The Benedict Castle

Today Darryl and I took a tour of the place we were considering using as our ceremony venue: the Benedict Castle on the grounds of Teen Challenge in Riverside. We had seen a video about it online, and had heard from different sources that it was a really neat wedding location. I had also contacted the castle coordinator, Ardee, and received a bunch of info on it a few months ago. The whole two year thing still earned us a couple of confused remarks, but I figured it was never too early to get the venues straightened out since that pretty much determines everything else about the big day.

One thing that is important to remember about this location is that it is on the grounds of a drug rehabilitation center run by the Assemblies of God church, which is actually one of the best programs in the country. Apparently it's not where the people going through the first phase of rehab are, but the people in the second phase of recovery, meaning that they're off drugs and putting their lives back together. Part of that often involves working on the grounds of Teen Challenge, and I gathered that the two guys who let us in were in recovery judging by their overall demeanor, but they were very helpful and I've heard that the entire staff there is very accomodating and nice. One of them was starting to set up for a wedding that's taking place tomorrow and is the worship leader for their chapel services; he said he would be there the day of our wedding, assuming he's still there in two years, to set up all of the sound equipment and run it for us, which was nice to know. Another nice thing about this location, unlike the Mission Inn chapel next to our reception venue, is that we would have the whole day to set-up and decorate and it's uncommon for them to schedule more than one wedding in a day.

As soon as we walked into the building, we were in love with it. It was actually better than the pictures and video we had seen. For one thing, there is a lot of natural light that shines through these big windows on each side of the room; my pet peeve is nice buildings with crappy lighting. It has a lot of space on the stage for everyone to stand and to have our huppah. They have a piano off to one side for Stella to play, and also an area for our bestman, Johnny, to play a song during the ceremony on his guitar. As you go through the main entrance, there is a double-sided iron and marble staircase that leads to a balcony that looks out over the sanctuary. The castle was built in 1922 and still has a very vintage feel. We didn't get to see the rest of the castle, but it has two other towers and hidden rooms from when it was a house. The whole place just had a really good vibe, and I'm more excited now than ever to get married there.

A Very Long Engagement Goes Long Distance

Today marks week 2 of Darryl living back home in Riverside, almost an hour away from me in Tustin. It's been an interesting week including Darryl getting the chicken pox, my office having a swine flu scare, and me trying to determine how to best manage our new long distance lifestyle on the weekdays that I am away from my betrothed. So far the longest we have been apart since the move is three days, so the time aspect isn't that big of a deal as of now; it's more just the fact that he doesn't live ten minutes away anymore so I can't just come right over anymore, and I can no longer rely on Darryl to come to my rescue for such occurances as locking my keys in my car, fainting at school, killing scary insects, etc. It's still an odd feeling that when I get home from work, unless I'm going to class, I'm staying home and not going out with Darryl for dinner and Starbucks. What's harder to fathom is that this could be the way it is for almost the next two years.

In an attempt to make the best of our new weekday lifestyle, I have begun exploring my many interests, not including as much wedding stuff. Darryl and I joke that I'm working on my MRS. during this period of time, which includes all kinds of things as we think of them, but the one thing that I'm most interested in is cooking. I began pouring over cookbooks, culinary magazines and websites, and even got an app on my (new!) iPhone for Whole Foods recipies. I'm determined to cook as organically and healthily as possible since I don't see much point in cooking whole meals unless I know that what I'm making is better health-wise than getting take-out. So far I have gone grocery shopping once, which was a much more frustrating experience than I had anticipated due to a lack of planning on my part, and have made one meal completely from scratch: whole wheat couscous with tomato and red pepper sauce and tofu. Despite how bad it might sound, it was actually quite good. Tomorrow, if I have time, I'm planning on making ratatouille and eating the leftovers for the rest of the week. My visions of making a different meal every night don't seem very feasible right now, especially when cooking only for myself in a very tiny kitchen that is not entirely my own. When every recipe requires buying all new spices and other stuff most people might have already stocked-up on, and always somehow buying more produce than I can use before it goes bad, it also isn't very cost effective. Hopefully by the time Darryl and I are on our own in our own place I will have learned how to manage a weekly menu and food budget more efficiently. For the sake of the wedding budget I'll have to start improving on the budget part asap.

