Quick Answer: Can I Get Ordained Online?? - CaliforniaInfo

can you get ordained online in california

can you get ordained online in california - win

Housewife highlights/Daily shit talk - October 2nd, 2020

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This community has been such a huge help for me personally and it's time I share my story

Part of my healing process is sharing my story with someone. This community has helped me tremendously since I found you guys several years ago and I wanted to share this with you first and say thank you for always being willing to offer some insight and wisdom when I needed it most. I know this is crazy long, so TL;DR is at the bottom for anyone that isn’t up for a good read. But this is the first time I’ve actually written it all out which is therapeutic for me and I am hoping it might even help someone else who just needed to hear someone else’s story. I find that reliving it in my mind can be painful, but each time helps me find even more clarity and confidence that I made the right decision by leaving. So here goes!
I was raised in a very conservative Southern Baptist church and passed up countless social, school and career opportunities including relationships with some amazing people that I otherwise cherished. I grieved over so many non-Christian friends and love interests when I inevitably cut ties and sacrificed my relationship with them on the altar in the name of pleasing my family and friends because I knew I couldn't be "unequally yoked" or I would risk losing everything.
Looking back, the cracks had started to form in 7th grade as I watched my 17-year-old brother and his Christian girlfriend from our youth group get publicly ostracized for having gotten caught sleeping together. They were forced to break up and not long after, he was pushed out of our house and forced to move in with a friend.
I knew in my heart that it was wrong that my freshly 18-year-old brother was now basically homeless, and that I had to choose between losing my brother or standing up to the rest of my family and my church in protest. But feeling completely powerless to do anything and faced with the reality of being completely disowned and homeless myself, I filled my belly with more of the Kool-aid and decided that the grown ups in my church must have been much wiser than me when they told me that they were going this out of love because my brother had to hit rock bottom so that he could inevitably turn to Jesus for help, and this was the best thing for him.
I didn't speak to my "lost" brother for nearly a decade after this, thinking I was helping by cutting him off like the rest of my family. I continued to struggle with confusion and doubt through so many examples of things that felt wrong to me, but instead of getting helpful answers, I was encouraged to "rededicate my life to Christ" at a men's conference in my sophomore year, which I did. I rode that religious high for the better part of a year, feeling like nothing mattered more than my devotion to the faith, as I was ensured that all of my questions would one day be answered when I met Jesus in heaven.
By my junior year of high school, I led the worship band and had plans to go to seminary when I graduated from high school. When I had just barely turned 18, our tiny youth program had diminished to a few junior highers and high schoolers and the man running the program left the church. No one wanted to take over the program, so in a panic, the church leadership decided that the immature and inexperienced 18-year-old kid with plans to attend seminary was their only choice and put me in charge of the program as the interim youth leader. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I took that responsibility so incredibly seriously and gave it everything I had while simultaneously trying to get through seminary through an online program at Liberty University as quickly as possible so I could become a legitimate pastor, all the while, still leading the worship band and working full-time so I could afford school.
I was feeling so burned out and I knew I couldn't sustain that pace, and after two years of that, a pretty new girl my age started attending our church. She started showing interest in me and I was admittedly smitten. Because she was a Christian and we met in the church, everyone seemed approving, so we started dating. She became my whole life and everything else started to fall apart.
She was a new Christian and she naturally had lots of questions. I, being the educated, experienced and wise Christian that I was at 22(/s), decided to use my vast knowledge of the Bible that I gained from a year at seminary to answer all of her questions. I decided that I wasn't going to give her the typical church answers designed to get you to stop questioning things, but actually answer as honestly and as well-informed as I could. But she questioned everything, including why our church didn't allow any leaders to drink alcohol, which she didn't see any problem with, and why we didn't condone speaking in tongues, or how the many examples of sexism, racism and genocide that the Bible seemed to be filled with were actually not those things.
I tried to answer everything, but I had no answers for some of the harder questions. But since I had been told in countless Sunday sermons that "you didn't have to check your brain at the door to be a Christian," and that "God's truth would stand the test of fire," I was very confident in my ability to find the answers in the Bible and I kept digging. When I couldn't find a satisfying answer, I took her questions to the wisest Christian leaders I knew. When their answers didn't satisfy, I was faced with the options to either admit to myself that this stuff made no sense to me, or admit defeat and finally give her the lame church answer that "God would reveal the answers to us when we meet him in heaven," or when she wasn't buying the lame answers I had come up with, that "He would reveal it to her in His time." It took everything I had to keep pretending to this woman I had grown to love, and I still had to wrestle with these questions in my own mind, even if she had given up on getting a real answer.
After dating for another year, we got married at 23. We teamed up to lead the youth group together and I continued to lead the worship band. We decided a few years later to try for a baby and we found out my wife was pregnant a few months later. I felt on top of the world and we thought life was good. I still hadn't given up yet on finding those answers, and as my wife grew in her faith, she came up with even more questions that I couldn't answer, but I was still in seminary and learning so much, so I felt like they would come eventually, and I continued digging deeper into the Bible. I completed a survey of the Bible where we read it cover to cover in a year alongside commentary from the great Christian scholars and surprisingly very outdated books from the 1960s. I kept digging, but the more I learned, the more questions I had myself. I kept studying while expressing my own doubts and uncertainty to my wife. We continued preparing for the baby and I fell more in love with my wife and our developing little girl every day. I was so confident in God's love and it felt like validation that every choice I ever made was the right one and was sanctioned by God himself.
Then, a few months later, we miscarried. All I can say about this is that we were absolutely and utterly devastated. I couldn't understand why an all-powerful God would allow his to happen and it really made me question God's goodness. I had heard all of the church answers, and I shamefully recalled every time I had given them out to people who were really grieving from actual hurts and losses in the past. Now that I felt this kind of loss, every answer felt like an insult. For me, the only question that mattered was how could God take our baby?
After around 6 months, we decided to try again, and to our joy and amazement, my wife was pregnant again a few months later. But I still hadn't forgotten that feeling of betrayal and anger when God allowed our helpless, innocent child to die.
I continued digging with more passion than ever before, driven by the pain that I was, in hindsight, still trying to cope with. That moment that we sat in the doctor's office in silence as our doctor struggled to find the baby's heartbeat was seared into my heart and I could never forgive God for how alone and devastated I felt at that moment. Where was He then?
Suddenly, I realized that if God was all-powerful and all-knowing, then He must be evil to allow this to happen. The only other explanation I could see was that He knew something I didn't that I just wasn't seeing. So many words and stories from sermons echoed in my heart about God taking away something we cherish so that He could give us something even better. Or, I thought that maybe He was testing my faith, like He did with Abraham and Isaac.
But I refused to believe under any circumstances that any amount of wisdom or faith gained by this would justify killing my daughter. So, that left me with two realities; either God was evil and took my baby to teach me some bullshit lesson, or He was in fact not all-powerful and couldn't do anything to save my baby.
The stress of school and all of my responsibilities at the church was too much to bear while trying to cope with this loss, and my wife and I finally decided that our dwindling youth group of 5 kids which was now made up of children ages 9-15 was not growing and it was time for someone else to take over because it was more than we could bear.
Of course, no one in the church wanted this responsibility or volunteered to take over until we could recover, and our shrinking church membership couldn't afford to pay a youth pastor, so after keeping it going for as long as I could, we finally had to sit down with the kids and explain to them why we were shutting down their youth group. Several of them cried and I felt so betrayed in their behalf by a group of believers who claimed to love youth and wanted to see the program grow.
A few months later, at just 25 years old, I was approached by the pastor of the church to see if I would consider becoming the pastor and taking over after he retired. He knew I was young but he felt that I was the shining example of the type of product their church wanted to produce. In his eyes, I was a well-adjusted young man with a passion for God's people and a seminary education from a prestigious Christian university.
I knew in my heart that I was having some serious doubts, but the pain and struggles were still pretty fresh and I convinced myself that I just needed to allow God time to work on me and that the answers would come eventually. I asked if I could pray about it and discuss it with my wife. He was on a time crunch since he was planning on announcing his retirement within the year and we had so much to prepare if I accepted.
He had discussed it with the church leadership and they were on board. He said they needed an answer soon so they could arrange my ordination and begin the process of nominating me to the governing body of the church for a vote within a few months.
After a week or two of praying and discussing, I decided to consider it. I let them know my answer and they started preparing me to take over the church immediately.
I started meeting with the pastor regularly and the church sent me to multiple leadership meetings sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. I read dozens of books about church leadership and growing a church and met with pastors from other SBC churches in the area. I found a few new mentors and after some time, I felt like I could trust some of them enough to express my questions to one in particular at a private meeting. He didn't really know what to say, other than to express his condolences for my loss and to reaffirm God's calling on my life and to encourage me to not give up and God would reveal His plan in some amazing way.
I decided to have faith and trust God and a few months later, I was being ordained by the church in a special ceremony that I can only liken to a budget wedding, complete with a reception and cake afterwards. Several of my mentor pastors were there and all of my friends and family were invited, many of them driving in from several hours outside of town. I received nothing but praise and validation from everyone as I was fulfilling what they were convinced was God's purpose for my life.
During this transition, I wasn't officially hired on yet at the church, so I was still working my 8-5 job on the side. I had been working at a local medical clinic as an EHR Admin, and I really liked my job and the people I worked with, and the paycheck was pretty decent so I knew it would be hard to leave, but I also knew I was fulfilling God's purpose for my life by leaving, and I began to make plans for doing so.
Meanwhile, my Christian boss and I had became pretty close and we talked about almost everything. Before I left, he and his wife had found out that she was pregnant with their 3rd child after 7 years. At first, she was very happy and excited to be pregnant and spent her first trimester telling everyone she knew and preparing for the baby. They were both very excited and so were their two older boys. But then, at the start of her 2nd trimester, his wife started to show signs of deep depression, and in her 3rd trimester, the baby was at a high-risk for reasons I can't remember, and she was placed on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.
She was taking it very hard and with her already debilitating depression, within a month, she had made her first attempt to kill the baby and was placed on suicide watch.
I watched my godly Christian boss who I had looked up to unravel while he desperately tried to balance single-handedly caring for his two young boys and his suicidal wife, trading shifts with any family that were available to sit with his wife and make sure she wasn't left alone for fear that he would come home and find her and the baby dead on the floor.
Finally, their baby girl was born happy and seemingly healthy and his wife's depression almost immediately subsided. He also left the clinic and started a new job that would provide better for his family's unique needs. As it later turned out, their needs were going to get much more severe, so this job change was essentially a life saver for him. We attributed all of this to a miracle and an example of God's goodness.
In the meantime, the church leadership voted to nominate me to the church for an official vote to hire me as pastor part-time since the church was struggling financially. It turns out that the previous pastor had already cut his salary several times and even did so recently so that the church could afford to pay me a part-time wage during the transition. The church membership voted to hire me on and allowed me to take over as pastor of the church on a meager salary of $900/month. My wife and I really needed the money and we had decided that I would keep working my full-time job to support us financially with plans for me to quit once the church could support us fully so that I could focus on my full-time pastoral role.
I was writing sermons and still leading the worship band. We were really praying for growth in the church and we started several ministry programs designed to increase growth in the church by focusing on evangelism and discipleship. Once again, I was the youngest guy in the room who felt completely out of place as I taught people three times my senior about life and God. Meanwhile, my feelings of doubt and resentment toward God only grew and I knew I was a complete imposter. I had never felt so out of place and so guilty in my life. At this point, admitting those feelings would have likely meant losing my job, and I couldn't risk that since we had become reliant on my income from the church. It turns out that having a baby was surprisingly expensive (hooray for US Healthcare!). We welcomed our new baby girl to the world in 2012 and I had never felt happier or more burned out.
The next several months were really difficult as they are for any new parent. It tested my strength, my sanity, and even my marriage. My wife went through about 4 months of post-partum depression that became pretty severe, but she hid it pretty well and I was clueless at how bad it had gotten. I knew she was depressed, but I didn't understand why and hadn't the slightest idea of what to do about it. I was so busy with my new responsibilities as a dad and as a pastor while continuing to work full-time that I didn't have the capacity to be there for my wife when she needed me most and I live with that regret to this day. She's the love of my life and I owe her everything.
