasm that needs to be fed. The life constantly examined that cannot wait to be seized by one moment not too far away. The anticipations are moments of pure bliss.