Stag & Hen

I've just come back from a long weekend in Ireland for my Stag Party. Yolanda spent the week in Spain, during which she went to Granada for the Hen Party. She tells me she had a great time.
My stag was great. I chose to hire boats and cruise on the shannon and Henry organised the rest of it. Henry was great! He did a wonderful job of organising the boats and the people and kitty. No one was ever without a drink for the whole weekend. Good man Henry!
I'll make a proper entry for the stag party on my main blog when I get a chance and the photos are censored! Only joking! I've seen most of the photos and apart from being drunk in most of them I think that they're not too bad.
I've not heard any mention of yolanda having pictures that she wan't to share with the world...I'm sure that's nothing to worry about...

Hotel Don Juan new web site

Fianlly HDJ have got a new web page! It's great and has lots of new info. However, this means I've got to update the links on my site for the wedding. I'll get to that in a few days, but in the mean time here's the link to the Hotel's new site.

Suit you sir!

I bought my suit for the wedding today. Gieves & Hawkes of No1 Saville Row London, have opened a new shop in Liverpool and I was really impressed with their suits. With it being a special occasion I though I'd get something special so I don't look foolish standing beside the elegant Yolanda. I'm really pleased with my choice and have a great feeling of confidence you can only get after 3 blokes with measuring tapes tell you how well sir looks and how well the suits fit him.
I've got 8-10 weeks to wait now to see the finished article. I can hardly wait. I'm going to look the absolute business! At least until Yolanda walks down the aisle, then I suddenly become decidedly average once more. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

First round of Invitations

The first batch of invitations went out recently. These are for the people overseas that we are inviting to the wedding. By overseas I mean overseas from Spain. All the rest of the invitations will go out to those in Spain when Yolanda goes to Aguilas to sort out the remaining things for the wedding and of course go on a bender with her mates for a hen party.
All in all things are going to plan. All credit must go to Yolanda on this one. She's doing a fantastic job of organising the wedding. I have a few jobs to do but so far this has been mainly limited to the invitations.

Marriage Preperation Course - Episode III Return of the... Priest

Back into the church again today for another edition of marriage preparation. This week, as you can guess by the title, Fr. Michael was back. Today's subject was communication. Fortunately this is something that Yolanda and I are good at. Fr. Michael was in great form this week and even told a joke! Here it is... Q. What is the punishment for the crime of bigamy? A. Two Mother-in-Laws!Hmmm...got to go! I'll finish this post tomorrow.
OK...I'm back I got busy there for a few days and just remembered I'd not finished this episode. Anyway, yeah, Communication… Fr. M handed out these photocopies of questions in different categories, like finance, religion, socialising…and we had to circle a,b,c, or d to say to what degree we had considered certain things. This exercise was boring as hell! Then we moved on to get more photocopies of hypothetical situations and we had to say what we would do in these situations… “Pat and Brenda were married and Pat had recently turned to beating Brenda after he had a few pints. The priest told Brenda to leave if she wasn’t confident that she could get him into counselling. Did the priest do the right thing? What would you do?”
“John and Mary were married for half a million years and had six hundred kids. John had finally turned to drink. Mary said she was leaving if he didn’t go to counselling. He agreed to go and it fixed all their problems and they lived happily ever after. Would you go to counselling?” Ok so I exaggerated the stories a little but not much I promise you. Note the strong influence of the daemon drink? I really felt it was very patronising this week, and there was so little preparation put into it. I’m getting a bit sick of it now. After this weeks’ scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to talk about I think it’s going to be pretty awful next time. I mean come on, the church has been going for 2000 years, and surely they’ve had time to think about this?
I entered into this course wondering what a guy who has no experience in marriage himself was going to tell us that didn’t already know after living with each quite happily for six years. Now I know…Nothing.
Still, it’s got to be done or there’s no wedding!

Marriage Preparation Course - Episode II Attack of the Midwives

This week’s course was based mainly on the subject of ‘Fertility’. Yes Fertility! We had a couple of guest speakers; two midwives from Liverpool who ‘follow catholic teachings’.
They were a fairly entertaining pair, who has a strong rivalry. One did most of the presenting and kept referring to reasons why the other lady was the boss and how she had one less qualification because she’s got kids and the boss doesn’t have any! The boss looked very serious and was straight faced, while the woman doing the presentation was easier going but a bit hyperactive! (she also could have done with taking a bit of wax to her top lip!)
Anyway most of it was interesting enough and explained how to achieve ‘Natural Family Planning’ and how, as far as the church is concerned, all other methods are a sin! Ah! There we go! After about an hour of general information the true agenda came to the fore and we then started to get into the tricky subject of IVF treatment. They said that too was against the teachings of the church. I thought their reasons for this contradicted other things they said and I started to loose interest. Apparently, last time they gave a talk their was a woman on the course that had had a child using IVF and she asked them if they were saying that her child was invalid! And the whole thing turned into a huge argument. It was quite clear that they were glad that they didn’t have to deal that this year and last years events didn’t have any change in their opinion so I decided to not both saying anything myself. No point flogging a dead horse!
I respect their right to have an opinion but I don’t agree with their opinion. I felt that although they seemed well read on the subject, their point of view was that if the church says ‘that’s how it is’ then that’s how it is, even though their arguments contradicted each other. Fortunately I’m capable of forming my own opinions and will carry on doing so.

Marriage Preparation Course

On Saturday we had our first session of four for our marriage preparation course in the Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool (Paddy’s Wigwam as it’s known locally for obvious reasons). The course is a requirement for us to be married and Fr. Michael who is giving the course will have to send a letter to the church in Spain to say we attended.
Fr. Michael is a nice chap, young enough at about 35 and was ordained only 3 years ago. He was keen to make sure we understood he had a life before the priesthood which I felt was good because it was better that the person preaching to us actually had some experience in the subject of male female relationships. But obviously he didn’t go into the specifics of his history in that area! He’s also a Liverpool supporter (i.e. not Everton, the other Liverpool team) and that made the more hard core football fans in the room more comfortable too!
Anyway, it was mainly a case of getting introduced to some other people that are getting married and him explaining the churches take on what marriage is all about. There was not ‘bible bashing’ to be seen and there was no praying except a little ‘our father’ at the end. Nothing over the top to alienate us at all! In fact we learned a couple of interesting things we didn’t know before and we cam a way feeling fine.
I’m not saying that everyone should do it but if you are going to get married in a church it’s a good thing to at least know what it’s all supposed to represent. I’m not a particularly religious person any more, and I can’t see this course changing that, but I’m going to feel less of a hypocrite standing in a church after attending this course.