We managed to survive the toughest months while my wife stayed home to take care of our daughter. Our home life continued to improve as our hearts grew and found a new capacity for love with each new day. But my guilt also grew while I continued to wrestle with feelings of inadequacy in my role as pastor of my church. My doubts and anger at God continued to grow as well. But the crazy schedule and the love we had for our newborn daughter were enough to distract me from the pain I was still dealing with.
I felt like I was being pulled in a thousand different directions but I did my best to give everyone all I had and buried myself in my pastoral work. We had tried everything to grow the church membership before we ran out of money and were forced to close the church's doors. I was running out of time, energy and options. I was convinced that the reason the church wasn't growing was because God knew I had doubt and unbelief growing in my heart. I preached so many sermons that I felt God had burdened my heart with like watching for the wolf among the flock and I was convinced it was His way of telling me, "I know you're a fraud, and I'm going to make sure they all know, too." The guilt was real and it kept me up late at night even when my newborn daughter didn't. I told myself that I shouldn't even be there, and I had unintentionally become the kind of person I most despised; a hypocrite.
After many sleepless nights and late night talks with my wife, I knew I had to find a way to quit. We made the decision to trust God and that He would provide for us as long as we were faithful. We convinced ourselves that we would find a way to make it work and I just had to stick it out as long as it took for that to happen.
We knew my wife couldn't work since someone had to watch the baby while we couldn't afford $900/month in daycare and any job she found would likely barely cover the daycare cost alone (USA, sigh), so it was up to me to somehow come up with the difference. So, I started to look for a better paying job so that I could quit my job as pastor at the church before God's wrath came down on my family, all because of my unbelief. I was wracked with guilt and shame and I started to hate my job, my church, my schooling, all of my religious experience up to this point, and I just wanted it all to be over. And still, God had remained silent and provided no answers.
Every week, we had an altar call (that "come to Jesus" moment you see in some American churches after the sermon where the worship band plays a song and the pastor talks over it and invites you to come forward so people can pray over you in the back of the room). But this week, something happened to me. Normally, I would have just finished delivering my sermon and while the band played, I would do my best to tie the message to a big emotional appeal for people to commit their lives to Christ. But that week, in that moment, I felt a cold chill run down my spine and I started shaking. All of the feelings of guilt, shame, anger, fear and inadequacy bubbled up to the surface, and I felt like I was going to explode. I tried so hard to keep it together, but with people crying and the music playing, it was such an emotional moment and my exhaustion was too much to keep my composure.
There was an empty row of chairs to left, so I quickly turned off my microphone and sat down. All at once, all of the emotions I had been fighting against for 4 years came to the surface, and I buried my face in my hands and just sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed and I didn't care who saw me. The band kept playing and people kept singing, and I swear, I must have sat there and cried for a full 10 minutes before I finally regained my composure enough to stand up and ask everyone else to be seated.
We went through our usual routine of several more songs, a few quick announcements and a final song to send everyone out the door and afterward, a bunch of the people in the church came up to me. Some just gave me a quick hug and thanked me for the sermon. Some told me that this one was especially powerful for them and they really needed to hear it (I don't even remember what the topic of the message was, and I doubt many of them do, either). One of the older dads in the church just gave me a squeeze on the shoulder and said, "You're a good kid. I just want you to know that I'm proud of ya." And I died a little more inside, knowing that none of them will feel this way when I reveal to them what I had really been struggling with.
So, I continued with the plan my wife and I had me up with. I looked for another job while continuing to work at the church and the clinic. I had a few leads, but nothing panned out. We live in a small town and no one was hiring for someone with my skill set in IT that was willing to pay more then I was already making at the clinic. So, I decided to try my hand at consulting at the encouragement of a supportive co-worker and after a long dry spell, I finally found a job at a health group in California that was willing to pay me twice my current salary! My wife and I were super excited, even though it meant I would be flying out every Sunday and wouldn't be home until late on Friday, which meant I would be lucky to see my wife and baby girl for more than one day out of the week. Given my current workload, I was confident I could handle the pressures of the job schedule, but nothing could have prepared me for the toll that being away from my family so often would take on me.
Meanwhile, my old boss at my IT job called me one day just to talk to someone. It was really great to hear from him and I told him all about my new job in CA and how much of a blessing it had been for my family. He was really happy for me but I could tell something was wrong. He admitted he called to catch up but mainly because he needed to talk to someone because he was starting to unravel.
After he had started his new job a few years back, everything seemed to be going great for his family and their new baby girl. But after a few years, they started noticing that his daughter was lagging behind in her development. They had taken her to see several specialists and she was eventually diagnosed several years later with a rare disorder that caused her to lose developmental progress until she was basically a vegetable, and it would eventually claim her life, likely before she turned 20. She was now 6 years old, she was completely bed-ridden and needed a feeding tube to survive, requiring constant supervision to make sure she didn't choke on her own saliva and drown since she could no longer even swallow. To make matters worse, he and his wife were struggling in their marriage and his great salary from his new job didn't even come close to covering the cost of the constant care his daughter needed and they were already on the brink of financial ruin.
He broke down and confessed to me that he was so devastated by all of this that he secretly wished his daughter would just die so they could move on as a family. I listened to this broken man tell me that he wished his daughter would die, and I shamefully wondered for a brief moment if the reason God had allowed my wife to miscarry our first baby was to spare us from something horrible like this.
But that thought was immediately stopped in my head when I wondered why He would save us from such a terrible situation, but not my boss and his family, a godly man who was faithful and devoted and did everything in his power to be a good example to his family and the people around him. As I sat and listened to his story, I was convinced that God was either powerless to stop this, or if He was all-powerful, then He must be a complete asshole.
By now, my daughter was 3 and my wife was pregnant with my son. She was nearing her third trimester and I had just accepted the offer for my new job. As hard as it was going to be, we knew this was the right direction for us and I had to seize this opportunity because there wasn't going to be another one like it anytime, soon.
The church had been doing well financially and was finally able to offer me the full-time position as pastor, but I turned it down not long after my break down in front of the church.
Many of the church leaders were understandably upset and angry that I was passing up this offer as they had been working on selling the idea to the church body for about a year to have me take over the role of senior pastor and this was a major change from the plan we had already agreed on.
I explained that I had been having some feelings of doubt and needed some time to work through them. I told them I was planning on stepping down entirely and would be working on transitioning all of my responsibilities at the church as quickly as possible. We made a plan right then and there to keep me on until they were able to find a new pastor and transitions all of my responsibilities.
Over the course of the next year, they did eventually find a new pastor and I helped get him started at the church before I found and accepted my new position in CA.
Unfortunately, they hired a man that I told them I felt was probably not a good fit, and he turned out to be a disaster, so they let him go. I told him I had already accepted a new position and I couldn't stay any longer, so when I left they were without a pastor and I was finally free.
My wife and I tried going to other churches for a while before we decided that we just needed a break from church altogether. We never stopped sending our tithe of 10% of our gross salary to our old church for that that God would remove His blessing and punish us. Until we one day realized what we were doing was crazy and we didn't want to continue supporting what we felt was a dying church that was doing nothing good for the community.
We decided instead to just put it into a savings account until we decided on a church where it would be used to help people. With my new job, I was making more money than I had ever seen in my life and it added up to quite a bit very quickly.
The longer we spent away from the church and some of the more toxic people I had grown up with in the church, the more clarity we found. I started reading secular books and learned so much about myself and the church and how it was contributing to my depression and anxiety.
I eventually started medication and counseling for my depression and it has made a world of difference for me and my family who has to put up with me.
My job was going so well, that they allowed me to work from home full time with only a few weeks of travel each year for upgrades and training. I got to be there for the birth of both my kids and I have been able to be the father and husband I always wanted to be. I've been able to encourage and support my wife in restarting her career and even proudly watched her come to her own conclusions about finding her own path towards happiness without the church.
I've never been happier in my life, and I no longer fear God's wrath might come down on us if we don't tithe. I've laughed and cried tears of joy more times than I can count and I finally feel like my life is mine to enjoy and share freely with the people I care about.
The process of deconstruction has been long and difficult for me but I have come to terms with it more and more everyday. And it wasn't until I felt like I had exhausted all possible avenues of finding answers and spent countless hours reading the Bible that I really started to find that no one had the answers because they didn't exist. It was all a big show and for a time I was the main performer. I'm not proud of that fact, and I had to apologize to some people and forgive others on my own. But I can be proud that I had the intellectual integrity to question the status quo and the moral integrity to leave as soon as I was able to do so while hurting as few people as I possibly could.
As for our tithe savings, we did eventually find a place that seemed to be making a difference in the community. It happened to be a church, and in hindsight, I wish we had given it to a charity, but I am proud that we not only gave it to a place we felt would use it for good, but we also finally realized that we didn't have to fear God's wrath for not sending our money to the church.
I'll be honest, for the first year or so, I was still pretty nervous that God might just be waiting around the corner to “remove His blessing” from us, and every once in a while I will still get that paranoid feeling for a moment, but then I just focus on how amazing these past 5 years have been and how much happier we have been since we left the toxic environment that I had grown up in.
What has helped me the most was finding so many other people who were either going through or had been through what I was experiencing. It was really cathartic to find so many others who had already been through this process years ago and that the hurt, confusion, anger, frustration, and especially fear I was feeling were common themes. It's easy to feel like you're alone when you’ve walked away from your entire support system. I’m not saying a subreddit can replace that by any stretch, but this has been the best resource for non-judgmental insight and encouragement I have found outside of paying a counselor, which I also highly recommend.
If you’re just starting down this path and trying to find your own answers, I encourage you to stick around and talk to these amazing people. No one is going to tell you that this will be easy or give you 5 steps to figuring this all out. But you will find so many others here who were in your shoes until recently and others who made the choice to leave decades ago. Some are still in the process of finding a way out, and you can see all of the pain and uncomfortable questions we've had to wrestle with as part of the process of leaving Christianity.
This deconstruction process can be really painful as it often results in losing relationships you once valued so dearly. I personally lost most of my friends save one who was awesome enough to stick it out with me and eventually ended up leaving on his own as well. It can really hurt to suddenly be alone, but then you will finally see how unhealthy and damaging some of those relationships were while you tried to meet their expectations of who you should be. It wasn’t until I finally drew a healthy boundary that I started to see them for what they were and began the process of healing. It took leaving for me to see that they aren’t actually capable of doing what they are so proud to claim to do so well, which is loving people as they are and not as they want them to be.
You will find during this process that the people you once held in high esteem who seemed so wise or holy are in actuality just as human and as deeply flawed as the rest of us. In fact, for many of us, this realization is what led us down this path to begin with.
But hang in there. This can stir up so many bad memories and it may feel totally wrong at first, but one day, you will look back on this moment and realize that the cost of leaving, as difficult and painful as it felt at the time, was nothing compared to what you would have lost by staying.
To sum this crazy long story up, I am so grateful I found this community shortly after we left the church in 2015. You guys have been such a huge support when I was feeling like I couldn’t do it on my own. Thanks for reading and I love you guys!
TL;DR
Grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist church. Was groomed to become pastor of the church from a young age. Met my wife in church who was a new Christian and challenged me to ask questions about my beliefs that I couldn’t answer. Ended up attending seminary and reading through the Bible and found more questions instead of answers. Got married, wife got pregnant and miscarried causing me to question God’s goodness, God said nothing. Watched God utterly destroy my ex-boss and his family because reasons. Trusted that God would provide answers, He didn’t. Moved forward on faith, anyway. Ended up becoming pastor of said church and was now emotionally, morally and financially dependent on church. Felt completely paralyzed with fear and doubt and couldn’t leave until my wife and I decided it had to happen and I searched desperately for a better job. Found a job that paid double, left the church, feared God’s wrath for leaving, God did nothing. Realized shit happens to everyone no matter how faithful they were and that I had been lied to my whole life. Finding healing through counseling and now my happiness and joy are something I find through life’s amazing wonders and my beautiful family. And I couldn't have done it without you wonderful people who encouraged and helped me when it felt like I couldn't do it on my own. Thank you!
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Budget Breakdown: $11.5k SoCal backyard DIY vegan wedding!

