If you follow me on twitter you know the good news..I found my dress!!! I am super excited about this because I was cutting it a little close {cough major understatement}. Most places need at least 5 months to order the dress and then get alterations done. I really lucked out because I got a dress from a trunk show and the designer was there and decided to comp the rush fee.  woo hoo! I’ve decided I’m not going to share my wedding dress with you yet. I think it will have to remain one of those surprises! {Also, the photos online don’t do it justice at all!} I did decide to share some of my most favorite dresses. I loved each of these tremendously but they were also tremendously out of my budget! I just couldn’t justify getting into debt over a dress I’d wear for less than 12 hours. The one I chose is very budget friendly though, which is absolutely perfect. Here are my dream favorites:

 Rivini, Christos

 Christos, Reem Acra

Sigh, so gorgeous. I’ll be wearing each of these in my dreams.

Those engaged/married: How was your hunt for your wedding dress? Did you get “the one?”

xox

So, to get married in the church Matthew and I have a couple different things we need to do. On Saturday we went to another church to fulfill what’s called the Engagement Encounter. It’s an all day workshop that’s led by two couples- one in their early 60s and the other in their late 30s/early 40s. There were 40 other couples there so it was a BIG group. We listened to topics about family of origin, communication, conflict resolution, finances, dreams and goals, and spirituality. Sounds like it could have been really boring, right? Well, the team couples made it relevant so it wasn’t that bad at all. I loved the younger couple! They seemed so sweet and even though they’ve come across some hard times {the husband has had 5 jobs in 7 years, and has been laid off since last May}, they haven’t let it negatively impact their marriage. Money is supposed to be the biggest reason for divorce in America but they talked about how it doesn’t have to be an issue. Between the talks, we answered reflection questions in our workbooks-girls went to one side and boys on the other. Then we got together as a couple to discuss our answers. While Matthew and I have talked about most of these things, I think it was great to have a more facilitated forum for discussion. We talked about what our family of origin taught us about marriage, what our expectations for marriage  are because of this, how our family of origin communicated and whether we want to communicate this way in our new family. We also talked about the characteristics we each have- extrovert/introvert, good/poor listener, needs time to think/responds quickly, morning/night person, avoids/confront conflict, talkative/slow to speak. Based on our different characteristics we talked about which positive comparisons we have that will help with our communication and any challenges we might need to discuss. One of my favorite activities was when we drew a picture of what our personal dreams and goals look like for the next five years. It was funny because when Matthew and I got together we had a lot of similar ones, I guess as it should be.

my picture: house near the water and family, two kids, Ginger, family dinners, summer vacations, Blogging!

Matthew’s picture: own a house near the water,apparently three kids, two dogs, a home studio, and traveling

and on the other side of his paper: world domination! He kids, of course.

I really enjoyed spending the day “planning our marriage,” instead of planning the wedding. It’s easy to get caught up in all the details but at the end of the day you’re married and that’s the important thing.

Engaged/Married Couples: Did any of you do something similar to this? Did you gain anything out of it? Were there any issues that you had to address after the wedding that you hadn’t talked about before?

xox