Now it's time for bed and in the morning it's my day off which means breakfast out with Darryl after he gets out of work! :)

Photography blogs

I have spent the past few hours of my Saturday in Riverside clicking through wedding websites, but especially wedding photographer blogs. I hadn't realized until recently that most up-and-coming wedding photographers all have similarly designed websites and accompanying blogs where they post their most recent work and comment on it. It makes me want to take all of the photo brochures I collected at the last Mission Inn expo and shove them down the garbage disposal. Not only do the weddings look awesomely vintage and diy style, but the pictures really are the best I've seen so far, especially for the price. I am also both appreciative and amused that many of them have the same "no beach photoshoots, please" policy for engagement pictures as I do. Instead they have them in more creative, secluded locations of all kinds.

Jagger Photography: http://www.jaggerphotographyblog.com/

Dana and Jeremy Photography: http://www.dana-and-jeremy.com/

Stephanie Williams Photography: http://stephaniewilliamsphotography.com/blog/about/

The Spanish Art Gallery

Over the past month or so, I've been contemplating some of the major specifics of the wedding. Granted, it is still nearly two years away, but some things are worth deciding on now. One of those things is the guest list. In an attempt to keep our budget managable, we've pretty much settled our guest list of about 100 people. We wish that we could invite more, but hopefully everyone will understand that it is only a result of our status as presently poor college students. The room that best accomodates that number of people for the reception at the Mission Inn is the Spanish Art Gallery. I fell in love with it the first time I walked in. It's a bit narrow, and hopefully the tables won't have to be too close together, but otherwise it's perfect. I can't wait until the next expo in August to check it out more seriously this time. Other decisions pertaining to the reception are still in process, including our choice of food, drinks, cake, etc. I think that with this one big decision made, everything else will start to fall into place.

We have also come up with a new idea for our honeymoon. At the time of the wedding, (God-willing) Darryl will be on his first summer break as a teacher, and he is definitely not planning on teaching summer school that year if possible. I have also begun researching the possibility of becoming a teacher, but since math is my all-time worst subject, and everything else either isn't hiring or is lame, I am considering special ed. My current job has exposed me to a lot of different mental/developmental issues in kids, and I think it's pretty interesting. So if I opt to do that, I will also have my summers free, which means that we can go pretty much anywhere we want for extended periods of time in the summer months. If the timing is right for everything, we would like to spend about a month going up the west coast, ending up in Seattle, WA where we could rent a vacation apartment for about the same cost as a normal month's rent here. The mere thought of it fills me with excitement to the point of giddiness. I have a deep desire to live someplace else, someplace different than here, and this way we could experience lots of different places, not just as a tourist in a hotel, but living as much like a local as possible. Again, a lot could happen between now and then, but right now this is what makes my insides flutter.

June 18th

If all goes as currently planned, two years from today Darryl and I will be married. It is our -2nd anniversary, or pre-anniversary. More importantly, after today the wedding will be slightly less than two years away, which counts for something in my mind. We celebrated by going to Wahoo's fish tacos and Barnes&Noble where I indulged in two hours of wedding magazine browsing (since the new summer issues were released this week) while Darryl increased his ice cream making knowledge with the official Ben & Jerry's guide to ice cream.

Regardless of what happens over the next 1.9ish years, I refuse the allow the engagement to go beyond that date; one way or another, we will be married by June 18th, 2011! *sigh* So close, yet so very far away. It's hard to believe that by this time next year I will have graduated college, Darryl will be looking (or hopefully will have found) a job in teaching, and we'll be making final decisions on not only the wedding plans, but where to live, handling student loans (eek!), etc. And even then, there will be another year to go before the wedding day! I'm positive that it will all be worth it in the end and that one way or another we will have an unforgettable wedding, but obviously the best things in life often require the most patience.