Date: May 26, 2019 (engaged 5-26-18)
Location: Thousand Oaks, CA (west of LA)
Guests Invited: 88; Attended: 64.
Original Budget: $10K
Final Cost: ~$11,500
Our goal was "quirky but stylish," whatever that means :D We wanted to pay for everything ourselves and were big on the DIY front. (Here's a picture of almost all of our DIY projects, 3 days before the wedding.) I was also pretty firm on axing any "wedding tradition" that I didn't love (e.g. bouquet toss, send-off, matching bridesmaid dresses, traditional ceremony). We both wanted a fun party with people we love, good food, and fun games.
We ended up getting a couple of super helpful gifts (described below) that allowed our budget to be $3-5K less than it would have been otherwise, so I realize some of this won't apply to everyone! That said, I found these budget breakdowns super helpful in planning, so I hope I can pay it forward!
Here's the album link. I'll also try to link to individual pictures where appropriate.

Where we saved:

- VENUE. Super helpful gift #1: we got married in MIL and SFIL's backyard, and the reception spilled into the house since it rained. SFIL is a building contractor and he and MIL did so much work to make their (already beautiful) backyard even more perfect for our wedding. They didn't do any work on the house other than decorate a little, but it was already perfect.
- attire: Super helpful gift #2: my mother made my wedding dress. So that was awesome. We went to a few bridal stores where I tried things on, and when I found "the one," she took a bunch of pictures and then stitched together a few patterns to make something similar.
- guest list: 2/3 of the list was DH's extended family who all live in SoCal. Even though we live on the east coast, it was much easier to have us, my parents and brother, and our ~15 friends fly/drive in from out-of-state than vice versa.
- flowers and decor: we made all of our flowers. DH crochets and I knit. This was the single most time-consuming project but also the one I'm most proud of. He also learned calligraphy for the other decor, and I'm super stoked to now have wedding decor that I can display around our apartment.
- music: no DJ, just a Spotify playlist that I'm still obsessed with and two bluetooth speakers. We didn't have dancing because DH does not like it. But I still danced on the patio.
- invites: DH designed both our electronic save-the-date and our Vistaprint invitations.
- website: I already had a personal squarespace website for my work with the domain www..com, so I made a private page with the url /and
- officiant: I had my best friend / bridesman get ordained, and DH and I wrote the ceremony.

Budget Breakdown:

Food + Reception
  • Catering: $2708 + $300 tip. Good food was one of the two things we prioritized. It had to be all vegan. DH and I are the only vegans in our family, so we also wanted it to be outside the box: something guests would eat and think how delicious it was, versus thinking how vegan it was, if that makes sense. You might have seen my post a couple months ago about my first caterer quitting on me because he left the business. Luckily we found a taco truck catering company who could do all vegan entrees, and they were a huge hit. There were two chefs, and we tipped each $150.
  • Appetizers: $125. We got lumpia (Filipino egg rolls) from a restaurant for $90 and assorted veggies, dips, hummus, and pita from Whole Foods. There was also chips, salsas, and guac included with the catering.
  • Alcohol: $477. We went to Trader Joe's, Costco, and Bevmo to get wine (2 whites, 2 reds, 2 rose) and beers. There were two wines that I specifically wanted (hence the three different stores) and the rest we just shopped around for.
  • Dessert: $480 for 250 miniature donuts in 5 flavors from a vegan donut shop. One of DH's little cousins heard there would be donuts and actually brought ziploc baggies from home to stuff donuts in for later. I did not know this until hearing it from a friend who witnessed it, but I think it's hilarious and wish I had been as clever when I was 10.
  • Cake: $125 + $20 tip. Oh. My. Goodness. This cake was amazing. Neither of us were too crazy about spending money on a cake and figured everyone would eat donuts so it would be just for show. On a whim, I emailed this person who had baked a cake for the donut shop and had some other cool cakes on her Instagram. GUYS, OUR CAKE WAS SO CUTE. I sent her an idea and a couple of bad inspo pics, and she absolutely delivered. AND it was delicious. So the lesson here is, sometimes trusting people turns out really great.
  • Rentals: $1400. We rented long tables, chairs, tablecloths, coffee pots, wine glasses, and heaters. I was hesitant to splurge $75 on the patio heaters but it dropped to 50 degrees that evening so I don't regret it.
  • Photographers: $2850. It was $2400 for wedding (8hrs with second shooter), $450 for engagement. This was our other big priority, and I am so glad we went a little above our initial budget of $2000. I absolutely love all of our pictures, and they got them to us ten days after the wedding. We were in the middle of our honeymoon when we got the email. It was astounding.
Decor + Paper Products
  • Flowers: ~$125? Plus many many hours. As I said, we made all of our own flowers: I knit the centerpiece ones, and DH crocheted cherry blossoms. He ordered manzanita branches on Etsy, and I saved all of our salsa/jam/pickle jars for eight months. We spent a lot of time on them, but we loved how they turned out.
  • National Parks Seating Chart: $50. I got the digital file from Etsy for $5 and had it printed at Staples. (picture)The rest was ink stamp, handwritten index cards, nails, and yarn. We did this because our honeymoon was a national parks cross-country road trip (which we've done before).
  • Other decor: ~$50. I didn't keep track of the many many trips to Michaels and Joann's that I made. I bought copper buckets from Michaels, purple and blue plastic utensils from Party City, and used those as centerpieces. They had number stickers on them, and I printed out national parks posters on index cards, glued them together, and Macgyvered some card holders from spare floral wire. I also painted a bunch of old Ikea frames with copper paint and used them to display menus, signs, etc. DH made some watercolor flower paintings and learned calligraphy to write some of our favorite quotes on them.
  • Invitations: $100. Both STDs and invites were designed by DH. The STDs were sent on Paperless Post and the invites were ordered on Vistaprint.
  • Favors: $10 + time. Booklets of our favorite recipes. Compiled in Microsoft publisher, printed on index cards, and put together with rose gold binder rings from Amazon. Took a couple afternoons but I'm pleased with how they turned out.
  • Card box: $12. Bought a wooden box from the Container Store and painted it using paints we already had.
  • Guest books: $0. We had guests sign two cookbooks that we already had (Miyoko Schinner's Homemade Vegan Pantry and Thug Kitchen).
Attire
  • Suit: $0. DH used the suit he already owned and had worn once. He bought a new shirt, shoes, tie, and socks but says he'll wear them to work so he doesn't count it in the budget.
  • Dress: $150 for shipping. The dress itself was made by my mother, as a gift. We went to some bridal stores last August and she took photos of the dress that I found (which was $2500). As she lives in the midwest, she would periodically mail me mock-ups of the bodice which I would try on over Skype, pin according to her instructions, and mail back. The $150 comes from the shipping costs. Two weeks before, I received the completed dress but there was one thing that still needed to be fixed. It cost $126 to Fedex it back in a giant archival storage box.
  • Accessories: $90. Shoes were $20 Aerosoles, earrings and hair comb were $70 from Etsy.
  • Hair, makeup, nails: $560. I did my own makeup (and it was not as stressful as it could have been thanks to sugarfreemua!) Hair was $60 for my trial, $120 day-of, and $190 for my two bridesmaids, + $70 tip. Nails were $165 for four of us. I am soooo glad I splurged on hair because the one thing I didn't like about my engagement photos was how my hair looked (I did it myself, and didn't do too much to it). On the flip side, I am obsessed with how my hair looks in all my wedding photos.
Ceremony
  • Marriage License: $98
  • Officiant: $0. I asked one of my best friends and he got ordained online.
  • Veil and cord: $50, bought from Etsy (more on this later)
Other
  • Weekend accommodations: $1650 for a VRBO (house rental) from Friday - Monday, where my MOH, bridesmaid + bf, and DH and I stayed. It was also our homebase for the bachelor(ette) parties on Friday night and where we took getting-ready photos. And there was a party boat - big plus.
  • Transportation: $166 for a Lyft event code. We put in $500 and allotted $25 per person to/from the important locations: wedding venue, rehearsal dinner, VRBO, and bachelorette party locations.
​
Total Cost: $11,596.

