Planning a Wedding

Wedding planning is coming along nicely. We're both fortunate that our liturgical traditions free us from having to worry about the ceremony itself, leaving us more energy to plan the party aspects of the weekend. The wedding will be on a Sunday afternoon in May and so far all sorts of people have volunteered to help. I guess this is one result of having fairly public relationship struggles -- now that we have overcome them everyone wants to help us celebrate. It's also a huge relief for our budget. We're paying for this whole thing ourselves, so every bit of help frees up funds to apply elsewhere. It's going to be great.

We met with someone at the Catholic church last week about requirements for getting married. They want us to attend an all day workshop where we will take the FOCCUS survey. At first I was highly skeptical (now just mildly so), and not just because they charge $100+ for it. But after reading more about the tool itself and talking to people about it, it seems like the kind of thing that would probably be a good idea to do before getting married. People say that it brought up discussion topics that they never would have thought to talk about before. I only wish I knew at the time of the meeting that my priest is authorized to give the survey, because getting permission to do it with him would save us some cash. I'll have to ask them about that.