The party, graduations, etc.

I'll admit it, I haven't really felt like blogging in awhile, or have had the time, so I'm kind of playing catch-up...

First of all, the engagement party has come and gone. It was a lot of fun, and was at least pretty close to my original vision.

The thing that made me the most happy was that my parents and our friends got to meet some more of Darryl's family, and everyone seemed to get along well and minlge. Of course, Darryl's ice cream was the biggest culinary hit of the night, so he was rather pleased with himself, as was I. The signature drink, Randy's custom strawberry margaritas, set the tone for the night for sure (especially after we broke out the umbrellas). I couldn't believe how fast it went by, and that I didn't have party stuff to constantly think about. It was all worth it, though, since I think that it made our engagement more official to the family and bridal party members, and was just a good excuse to get together and have some crazy fun. I'm assuming everyone has seen all of the pics on facebook, so I'll just post this one which has consequentally become my desktop wallpaper :)

After the party was over, the main focus became Darryl's future in teaching. As his graduation from Vanguard grew near, he had decided to put all of his eggs in the UCR credentials program basket, since it was the fastest and cheapest program available. Afterall, he needs to secure his career asap so that we can not only afford the wedding of our dreams, but also to be able to live comfortably in our marital bliss. This all became increasingly and unexpectably complicated, however, as people in that school were a lot more disgruntled and less helpful than he expected, causing a lot of stress, frustration, and anxiety for us throughout the admissions process. But finally, after a second interview, writing tests, financial aid applications, and CSET tests, he's officially admitted! Unfortunately, he did not know until about a week ago that he needs to take summer classes, robbing him of the summer break he had been anticipating, but it does give him an excuse to move home and quit UPS a little sooner than he had planned. And oh, how he is looking forward to the day he leaves his five-year career with the Brown. Among other things, he'll be able to have a normal sleep pattern for the first time in years.

With all of the stress and tension building over the past few weeks, I decided that we needed a break from things, so on my day off last week I drove us down to Crystal Cove for a couple of hours in relaxing, beachy surroundings. It seemed to work, at least for that day, to get our minds off of things. Things are looking up now, but sometimes we need a moment to get away and remember that everything has always worked out before, and it's not going to stop now.

The rest of the week was almost completely consumed by graduations. First, there was Jason, the son of Darryl's landlady, who graduated from Crystal Cathedral high school. His graduating class was only 6 people, so that was by far the least painful ceremony I have attended so far. Next, there as Kasey's high school graduation. We couldn't go to the actual ceremony since I got out of work too late, but we stopped by for the after party. Finally, there was Justin's graduation from UCSB, which we were looking forward to for awhile since we've never been to Santa Barbara before, and it was another chance to get away. We had a lot of fun being with almost the entire family in a new place. I must say that Meesa's apartment is the cutest ever, and that plus the neighborhood of Goleta made us want to move more than we could bear. Unfortunately when I looked up the cost of living and job prospects, it doesn't look like a possibility any time soon, but I can dream can't I?! Honestly, anywhere but my present living situation would be nice. As much as I appreciate being able to grow up in a place like Orange County, there is a big part of me that wants to get the heck out of here and on to something different. There are still a lot of things keeping us here for now, though, so we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll just spend a lot of weekends away. Hopefully where we live won't matter as much as the fact that we'll finally be living together in our very own place with our own rules and way of life. Lately I've been looking forward to that even more than the wedding.

Hair

I'm having a bit of a dilemma. So far I am planning on growing out my hair for the wedding, just so I have more style options, but I can't decide if I want to start growing it now or cut it short a couple more times. I like my hair short, and so does Darryl, but I'm starting to miss having long hair. For one thing, I can simply pull it back in a pony tail at work instead of constantly dealing with bobby pins or clips to keep it in place. Also, certain outfits just look better with longer hair. However, certain other outfits look cute with short hair, and it's easier to style, besides at work. Or I could go even shorter than usual just for the heck of it before I grow it out.

I'm up for suggestions.