Things I didn't include:

  • rings: mine was $650 and DH's was $250.
  • DOC: This was a gift from MIL as the DOC was someone she worked with.
  • bachelor(ette) parties: My bridesmaids reserved a table at a club and got bottle service. I was not allowed to see any of the receipts, so in exchange, I covered all of our wedding weekend accommodations.
  • gifts: I bought watches for DH and myself and fanny packs for my bridesmaids and myself (which we wore to the club, lol). DH got gifts for his brothers, and we are also giving thank you gifts to our parents.
  • last-minute fixes: It rained, so FIL got pop-up tents to cover the ceremony area. This was probably the biggest expense that we didn't cover. But MIL and her sisters host a lot of events, so between them, they'll probably be able to use the tents in the future.
  • honeymoon: we drove out to California and our honeymoon was a cross-country national-parks road trip back home. By my count, we spent about $2200 total ($716 on gas both ways and $922 on accommodations which were a mix of campsites, Airbnb's, and one hotel when a thunderstorm scared us out of camping for a night),

Takeaways

  • We spent a lot of time on little things, but we don't regret it. Yes, those flowers took all of our free time for basically a whole year but my bouquet sits in a vase on our dining room table and every day it makes me smile. It took us weeks to write our <10-minute ceremony, but it made even DH's stoic best friend shed some tears.
  • But we also gave up some things we wanted, and don't regret that either. e.g. for favors, we were adamant that they should be food or no one would take them, and I decided on hopia (a Filipino dessert pastry) to incorporate more of my family's tradition. But after some months of searching, I realized there was no easy and inexpensive way to get 150 pieces of vegan hopia. And once I made the recipe book favors, I realized that doing hopia in addition would be devoting far more time and resources to something I didn't care a ton about.
  • It was multicultural in just the right ways. Throughout the planning process, I was a little worried that the wedding would be - for lack of a better word - too "white". The majority of the guest list was DH's family, as my extended family is all in the Philippines and couldn't come, and MIL had a much stronger hand in planning since it was at her house. Ignoring my background felt inauthentic, but having a fully Filipino wedding also felt inauthentic: I was born and raised in the Midwest and grew up eating Filipino food but have never lived in the Philippines or speak the language. So as a surprise, we included a traditional Filipino veil-and-cord ceremony. This is typically a religious ceremony since most Filipino weddings are Catholic, so we changed the wording around it to make the veil and cord symbolize commitment to each other, rather than to God. We also served lumpia as an appetizer (and it was the most popular food of the night, hands down) and included some Filipino recipes in our recipe book favors. This ended up being just enough - most of my ties to Filipino culture come down to food anyway.
  • Things didn't go according to plan, and that was okay! Even for a type-A perfectionist like me. Our wedding day was the one day in a 10-day stretch that had any rain in the forecast. On the days leading up, we kept vacillating between keeping everything (ceremony and reception) outside, covering them with tents, moving the dinner tables inside, and on and on. The day before, the tables were delivered and we chose to put them inside the house. On the morning of, the rain had moved to the morning and disappeared from the evening forecast, so DH made the executive decision to move everything back outside. Literally ten minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start, the rain started coming down. Unbeknownst to us hiding in a back bedroom, SFIL and other family members started running around, putting the pop-up tents back up over the ceremony area, covering the dinner tables with plastic. We started the ceremony ten minutes late, I stepped in a puddle, but everything was still great. The moment we walked back down the aisle after the ceremony, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Later in the evening, my bridesmaids and I had a little bonding moment as we took turns holding a hair dryer to my shoes in the bathroom.
All in all, it was an amazing, fun, memorable experience, and I am so glad that it's over :D Feel free to ask me for more details about anything!
submitted by CatyCosine to weddingplanning [link] [comments]

25 years ago today I was confirmed Catholic. Thanks in part to William Shatner. Here is my conversion story [long]

