Update

Okay so far...
1. Got the cake. Finally! We got two flavors and I hope they are as delicious the day of the day as they were when we had the tasting. We went with Decadence Fine Cakes and Confections after sampling baker Dawn's six most popular cakes and, I'm not going to lie, after being quoted a price that was extremely reasonable. Dawn was also really great at designing what I think will be a fun and different cake out of my whack-a-doo crazy pants ideas and photographs. Cross your fingers it turns out photographable.

2. Found my hairdo lady. Although I realized that I am going to need a lot more product and an emergency ponytail holder in case the coastal moisture makes my hair frizzy throughout the day.

3. FInally, finally tracked down our florist. Oskar and I couldn't get in touch with her for a while. She was never around when Oskar would call, and she didn't send the contract like she said she would. We thought maybe she was trying to dump us by ignoring us but as it turned out, she just had a really really old computer and as we discovered when we went to visit her, she didn't really know how to use it. But the contract is signed, the deposit paid so flowers we shall have.

4. Oskar and I are getting married in the church and because of that we were required to go to "Catholic Engaged Encounters" a seminar for couples. We had the option of going to a one day, all day lecture or a weekend retreat. We went to the three day retreat in Montebello, Ca. I didn't think there were going to be sooo many couples. I envisioned that Oskar and I would be with maybe 6-10 couples at the most. There were 60 couples.
The seminar was led by two couples, one that's been married for 45 years, and the other for 10, as well as a priest, Father Gerry. The women stayed in one dormitory building while the men were housed in another.
The setup was pretty basic: the moderators gave a lecture about a topic. They would talk about their experience as a couple, the conflict they experienced, how they worked through it, and what they learned from it. The priest would then chime in about something spiritual and then we had to write in our journals about our thoughts. Then we would join our partner to talk about what we had written. That was the structure of the whole weekend. At the end of the day we would go to the campus church and celebrate Mass. We didn't really interact that much with other couples because the point of the weekend was to focus on our partner. Oskar was of course disappointed with that because of course, he loves talking to people. We did get to chit chat during meals, (cafeteria food bleh) and met a couple who were from Ventura, Karina and Yovani. She was a former Gaucho (class of 01 ) and he went to Cal Poly SLO.
I felt really tired by the end of the weekend, turning 27 that week didn't help either. We are glad we went though. We got to open up about a lot of topics that we are uncomfortable talking about day to day and saw firsthand that there are still people who aren't so cynical about getting married, much less get married in the Church.

5. Oh! We got our wedding bands. That was fun. It took an hour but I gotta say we were both really happy with the service we got and the rings we left with.

6. When I went to Ventura to get my hair trial I went with my mom and my aunt Norma. On a spur of the moment we decided to go to Santa Barbara. I took them to see San Roque and Cabrillo Pavillion. They were impressed and really happy. My mom was super stoked about the reception hall being right on the beach. We also got to see vendors setting up the room for a wedding that afternoon. A party for 200 is going to be a tight squeeze, but I don't think Oskar and I are going to have to worry about that many guests so we will definitely have a lot more room to spread out.

Lastly I know I have been neglecting my pet blog. The last couple of weeks have been pretty overwhelming and fun in a stressful way. I still have to write about my bridal shower and Oskar said he was going to write about his bachelor party which I am a little skeptical about since he doesn't recall half of it.
Have a good Tuesday party people.