Marriage Prep Class

So we went to our marriage preparation class yesterday in Auburn Hills, MI at the St. John Fisher Catholic Center on the campus of Oakland University... It lasted 6 hours and 45 minutes (12:45 pm - 6:30 pm.)

Let me guess - you're asking yourself what we learned in all that time?

Well here is the top 5 culminating in the #1 most important thing (according to the Catholic Church) we learned during the session:

5. Have many, many Catholic babies (We MUST procreate and bring the children up in the Catholic church. If we don't, we have broken our vows because we must be open to accepting children into our home.)

4. We speak the same love languages (Physical Touch and Quality Time were our top two "love languages" according to a test we did)

3. Joining finances is hard (We did some case studies to help us learn how to do it, and heard from one of our fellow attendees about how he has his own business and doesn't get a regular paycheck.)

2. Natural Family Planning is 99% effective (No joke according to our session leaders, who in a fit of TMI - Too Much Information - talked about how they used to use "artifical birth control measures" and it nearly ruined their marriage... Alrighty then...)

... and the #1 thing we learned in our pre-marriage seminar yesterday is...

1. Cohabitation = Divorce (According to our session leaders, who by the way are a Corporate Development guy for a hospital and an MBA from the University of Michigan who home schools their children, only 15% of couples who cohabitate before marriage don't divorce. According to Anna, our resident Social Scientist, the data that was used to formulate the 15% number was skewed and was misrepresented by the people leading our session... I have heard this many, many times since the session ended...)

By the way, if anyone wants to borrow our "Contraception: Why NOT" CD, we got an extra copy to share with our friends and family if they are interested...

Honestly though, this session did help us to understand a little more about the marriage process and some things we needed to think about, and so it was worth the time. And, it's done!! YAY! One more thing done and taken care of!!

Talk to you all soon! We're down to less than 11 months until the big day!

Wedding Photographers

Who knew wedding photographers were so expensive? Maybe everyone else, but not me... We have been getting quotes from people with a difference of like $2,000 for the same services... Let's just say right now that we won't be going with the ones that are on the high end of that. Anna's mom said recently something to the effect of "You shouldn't go with the highest costing photographer because you really only pull your wedding photos out every once in a while after the wedding. Once you have kids, you'll be taking more photos of them, and the wedding photos will not come out except for every two or three years just to look at them and put them away again..." Makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, we're on the hunt for wedding photographers right now, so if anyone knows someone in the Michigan City, Indiana area who takes good photos and doesn't charge an arm and a leg, please let us know!

More soon, including honeymoon stuff... (I've been put in charge of that portion of the big wedding festivities, so I'm really looking forward to sharing with everyone where we're going to go and what we're going to do!)