25 years ago today I was confirmed Catholic. Thanks in part to William Shatner. Here is my conversion story [long]
[Actually the Shatner thing was an aside. As you'll see, the truth is I had an insane amount of topmost catechetical opportunities and resources made available to me and yet I was, embarrassingly now, a skeptic for as long as I was.]
"Conversion of the skeptic"
Michael Malak
Written: February 7, 1995 - May 27, 1995
[But square bracket material, which provides 25-year hindsight, added September 4, 2019. Also the names of all non-clergy people have been deleted. I tried to retain 100% of the personal stuff, but there are a couple of sentences I did end up deleting.]
Confirmed: September 5, 1994
From atheism to confirmation took 17 months. I was baptized, raised, and even confirmed as a Missouri-Synod Lutheran. Like many teenagers, I stopped going to church with my parents. I was about 14. I became agnostic, preferring to leave the important questions for "some other time."
Agnosticism is one of the many forms of atheism [taught in my RCIA class]. As I grew older, I developed a few tenets which bordered on deism, another form of atheism. I held that human life was the most beautiful thing to exist, and that everyone should strive to preserve the existence of the human race in the universe. Individual human lives were of secondary importance to the long-term survival of mankind. But since I believed the key to survival was the traditional family, I was pro-life. I believed abortion to be one of the causes of the breakdown of the modern family, so I was against abortion except in the cases of rape and incest.
To back up slightly and concentrate on the abortion issue, my original awareness to the issue came at age 15 from my [best] friend, a Catholic. I knew the word, but was unaware of the fury surrounding it, and I had never before considered the issue. My friend brought it up as an issue, and it didn't take long for him to convince me that abortion was bad. As I grew older, the truth that abortion is murder became more clear. I even became against the I.U.D. and I also argued that a single cell human being should be saved because it had a unique genetic code. But equally as important to me then was the preservation of the human race, and how abortion jeopardized that.
The abortion issue typifies the basis of my philosophy as an atheist.
The goal of preserving the human race was inspired by science-fiction such as Star Trek: The Next Generation. The means to that goal was inspired by the Catholic Church. I recognized the value of the high morals, and the preservation of the family espoused by the Catholic Church. I also recognized the longevity of the Catholic Church and saw its morals as a means to my goal.
I believed the questions of the existence of God and His relationship to Creation and man today to be unknowable. I believed that perhaps the human race was just a group of mice in a cage, as proposed by Kurt Vonneget Jr. in his Sirens of Titan which I had to read for English literature, or as described in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Under those possibilities, man would have little hope as the keeper of the cage could snuff out the race at a whim. But I thought it was worth a shot anyway.
That was the culmination of my atheistic philosophy, which as promised, bordered on deism. Now like most young men, I was interested in meeting young women.
[This is the point where I insert a major portion of hindsight and backstory. Where I lived, the Washington DC area, especially the singles scene, was dominated at the time by Boomers, meaning the women were 8-20 years older than me. The GenX people my own age just hung out in bars. Remember, this was (just) before the Internet. There was nothing else to do; hanging out in bars was the thing to do, and it just wasn't for me.]
[OK, so I was wondering where I could meet women my own age. More than wondering; I was quite distraught about it. It didn't help that I was a computer nerd. Nerds didn't make a lot of money back then (not until the dot-com boom) so we didn't even have that going for us.]
[So, in January 1992 the repeat of William Shatner's famous 1986 Saturday Night Live appearance comes on. But I don't believe I had ever seen it before (remember: no YouTube, no social media). http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/howtowatchTV/clips/shatner-takes-on-star-trek-fans-on-snl/view It changed my life. I vowed to change my life. Yes, I vowed to get a life. My best friend set me up with his neighbor, a young woman my age. I accepted invitation from the (older) women in my office to go country/western dancing. But the real change occurred due to a hard drive crash in August, 1992 from my Internet startup, halluc.com. You see, in 1990-1992 I was an Internet Service Provider. Here is a complete list of every server on the Internet in Virginia in 1992: http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/athena/contrib/potluck/Net-Services/net-directory/maps/uucp.bak/u.usa.va.1 When the hard drive crashed, rather than spending time to rebuild everything from backups, I decided the whole Internet thing would never take off in popularity, and I gave it up, giving me time to develop a social life and, oh by the way as it turns out, become Catholic along the way. OK, so I lost out on an early retirement, but I got the Catholic faith instead.]
So I signed up for every single's event and club in the Washington, DC area. The problem is that no women in their 20's did. The Washington, DC demographics have mostly baby-boomers (30's and 40's), plus young people tended to hang out in bars, which I did not care for. I was distraught.
Then one day in April, 1993, my best friend [a practicing Catholic] invited me to a get-together at Bob's Big Boy. He had been taking night classes that school year at the Notre Dame Institute for Catechesis, based at Queen of Apostles in Alexandria, Virginia [which subsequently got merged into Christendom College and became their graduate school https://www.christendom.edu/about/a-history-of-christendom-college/ ]. One of his classmates, a woman, had arranged a get-together just before one of the classes. Eager to expand my social arena, even with religious zealots, I tagged along with my best friend. It was OK.
Meanwhile, that woman classmate was planning a trip to Denver to see Pope John Paul II for his August, 1993 visit. My best friend had been mentioning this trip for a while, but I was not interested because I was concerned about 30 people trying to share one bathroom with one tiny hot-water heater. The woman classmate invited my best friend to a party, which was to be a combination Denver planning party and birthday celebration for the woman's boyfriend.
Eager to meet more people, I went along with my best friend to this party. Lo and behold, there were lots of nice, young women. Even though I had no intention of going to Denver, I eagerly went to the second planning party. While the first party was all party and little planning, the second involved some planning. They played the first half of the movie about Pope John Paul II, and a videotape advertisement for the ranch we would be staying at. Also, the woman classmate had brought a large posterboard with a floor plan of the ranch. The videotape showed a luxurious ranch, and the floor plan revealed eight bedrooms and four bathrooms. I was guaranteed a bed and a good percentage of a bathroom!
The real inspiration to go to Denver was the movie about Pope John Paul II. Though I scoffed his authority, I saw that we was a great man in his own right. I wanted to see him purely on those grounds.
The other important thing that happened at the second planning party was that a male friend of the woman classmate encouraged me to come to the prayer group that several people at the party attended regularly. He said there were "lots of babes" there. Prayer or not, uncomfortable or not, I was going. I twisted my best friend's arm into going with me. I considered him, a Catholic, my ticket into this strange gathering. I was pretending he forced me to go, when it was really the other way around. It turns out that male friend of the woman classmate was right. After about my second visit to the weekly prayer group, I found I actually liked praying the Rosary. I found it peaceful and meditative. Since it was pleasant, and since I figured it wouldn't hurt to learn about the Catholic faith, I attended the prayer group, weekly without fail.
I actually committed to the Denver trip at the third planning party.
The trip to Denver was a blast. It was constant companionship with 20 other single young adults. It was like going away to camp as a kid. The overnight vigil in Cherry Creek Park with 300,000 other "youth" was great. The ranch was nestled in the Rockies at 9,000 feet elevation [possibly Breckenridge area?].
Every morning and evening we made the 70 minute commute through the continental divide in our rented vans praying the rosary. Every day brought a new level of togetherness. The trip was, up until that point, the best time of my life. I was still an atheist, but I was having a great time.
Around the time of the Denver trip, my best friend had started going to another prayer group [hosted by a group of young women sharing a home in Annandale, Virginia]. My best friend had met one of the young women at a wedding that spring. At the time, I considered her "too religious" for me to be comfortable hanging around her. But my best friend eventually followed up during the summer, and went to one of their prayer groups by himself. He told me that they sang during their prayer groups, so I decided to stay away from that prayer group, despite the reportedly large number of young women there. After many such reports, I eventually gave in. It was intense -- they kneeled through the whole rosary! But it wasn't so bad. I got used to it. I alternated between the two prayer groups during late summer and early fall of 1993, to maximize my social arena.
Another reason I alternated was because every other Sunday at the Annandale prayer group, the leader [who learned at Thomas Aquinas College and would years later become a locally-recognized expert] led a discussion on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, using the book Light of Faith, which is the [then-] recent translation of his Compendium of Faith. St. Thomas is a father and doctor of the Catholic Church. He is also a philosopher who followed the lines of Aristotle, and used his philosophical methods to explain Catholic doctrines. Since I had jumped in a few weeks into the progress through the book, and since I had never been exposed to philosophy in my life, I was more than just lost the first time.
During my second attendance, they (the leader reading St. Thomas) built on what was discussed during my first attendance, and I started to feel the flow of things. I had the leader order me a copy of the book. Through these discussions, and through my own reading of the book, I quickly became convinced of the existence of God, as well as several qualities about Him: eternal, all-powerful, uniqueness. I wasn't convinced that He was the Catholic God at that point. Through further discussion, I also became convinced, through St. Thomas' explanation of matter and form, of the feasibility of the immortality of the human soul. I was not convinced this was necessarily so, however.
To quote the first non-introductory chapter:
Chapter 3: The existence of God
Regarding the unity of the divine essence, we must first believe that God exists. This is a truth clearly known by reason. We observe that all things that move are moved by other things, the lower by the higher. The elements are moved by heavenly bodies; and among the elements themselves, the stronger moves the weaker; and even among the heavenly bodies, the lower are set in motion by the higher. This process cannot be traced back into infinity. For everything that is moved by another is a sort of instrument of the first mover. Therefore, if a first mover is lacking, all things that move will be instruments. But if the series of movers and things moved is infinite, there can be no first mover. In such a case, these infinitely many movers and things moved will all be instruments.
But even the unlearned perceive how ridiculous it is to suppose that instruments are moved, unless they are set in motion by some principal agent. This would be like fancying that, when a chest or bed is being built, the saw or the hatchet that performs its functions without the carpenter. Accordingly, there must be a first mover that is above all the rest; and this being we call God.
[Another major part of the Annandale prayer group was taking a half-mile walk through a field after the rosary each week to the perpetual adoration chapel at St. Michael Church https://stmichaelannandale.org . The first time I had no idea what it was; I just followed right in. If you've ever been to an adoration chapel, you know what it's like: tiny, with kneelers, completely silent, with the consecrated host displayed in a gold monstrance. The first time, I sort of gathered something important and awesome was going on; I wasn't exactly sure what. This hunch was reinforced by the prayer group leader asking afterward what I thought. I didn't know. By the second or third time, I somehow inferred the idea they were worshipping God in the Eucharist (the consecrated host). No doubt my Lutheran upbringing helped play a role, because Martin Luther described it in his catechism as Jesus being "in with and under the bread and wine". Catholics, of course, believe in complete transubstantiation (change in substance) where the bread and wine become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.]
Also sometime during the fall of 1993, I happened across a pamphlet on birth control [Couple To Couple League, 1982]. Birth control had always been a reason for me to try to avoid the Catholic Church. Finding out how the Pill actually sometimes aborts fertilized eggs, and how Natural Family Planning is just as effective allayed my fears and concerns. I became more open to the Catholic Church because of that.
One Sunday evening In January, 1994 at the end of a prayer group meeting at the Annandale prayer group, a group of us were standing outside St. Michael Church, and a young woman from the Annandale prayer group walked up and played a big roles in it. But that night she did not attend because she started attending a class at Notre Dame Institute, a tiny local graduate school. The class was on Catholic Apologetics and was taught by Father Most [who would later become semi-famous for being the lead apologist for ewtn.com]. She was saying how great the class was, and that maybe, "Hey, this would be a great class for Mike". I had heard about this course because my best friend had taken it the previous year. I signed up.
Shortly after I signed up for the class, Lent was rolling around.
Dancing [swing/ballroom/country-western] had been an obsession with me since August, 1992. One evening in February, 1994, I invited a couple of women from the Annandale prayer group over to the house of one of my [regular] dance partners [eight years older than me] so that I could teach them some steps. After it was over, as we were leaving, my [regular] dance partner asked when we were going to do it again. I replied that since Lent started the next day, they wouldn't be back anytime soon because they took things further than most Catholics, and so would not be dancing during Lent. Outside, one of the women [yet another of the Annandale housemates] told me that she could explain Lent to me, but that I probably wouldn't care.
I asked her to go ahead anyway. She explained that Lent is a time where we can detach ourselves from worldly things, and spend more time on spiritual matters. She further said that someone like me who was exploring the faith could especially benefit from giving something up, and spend more time in prayer. That was news to me. I had always thought that Catholics gave things up for Lent in order to be more like Christ, and that was it. Since I wasn't convinced about anything about Christ, I had no intention of observing Lent under those pretenses.
But after her explanation, I readily gave up dancing.
With the extra time I had, I learned a lot from Fr. Most's class. Fr. Most is a scholar, well-versed in classical history and languages. The textbook for the course was his book, Catholic Apologetics Today: Answers to Modern Critics [full text is now available for free at https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/most/getwork.cfm?worknum=212 but the book is only 1% of listening to Fr. Most's vast knowledge and engaging personality in person]. The approach he used to explain the Catholic faith was to first use the Synoptics (the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as historical documents. He does an investigation as to the validity and reliability of these books as historical documents.
The conclusion is that the following points can be determined with confidence, strictly from an historical perspective, from the books:
1/ There was a man named Jesus.
This fact is borne out of secular history as well, such as the Annals by Tacitus.
2/ He claimed He was sent from God as a sort of messenger.
Note that we are not saying at this point that Jesus was divine, or that He even said He was divine. We are only saying that He [said He] was sent by God.
3/ He did enough to prove this by miracles done with a connection between the claim and the cure.
Not only do we have evidence from the Synoptics, but also from Tacitus, and even more compelling, the modern miracles associated with the Catholic Church. The three miracles which have occurred this millennium which were compelling to me were:
i) The healings at Lourdes. Hundreds of people visit Lourdes daily. Most claim a healing. Indeed, the power of suggestion is a scientifically proven healer. But there is a team of doctors present on-site which investigate the healings to disprove them. Several healings over the past century have completely baffled the doctors, and one doctor was even converted. One example is a blind woman whose optic nerve had withered. Her sight was restored, even though her nerve was still withered. Three months later, her nerve was found to be restored.
ii) Our Lady of Guadeloupe. Mary appeared to a Mexican farmer, and gave him a message to deliver, which he did. He delivered it to the Bishop, who did not believe him. He went back to the field, and this time Mary gave him roses as proof (it was the dead of winter). The Bishop believed him this time, because on his cloak was emblazoned the image of Mary. The image on the cloak has not faded (it's been 150 years), and has been scientifically examined. A small amount of paint was found (evidently from attempted human touch-up), but the nature of the bulk of the image cannot be explained by scientists.
iii) The Host of Lanciano [actually eighth century rather than second millennium]. A priest did not believe in the True Presence in the Eucharist. So one time when he consecrated the Blood of Christ, blood clots appeared where there was once wine. The Host has been preserved for the last 1250 years, and the clots have been confirmed as being blood, yet they have not disintegrated.
4/ In the crowds He had a smaller group to whom He spoke more, i.e., the Apostles.
5/ He told them to continue His work and His teaching.
6/ He promised God would protect that teaching.
"He who hears you hears me, He who rejects you rejects Him who sent me."
From these points, we have that God established the Church on Earth, starting with the Apostles. That Church was started with Peter as the first Pope. Matthew 16:15-19:
Jesus said to them [the Apostles], "Whom do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus answered, "Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to you: That you are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: And whatsoever who shall loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."
The Catholic Church traces an unbroken chain of Popes back to Peter.
Peter and the other Apostles ordained priests and bishops, who in turn ordained other priests and bishops, etc. Every priest in the Catholic Church can trace a lineage back to Peter, who was ordained by Jesus.
Except I had a problem with point number 3 above. Just because Jesus, and even the Church, seems to be supernatural does not prove that Jesus was sent directly by the First Mover. Who is to say that we are not mice in a cage? Surely we humans seem to be gods to actual mice awaiting their next biological experiment. Could we not be so fooled, if not by others from this universe, then perhaps by beings from a higher dimension? Perhaps the entire universe is a computer simulation, and nothing really exists (you can see the Star Trek influence here).
I spoke in private [twice] with Fr. Most about these concerns. He pointed out that the First Mover is responsible for every action that takes place, and to fool us with such compelling evidence would not be just. I pointed out that He would need to be just only if man had an immortal soul, of which I was not convinced. Fr. Most reiterated some proofs that man had an immortal soul, but at the time I found them unsatisfying. I was in a catch-22. If the Church was established by the First Mover, then man has an immortal soul because the Church says so. If man has an immortal soul, then God would not allow the compelling evidence that the Catholic Church is the true Church to persist unless it were true.
St. Thomas argues for the immortality of the soul in chapter 79 of his Compendium of Theology (Light of Faith):
Understanding is proper to man beyond all other animals. Evidently, man alone comprehends universals, and the relations between things, and immaterial objects, which are perceptible only to the intelligence. Understanding cannot be an act performed by a bodily organ in the way that vision is exercised by the eye. No faculty endowed with cognitive power can belong to the genus of things that is known through its agency. Thus the pupil of the eye lacks color by its very nature. Colors are recognized to the extent that the species of colors are received into the pupil; but a recipient must be lacking in that which is received. The intellect is capable of knowing all sensible natures. Therefore, if it knew through the medium of a bodily organ, that organ would have to be entirely lacking in sensible nature; but this is impossible.
Moreover, any cognitive faculty exercises its power of knowing in accord with the way the species of the object known is in it, for this is its principle of knowing. But the intellect knows things in an immaterial fashion, even those things that are by nature material; it abstracts a universal form from its individuating material conditions. Therefore the species of the object known cannot exist in the intellect materially; and so it is not received into a bodily organ, seeing that every bodily organ is material.
I personally found the argument unsatisfying at the time. Now that I am Catholic, and now that I understand philosophy slightly better, I appreciate the argument now. Back then, I liked it to the extent that it showed to me that there was a strong possibility, without having to rely on the Catholic Church, that man has an eternal soul.
So with the catch-22, I remained 70% convinced of the validity of the Catholic Church. But to continue on with Fr. Most's explanation of the Catholic Church, he uses the above six points to show that God established and protects the Church. From there, we can let the Church tell us that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, which is the First Mover. We can let the Church tell us (as it did in the 300's) which books belong in the Bible (i.e., which are inspired and Sacred Scripture). We can also let the Church tell us which parts of the Oral Tradition are valid. Oral Tradition is what Jesus Christ taught the Apostles, but which was not written down in Sacred Scripture.
E.g., the Pope affirmed just forty years ago that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven, even though that is not in the Bible, but it has always been known by the Church.
In April, 1994 I approached Fr. Hathaway [ https://twitter.com/fatherehathaway ] at St. Michael's Catholic Church about taking an RCIA (Roman Catholic Initiation for Adults) class. I had been visiting Mass every week there since October, 1993.
And all my friends from the Annandale prayer group knew him personally, mostly through work with the Legion of Mary. I was interested in the RCIA class as a stalling tactic. By this time I was feeling a lot of pressure to make up my mind. I had been on this path of studying Catholicism for a year, and my new-found Catholic friends were getting a little impatient with me. I figured the RCIA class would buy me some time, since I could decide after the class was over. Fr. Hathaway replied that the current class [the regular RCIA cycle ending Easter] was just ending, and another one would not be starting for a couple more months [what I now know to be a highly unusual expedited summer RCIA], and that since I was baptized Lutheran and had good knowledge of Christian doctrine, he could just talk to me personally. I took that to mean that I would not have to attend RCIA. My stalling tactic blown, I immediately shied away.
Then one day after the semester of Fr. Most's class, I was in a restaurant with a young Catholic woman [connected by an extraordinarily expensive dating service; online dating at the time had a pool of less than five women per major city. It turns out this is the only time I met her and I do not recall her name]. I was explaining how I was 70% convinced. She was a born-and-bred Catholic, and a teacher of young children. I don't think she was well-versed in philosophy and Star Trek. So I don't think she really saw or identified with my doubts. She asked me, seemingly off-hand, "What would it take to convince you?" Either she was a mastermind at Apologetics or it was accident. Either way, I tried to reply but found no words. I realized in the weeks after that that I was merely questioning reality all along, which was absurd. Because what would it take to convince me -- God appearing to me in a burning bush? Could that not also be contrived by the cage-keeper? How could I know anything was real? Is there any way anything other than the First Mover can know anything is real? I think the idea is absurd, and therefore I realized that there was sufficient evidence that the Catholic Church was in fact established by the First Mover. If one believes in reality, one must believe in the Catholic Church. I believe in reality.
I didn't sign up for an RCIA class right away. The summer RCIA class at St. Michael's was on Monday nights, which conflicted with a dance class I wanted to take with another nice Catholic woman I had recently met [online, actually. Recall I was an ISP so as soon as I saw her post I jumped and immediately responded]. After the dance class was over, I went to the beach for a week.
One of my favorite beach activities is reading novels. Since I was financially destitute from being a new home owner and renovating the house, reading was my exclusive activity that year at the beach. One of the books I read was Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. It's a scary book that makes one self-insightful about Satanic temptation. The story is told from the perspective of one devil training another in the art of temptation. The protege devil is responsible for a man's soul. The story follows the man through his life. The ways in which the devils in the story cause the man to avoid thinking about religion, causing him to to innocuously take definitely wrong turns, rang true.
When I returned from the beach late on Sunday, I managed to find out the time and location of the RCIA class that Monday, as well as get permission to start in late. I was able to catch up by reviewing the videotapes of the RCIA class held the previous summer.
I had a shotgun confirmation. I wanted my best friend to be my sponsor, but he was leaving to start the school year at St. Thomas Aquinas College in California. So Fr. Hathaway got permission from the pastor, Msgr. Browne, to hold my confirmation on Labor Day. 30 people attended my confirmation, from both prayer groups, and my best friend's family. My parents were holding a major party at their house the same day, so my mother attended, but my father did not.
[Final notes:]
[1/ To allay confusion about why I now live in Denver: it's mostly coincidence not related to the 1993 visit. Among some other reasons, it was because I no longer wanted to live in the suburbs and I could actually afford (in 2006) to live next to downtown Denver. Also to get away from the pagan temples that define DC. https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/dc-creeps-me-out/ ]
[2/ Although the Shatner thing was something I just added today as kind of a joke to the Reddit title, it remains true that I would most likely never have become Catholic were it not for the timing of the 1992 rerun of the 1986 SNL episode. For example, I recently Googled the name of one of the very few women online back then. I never reached out to her because I assumed she would be very unattractive. It turns out she was just my type. And she was evangelical. So I could have so easily ended up evangelical (or, much more likely, an atheist dating an evangelical) instead.]
[3/ I will try to answer questions posed, but do not feel offended or left out if I decide to not answer for personal reasons.]
submitted by michaelmalak to Catholicism [link] [comments]

October '18 Sequoia National Forest ~Under 10k~ Wedding Recap [LONG]

This is waaayyyyy overdue, but...better late than never, I guess? To be honest i had a LOT of Photographer regret, still do, but whatever, so here goes!

Sorry not sorry, this is really long & detailed‼ You've been warned! lol

First and foremost…PICTURES!
So if you guys can't already tell, our venue was full of foresty goodness. If you haven't visited the Sequoias, I highly advise it as it is a magical place and Sequoias are freaking straight out of a fantasy movie. Fun facts: Sequoia Trees were once highly sought after for lumber, but lumber companies soon realized that the wood was too soft to do much of anything with, so they stopped chopping them down. Not only that, but Sequoia trees are fire resistant & can live to be 3,000 years old. Nature is neat.
Okay, okay… I know you guys didn't come here for an episode of Planet Earth. So let's get down to business!
Basically:
We are both originally from the SoCal valley. 99% of our guests attending are from Out-of-State in the mid-west or back East. I didn’t want our venue to be anywhere near here and I didn’t want it anywhere near summer time, as summers here are the worst. We originally wanted Mammoth, but holy balls, that was *waaayyyyy* out of our price range. (did you know that the average wedding costs over 20k in California???) Sequoia though, was surprisingly very affordable and I really am happy we chose it. We also paid for everything 100% out of pocket as I wanted to save up to buy myself a car and possibly our house ♥.

THE BREAKDOWN:

Budget: 10k
Actual Spent: ~ 9k
Invited: 78
Accepted: 42
Declined: 36
Attended: 38
Weird numbers I know. My husband (!) has a \huge* family, mostly located on the opposite end of the US. Some cancelled last minute, or accepted and didn’t show at all, and some brought extra people that weren't invited. We expected this and ended up getting enough food and drinks for 45 people.*
​
Dress:
Off the rack: $400.00
Alterations: $90.00
I got my dress as David's Bridal for 60% off ( Jewel wg3814). It was originally 1k. My veil I got at hobby lobby for $5. I thought my alterations were going to be expensive due to its heavily beaded corset top, but they only ended up costing not even ¼ what I budgeted for.
​
Girls (Bridesmaids):
$250
I made most of my bridesmaids buy their own dresses. I didn’t care what style, or length, as long as it was purple and they'd wear it more than once. I paid for one of my Bridesmaid's dresses though (at the L.A. Fashion District) as she's one of my best friends & never buys anything for herself and her daughter was my flowebubble girl. I also bought all the bridesmaids customized bags off of Zazzle, and they came out super cute.
​
Boys (Groomsmen):
$500.00
The boys, including the groom, got their suits from the Fashion District in L.A. I highly recommend this if you are looking for a cheaper alternative to suits.
​
AirBnB
$200.00 for 3 nights split with 3 other people.
We rented an awesome AirBnB at the base of the mountains in Three Rivers, Ca. It was only about 10 mins from the Sequoia Gate and the fact that we had an \entire* house to ourselves with our closest friends was awesome. It also had a ping pong table and a foos ball table as well which the boys loved and was a huge plus.*
​
Décor:
$250.00
So this was actually one of the very last things that we bought, all from Amazon. I got everything around a week before the wedding, and then my amazing MIL helped me put everything together!
​
Photographer:
$585.00
This is the one thing I actually sort of regret. He was one of the groomsmen's brothers and though he shot AMAZING pics for my husband's friend (the groomsman), the pics he did for us were pretty subpar. I cried after getting them, but my MIL assured me it was fine and not all of them are TERRIBLE. Honestly though, since hindsight is 20/20, I would have hired an actual photographer. But it is what it is.

Ceremony:

Wuksachi Lodge, Sequoia National Park, Ca
Clover Creek Bridge
Ceremony Bridge rental: $350.00
NPS Permit (required for weddings in National Parks): $175.00
Our ceremony was about as nontraditional as you could get. I walked down the aisle to my Uncle playing an acoustic version of Smother Me by The Used. One of our closest friends got ordained and officiated our wedding, which was awesome. It was his first time, he was nervous, but actually did a kick ass job. My husband and I wrote our own ceremony and our own vows. We are avid gamers, and had tons of references to video games like Overwatch and other things we loved, including our cats. We hadn't read each other our vows beforehand, so everything was a surprise, and I think it really both meant a lot to us. Rarely do we like to show that much affection in public. My dad was really apathetic about the entire wedding thing…until he walked me down the aisle. We don’t have the closest relationship, as he's a hard person to get close to. But at the reception he pulled me aside and started to tear up and told me how happy he was that I had the wedding. It made me feel a lot better.
The week of the wedding, I was a nervous wreck about the weather. There were some nasty storms heading up that way the entire week. The day before, we went to the lodge to set up, and it was SO misty and foggy and cold. I didn’t mind it, I actually enjoyed it & thought it looked so eerie and "spooky", but I can see why not everyone would. On the day of, though, it was pretty cold in the morning, and by the time the ceremony started, the sun came out….just long enough for us to have the ceremony and take pictures. At the end of them, it started to rain, and we all went inside. 15 minutes later, A huge thunderstorm arrived and there was an insane amount of hail, thunder and lightning. I'm happy it had held off.
​

Reception:

Wuksachi Lodge, Sequoia National Park, Ca
Wuksachi banquet space/ clover creek lounge
Reception/Cocktail Hour space rental: $1,045.00
Food/ Alcohol cost: $5,140.15
The reception was awesome. Looking back at our budget breakdown, I see where we splurged, and it was \so* worth it. Everyone raved about the food, and there was more than enough to go around (the brownies were seriously to die for). We are introverts to the max, so having a smaller wedding where we could talk and hang out with everyone was literally perfect. I can't tell you how much we enjoyed being able to sit with our families at their tables and talk to them. We just played our wedding* Spotify Playlist on our little Bluetooth JBL speaker with Music by Tilian, Emarosa, acoustic Sleeping with Sirens, The Used, Anthony Green, etc. We danced to "Come What May" by The Scene Aesthetic, and it was a pathetic excuse for "dancing" as we never dance, but we tried.
Our bartenders/event set up guys LOVED us. I can't tell you how many free drinks they gave us. At the end they had a shot with us and told us that in the 4 years they had been doing weddings there, that our wedding was the most relaxed they had ever seen and we were the chillest couple they had met & told us that we made their night very enjoyable. I guess most people aren't too nice?
Sadly, though, due to the weather, we had to move up the events of the reception so people could leave before the storm got really bad. Which was fine, and I'm glad we did it. By the time my husband and I had left, we hit a lot of snow, hail and ice along with angry dark skies with lightning and thunder. It would have been hella neat, if we weren't 7,200 feet up with cliff drops & had snow chains on our tiny Scion TC. :)
​
My favorite things:
​
The not so great:
​
BONUS STORY:
So, this one is kinda funny.
Basically, I work for a very small structural engineering firm. My boss is super old (90 years.) Yes, he still "works". It's crazy. So anyway, I invited him and his wife to come to the wedding, they made it which was awesome.
However, I had ordered our arch online, and when we put it together, it was a bit wobbly. No big deal. Well I guess before the ceremony, when the guests were getting seated, a gust of wind came and blew the arch over.
Our groomsmen picked it up and fixed it and decided they would designate another groomsman to just hold it. No biggie.
Well, you see, my boss (structural engineer), decided he wanted to try and fix it. So it's 5 minutes before the ceremony, and this 90 yr old man is up at the front trying to fix a $30 arch. I guess everyone was telling him to stop, sit down, and let it be. I mean I guess he even tried somehow securing it with a chair? And he argued with his wife because he swore that she was wearing something he could use to secure it, and she wasn’t.
He just wanted to fix it for our wedding, and I totally get that & it was very sweet, but I mean someone had to go and escort him back to his seat because he was just not listening at all and kept yelling at people when they told him to stop. His wife was super embarrassed and made a joke that after 65 years of marriage, she can't even stop him.
My MIL was a little irritated at him, (she worked for him for over 20 years) but I think it was pretty comical and that’s a story we will forever have now.

Anyway, that's it. If I didn’t cover something and anyone has questions, let me know! ♥

submitted by LordoftheCatsx to weddingplanning [link] [comments]

[Discussion] (Update) VRChat Changed My Life

I just wanted to share with everyone how this game has changed my life. Warning, this is a long story, so if you are not interested in long drawn out stories then this is your chance to stop reading. For the others who want to continue, I hope you enjoy.
As a kid, I have always played games and loved every bit of it. My first MMORPG was Runescape and ever since then I have been drawn into MMORPG games. However, I never thought a simple online game would change my whole life.
I started playing VRChat after watching a few twitch streams show it and it seemed pretty interesting. So, I went out and purchased an Oculus and started playing away. It was so amazing and just different, being able to socialize and be apart of communities without even leaving my house, what a dream come true! As a streamer myself, I wanted to do things that others would find entertaining and at the time, marriage was a huge thing on VRChat, so I asked a few people and got turned down a lot. As I continued playing, I ran into this one player who loved to play music and even without full body, loved to dance and could mimic full body pretty well. So, after befriending him, I decided to ask him if he would RP marry me. He said yes and we talked to the owner of the world to put it into motion.
Valentines day came around and we stood in front of many people as we got married. The place was so laggy, I had to shut my stream off. Unfortunately, we were never able to get a copy of the video/stream of the people who did record it. After our RP marriage, my viewers wanted me to continue the story line of life after marriage, so that meant us spending a lot of time together in game. As we went through each day spending time with each other, we started developing feelings for each other. One day (off of stream) he confessed how he felt about me and I confessed that I felt the same. To be honest, the first day I met him I knew I felt different about him. So, he asked me to go out with him in real life. Now let me tell you a little bit about this situation. He lives in Europe whereas I live in the USA, we both knew that there was a distant between us, but we didn't care. I said yes that I would be his long distant girlfriend.
Each day, we spent time either talking on discord or playing VRChat together. It is the only place that makes it feel as real as it can be without being in front of each other. Now, this is where people who are still reading will judge me, but I do not care. I also make models, that being said, I was making a model while he was playing songs and I had to guess the songs that he was playing. It was a way for me to still be active while working. He said "here is one from when I was a kid" and began playing a song from the 2000s, now I grew up in the 90s, so this immediately made me pause. I asked him "how old are you?" and he told me his age. This made me stop everything I was doing and had to talk with him about it. I know I know, you are probably asking yourself "why didn't they know each other's age?" the answer is, because he has a very deep voice and I have a very girly voice. Our voices made us sound as though we were in the same age group, so I never worried about asking.
We had a sit down and talked about how this is going to effect us and both agreed that it would be better to stop this since there is a 11 year gap between us. I started backing off from him, spending less and less time with him as he did to me as well. The issue with all of this is, you can never stop your heart from what it wants. Everytime I heard his voice, saw his character, or even saw a new message from discord, my heart would hurt so badly. Not being able to talk to him or even see him in game hurt worse then I have ever felt. I was going crazy and I couldn't take it anymore, so I confessed to him how I felt about it all. Luckily, he felt the same way and it hurt him just as bad as it did me. We decided that we were not going to let age get in the middle of us.
It has now been 8 months since we have been together and he is flying to come and see me to go to Twitchcon with me. It will be our first time ever meeting in person and someone has already ruined a big surprise to me that he has planned. Since I do not know when I will update or even talk to you guys on reddit again, I will go ahead and ruin it for you as well. He has planned to propose to me in person during his stay here and then we have planned to have me move to Europe to be with him later on.
This game is amazing and has changed my life, without VRChat, I would have never found the love of my life. I hope you enjoyed the story <3
UPDATE: He did propose to me! I started crying and pictures have been taken of the occasion. I also almost cried when I saw him and gave him a hug at the airport, we haven't been seperate since he has been in the USA, he leaves to fly back home soon and I could only wish for more hours just to spend with him.
Let me tell you how the proposal went, please be prepared to laugh.
He took me to a very nice and old restaurant in California that was located in the mountains close to the Yosemite national park. After we got done eating our dinner, I looked over the menu and saw banana split as a desert. So I asked if I could have it and he replied with no. He then got up to stretch and said "these seats hurt my back" and I said (while still looking at the menu) "I would really like that banana split". He then got on one knee and before I could process what was going on, I turned to him and said "I really want that banana split". I saw what he was doing and holding and started freaking out and crying. I (of course) said yes and the waitress stopped everything she was doing to take photos.
And for the ones who are wondering, no.... I did not get my banana split.
Here is my enegament ring! https://imgur.com/a/of57GA2
UPDATE: I just got back home from dropping him off at the airport and I cannot seem to stop crying. I'm sad that I had to part ways from him for now, but also happy that I had the chance to spend time with him and that I even got to spend some extra days with him since he missed his flight. I know I will see him again in VRChat, but it will never be the same. I cannot wait until the next time I can hold his hand, kiss his lips, and just feel him again. I also cannot wait to be his wife and spend the rest of my life with him.
A few months later after we hung out, I couldn't wait to see him again so I bought my ticket to Denmark and plan to fly in April 2019 to visit him for 3 weeks. I'll be sure to update about my trip to keep all you lovely people up to date on our story. I cannot wait until I can see him again. Also, I am meeting the parents and the rest of his family, so this is going to be a very interesting trip! After much talking and considerations, we have decided that we didn't want to wait any longer to be husband and wife, so we will be married soon enough and when I go and visit him, I will meet my parent in law.
On March 9th, 2019 we tied the knot and became husband and wife. We did the whole thing on VRChat and had a legal priest ordain us and make us husband and wife. We have our legal paperwork and have everything signed by the courts. If you would like to see our wonderful day, you are more then welcome to watch it here: https://youtu.be/joAcV-rJGGI
submitted by watuhboi to VRchat [link] [comments]

May 2018 Wedding Recap; Small "destination" Ceremony with giant park reception in SoCal

Now that I’ve had a little bit of time I wanted to put together a re-cap of our crazy whirlwind of a wedding! We joked that we had an indian style wedding since it lasted approximately 5 days and boy were we excited to get into a car at the end of it and be alone for the next week for our honeymoon road trip! Hopefully I format this correctly! This is going to be LONG. We did a lot of "non-traditional" deals and had a non-wedding wedding. Even though this is becoming more and more a norm for a lot of couples, in our group of friends it isn't. We had a lot of close friends be inspired by how we did things and some are following our example (we are going to a celebratory reception next week in the same park!)
First, the goods; Here's the Photos by BurgundyBlue Photography. There's some low-res of the reception as well at the end. Here's the wedding Video by Roman Howell Films.
This is a lot of info, sorry!
We decided to “elope” 3 hours north of where we live with immediate family. It caused a little bit of drama within some members of family and a few friends but everyone is generally over it and I try not to dwell as all they wanted was to see us married. Two days after our “elopement” we had a large, daytime reception party at a local park. This wedding was crazy under budget because I have so many amazing friends, family, and compadres in the wedding industry so I realize it isn’t exactly realistic for most to do this much at what we paid.
Let's start with the Ceremony!
12 guests/family, 1 photographer, 1 videographer for a total of 16 including us. We stayed for 2 nights and 3 days in Cambria, CA.
We meandered up on a wednesday and we treasured the alone time driving together since it would be the last for a couple days! We met with our family, who mostly drove separately, at a local winery for a couple bottles of wine and to enjoy the beautiful afternoon.
Afterwards we checked into our VRBO that we rented for the whole family and started getting all the rooms set up. My older brother bought enough alcohol to stock a bar and for the two days I think there were like 5 cases of wine. Clearly, we did not drink all of it, but we were at least well prepared!
That evening my husband(!!) and I cooked dinner for everyone and (tried to) get to bed early for the next day. Our family brought all sorts of snacks and muffins, breakfast, and lunch stuff for our day so the kitchen was stocked for anyone that was hungry.
Thursday we all went down to the beach and walked for about two hours. We played in the sand, collected rocks, and just had a grand old time. It was SO nice being able to do something normal and fun the morning of and it was one of the highlights of the trip! Our videographer showed up early so he was at the beach with us and got some fun shots of the family and us goofing around.
Once we got home we took a little siesta and then started getting ready. I set up a “flower station” where people could make their own flower crowns or boutonnieres and everyone jumped in on it and had a blast! I also made my own bouquet before I started getting ready. Our photographer showed up shortly before we started getting ready and from there it was just a whirlwind!
Where we were having the ceremony was about a 15 minute drive to San Simeon Beach where it was then about a 18 minute walk to the ceremony site. Only one person asked “are we there yet?” and it was our 15 year old niece when we were within sight of the spot. :) Everyone walked down by two’s, our youngest niece was a “flower girl” and I walked down the aisle with my older brother.
My sister officiated and knocked it out of the park! It was funny, meaningful, she chose the best readings, and should seriously consider doing it professionally! We wrote our own vows and it was such a touching experience to have everyone right there, next to the ocean, amongst the trees.
Afterwards we took some portraits, and then the family began to walk back to head to the dinner restaurant in town. We stayed back with the video and photo and took our time to walk back.
Dinner was amazing, we all stayed almost to closing and the staff was wonderful and they had a lot of veggie and vegan friendly items on the menu which was important to us. If you are ever in Cambria go to Robin’s Restaurant!
THE AMAZING
THE COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
BUDGET BREAKDOWN FOR CEREMONY (asteriks show something that was gifted)
THE RECEPTION
We knew that we didn’t have the funds or the emotional capacity to have a large wedding so our compromise was to do a large, casual, day-time reception to celebrate with our loved ones. We invited 261 people, 36 of them were under the age of 16 (mostly babies!). 26 people RSVP’d No, and 45(!!!) people were no-shows. 15 of those no-shows alerted us the week before the wedding. Some people apologized day of, some people we haven’t even spoken to since (not necessarily out of bitterness, but it just hasn’t happened). So total, we had 190 guests at our day-time reception party. We requested no gifts and asked everyone to bring their own beewine/liquor.
My husband initially said he wanted; a petting zoo, ostrich races, and “like 5 giant bouncy houses”. Being a county park and real-life, I said we could make one of those happen. The morning of, our family came out and helped us decorate the two covered picnic areas we rented at our local county park. We had streamers and colored balloons in the gazebos, and papel picado strung up inside the covered picnic areas.
My sister who takes care of horses brought out 5 hay bales that we covered with serapes and had as a hangout area. We set up a little welcome table with photos, a guestbook and instax camera. My husband(!!!) and I dressed up in our suit and dress and welcomed guests for the first 1.5 hours in our outfits, then changed into jeans and shirt afterwards for the rest of the day.
Our families brought and set up a game area that included; water balloon toss (with like 1000 balloons!), bocce ball, badminton, ring toss, corn-hole, we had a little bubble area that kids could blow bubbles of all kinds, and I think we had another game but I can’t think of it right now! It was so fun because I think EVERYONE played with the games all day!
We ended up renting 6 ( yes six) different inflatable activities. We had 2 bounce houses, an obstacle course, a giant slide, a velcro wall, and a jousting ring. People LOST IT when they pulled up! Kids immediately would run over and it was just such a blast!
We bought a bunch of cheese, fruit, crackers, popcorn, hummus, everything for a giant charcuterie board (mostly from costco) that people absolutely loved! There was also a bar set-up with tubs of ice people could put beer or wine in, plastic cups with sharpies to write their names. We also had 5 drink dispensers with water and we provided a giant tub of la croix and sparkling water as NA drinks. Other than that we didn’t bring any booze! But we ended up leaving with SO MUCH BOOZE. Perk of BYOB. A friend also brewed a keg specially for the party.
For dinner we catered food, buffet style, from our favorite indian/tibetan restaurant and we had way too much because of the no-shows! We bought disposable bamboo plates and silverware and napkins. Most of our friends and family are adventurous with food, but the folks who weren’t were even raving about how amazing it was! We had rice, garlic naan, paneer tikka masala, and a cauliflowepotato dish. It was one of the highlights!
Afterwards EVERYONE pitched in a helped us clean up! I was a little stressed about it and was not expecting all the help we received. We had people picking up little plastic balloon pieces! The park said they had never seen a party that big leave the space so clean.
After the party was over (7:30pm) about 30-40 of us went to a local bar to party a little longer and the next day another 20 of us met up for brunch.
THE AMAZING
THE NOT SO AMAZING
BUDGET BREAKDOWN FOR RECEPTION
Since people are interested in this kind of stuff;
We received approx $3500 in familial financial contribution prior to the wedding. No strings attached.
Even though we requested no gifts we received; 5 physical gifts ranging from linen napkins, home decor, kitchen-aid mixer, beautiful photo frame, etc.
$2236 in cash, checks or gift cards
So overall our wedding cost us; $9787, minus the money we received from family and as gifts is less than $4500.
Overall 10/10 would get married again
submitted by isowseeds123 to weddingplanning [link] [comments]

California Beach Wedding Rundown with Tips & Pics!

So my DH and I had a small ceremony on a public beach in Pacifica, CA in early January 2016 (Don't worry - it was a warm 65 degrees fahrenheit by noon, hah). My DH has ALWAYS wanted to get married with his feet in the ocean, so we set out to make that dream come true! (Pics!) There were 8 people in attendance including DH and myself. The whole thing cost us $1200 and I learned a few things that I'll gladly share in a breakdown on the off chance it helps any couples planning smaller weddings/elopements, especially at the beach.
This designer is great for simple, pretty wedding dresses, especially for small beach-y weddings or garden weddings. The website routinely has some nice dresses on sale for $200 or less. They also have a decent selection of beaded dresses and dresses in colors other than white for less traditional brides (I went with purple).
NOTE: My DH's suit, tie, shoes, etc were already a part of his wardrobe. They fit well and he didn't see a need to pay rental fees or buy a new outfit. This kept our clothing costs down. We also didn't have traditional bridal party roles, so told our small party to dress casually and simply witness our ceremony.
Seriously, if you have even a hint of DIY instincts, watch this video on YouTube on how to make a simple floral arrangement and buy some ribbon or twine at a craft store. Purchase a couple bouquets of some nice statement flowers and one or two bouquets of filler (hydrangeas work well). Follow the instructions on prepping and wrapping the flowers and once you have your bouquet, store it with the stems in water in a cool place overnight (I made mine the day before my wedding). You can also make a boutonnière by wrapping one statement flower + a couple pieces of filler with twine/ribbon and attaching a pin with hot glue.
I had a lot of fun doing this, but it isn't for everyone. It can take a few tries to get an arrangement that looks OK if you've never done it before, which I hadn't. TIP: If I had this to do over again, I would have taken pics of myself holding the bouquet prior to the wedding. From above, the arrangement looked perfect, but in pics from the side it was too dense with hydrangeas.
I knew my hair was going to get a bit windblown at the beach. It comes with the territory of an outdoor coastal wedding. So I opted to not stress too much and do my own hair in a simple side swept pony tail fastened with a clear elastic and some blonde bobby pins
OK, I cannot stress this enough - you do NOT need to spend a fortune on a manicure to have beautiful nails on your wedding day if you don't want to/can't afford it. Let's be real...your nails really just need to look awesome in pics where you're holding your bouquet or showing off your rings. Kiss Gel Fantasy nails are my fakies of choice, and they come with the option to either glue on (more durable) or press on with sticky tape (easier to remove). They also come in a variety of colors and sparkly designs.
TIP: If you go this route, be sure to put the nails on AFTER you've done any prep work that requires manipulating things with fingers. Because these aren't salon nails, they are more for aesthetic as opposed to functionality.
Seriously, this online retailer is life. As far as event prepping on a budget, it's hard to beat. I snagged my shoes here for $15 (didn't really wear them on the beach though) and my jewelry set (headband, necklace, and earrings) for $10. There's all sorts of goodies on this website, but order in advance because shipping can take awhile.
So, if you factor in the cost of all of the products I used, it wasn't exactly free, but I did own all of them beforehand and didn't purchase anything new to create my wedding look. I am pretty OK at doing my own makeup...not a master by any means, but I felt confident enough to put on some false lashes (which I highly recommend because DRAMATIC!!) and a complete face.
This is a grey area for some brides. If you don't feel confident that you can create the look you want for your day, this is where I feel it's OK to splurge. This is the face that will appear in all your photos for the rest of time. It's worth getting it right. Find a friend you trust or pay a makeup artist to create your look. Alternatively, watch some YouTube wedding makeup tutorials and do some trials on yourself until you feel confident.
Our friend had his license to ordain our marriage in less than 10 minutes from this site for free. Beats the hell out of paying a civil servant we didn't know beforehand to do it. Granted, we are non-religious, so needed no additional qualifications in that regard. TIP: PLEASE do your research to make sure this officiation method is legal in your state/country/area if you go this route. In California, we had no problems...but I haven't looked into other regions.
OK, so not everyone is as lucky as us in this regard. Our friend has no official photography experience. She's an enthusiast who has an eye for setting up nice shots. The pics in the first paragraph above were taken with just an iPhone 6!! If you're OK with not having a professional with fancy equipment document your day and you are willing to settle for amateur photog memories, this is an excellent alternative to dropping hundreds on a pro.
We picked a favorite midrange seafood place and went with our small party to dinner. We chose the place in part because they also have a great in-house dessert menu (we didn't have a professional cake). We paid for everyone's drinks, knowing that our party didn't have any big drinkers. An alternative to this would be to bring a few bottles of nice wine and pay a small corkage fee to avoid paying for highly marked up drinks.
This really relies on location and preference, but we have a strong liking for energetic venues and live entertainment. We also didn't require a private venue, but just wanted a location where our small group could dance, sing, drink and celebrate. We chose a piano bar with a $10 entrance fee per person and our guests picked up the tab for their own drinks here.
We really wanted a wedding night to ourselves away from home, but close to our reception venue to minimize taxi costs (because drunk). We hopped on Priceline and found a nice, but not TOO fancy hotel at a discounted rate about 2 weeks before our wedding day.
Late hangover breakfast with the family before they left town :)
Bottom Line: If you're moderately flexible and willing to do some things yourself that are traditionally taken care of by professionals, you can spend your money where it matters most to you and make some great memories on a budget.
submitted by calamitylane83 to Weddingsunder10k [link] [comments]

can you get ordained online in california video

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The laws in California make it unnecessary for persons performing marriage ceremonies to file their credentials with any state or local agency, but you must hold a current and valid minister's license to perform such rites; in addition, you must present your credentials to any legal authority and/or the parties to the marriage upon their request. Get Ordained In California. Become a minister to officiate weddings in California. We are American Marriage Ministries, an IRS Certified 501c3 Non-Profit Church with the mission to empower people of all backgrounds to officiate weddings. Our free online ordination application is recognized under California Code § CA Fam Code § 400 and enshrined by the 1st amendment of the US Constitution. You might have been asked to officiate a wedding, or maybe there’s another religious ceremony you want to perform, or maybe you just want to become ordained so that you can have the title “minister.” These are all legitimate reasons to get ordained! And for most people, the easiest way to make this happen is to get ordained online. How to get ordained to perform marriage ceremonies for family and friends anywhere in California. Fast, legal marriage minister ordination with free online study for wedding ceremonies in California and throughout the United States. Includes all required forms and documents, plus minister credential and license... How to Become an Ordained Minister in California If you haven't yet become ordained with the Universal Life Church, that is the first step. Anyone willing can become a legal minister of the ULC, one of the world's largest religious organizations. Online ordination is fast, easy, and completely free. Click on “Get Ordained” or something to that effect. Pay the nominal online ordination fee, if any. How do I become a wedding officiant in California? Begin officiating weddings. Once you become ordained, you will be eligible to perform legal marriage ceremonies. Click on “Get Ordained” or something to that effect. Pay the nominal online ordination fee, if any. Can anyone be ordained to marry someone? A clergy person (minister, priest, rabbi, etc.) is someone who is ordained by a religious organization to marry two people. So let’s dive right in and see where you can get legally ordained online right now. Here are The 5 Best Places to Get Ordained Online: 1. Wanderlust Bay Ministries 2. Universal Life Church 3. First Nation Church 4. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster 5. The Church of Dude If you’re seeking full religious ordination the fastest way to do this is to use an online church or ordination service. If you just want to officiate a legally binding marriage, California offers the unique opportunity to have the right to officiate a marriage for one day only, using a special permit that can be obtained at participating courthouses. Our Ordinations for California are completely free and can be completed in less than a day. Thousands of people have registered and become licensed ministers in California and are able perform marriages through Open Ministry in California! Get Ordained Today and start your journey as an ordained minister in California with Open Ministry.

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