365 Days Until …
The Journey to Our Wedding
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
So how did you…
We’re often asked, “So how did you come up with the idea for this wedding journal book?” Actually, it came about like most good ideas, accidently over a bottle of wine.
My then fiancé and I had just finished up with dinner, and were working on my tiramisu birthday cake. We were also working on our second bottle of Moscato. After we finished devouring the cake, we began talking about our wedding. The date we had chosen was August 8th, 2010. The reason we choose that date was simple. Esha wanted to keep our wedding date the same as our anniversary date, which was just fine with me, one less date to remember.
Just so you know, I proposed to Esha in November of 08’ in Jamaica. Right after the New Year, we began discussing possible wedding locations. Meaning if we were going to have a destination wedding and if so, where, or if we were going to have our wedding somewhere near home. After a couple of weeks of weighting out the pros and cons of both, we decided to keep our wedding somewhat near home. We began looking at a lot of wedding facilities, in person and on-line. After visiting a few places, we settled on a place right on the beach in New Jersey, about an hour and half away from our house. Yeah, we knew it was a little bit of a drive, but the place was beautiful.
The day we drove down to the location to meet with their wedding coordinator, to do a tasting and possibly put a deposit down, we were running a bit late due to traffic. We called to inform her that we’re going to be about 20 minutes late. When we arrived, the wedding coordinator left us waiting in the lobby for 45 minutes, never once saying hello. Come to find out from the hostess that since we were late, the wedding coordinator decided to take walk up customers, despite the fact that we had called to say that we would soon be there.
We were irate, and after I shared our thoughts with the General Manager and informed him that we were taking our business. We then got in our car and sat in traffic for three hours. That ride home really friggin sucked, but now that I look back, I couldn’t be happier with what had happened.
The next day, one of Esha’s sorority sisters who is an event planner and a wedding coordinator, sent her an email with a few website links of possible wedding locations. After we checked the websites out, there was one that Esha really liked. The next day she called the location and made an appointment for the following day. The place was called Auletto Caterers.
The place was amazing and had everything we wanted. It had a large lake as a backdrop for an outdoor ceremony, a wine cellar, and a big-ass dance floor, and after we tasted all their different food options, which were delicious by the way, we knew we found the perfect place, a one stop shop for our wedding ceremony, our wedding photos, and for our wedding reception.
The next discussion we had took about two seconds. Since I proposed to Esha in Jamaica, which is a story all by itself, and since we were having our wedding in the summer, it was a no brainer that the theme of our wedding would be beach/Caribbean.
Anyway, since we decided we were going to do everything ourselves, we began talking about the need to make lists and keeping notes on what we were doing for the wedding. I knew she was already doing this so basically the talk was a polite way for Esha to tell me what to do. I told her that I would get a notebook and start writing down whatever I did or needed to do for our wedding.
Right then I had one of those lightning bolt, creative moments. I told Esha that we should both keep a journal pertaining only to the wedding that we should write in a journal, every night from August 8th, 2009 until August 7th, 2010.
And so the book was born.
For 365 days we wrote down what we did for our wedding, our thoughts on getting married, our fears, our wants, what we learned about eachother, what we learned about marriage, and what we think it will take for our marriage to reach the golden anniversary. Then I threw in a twist. The twist was that neither of us would read what the other wrote in our personal wedding journal until after our wedding. Cool, huh?
What really just started out as a way for us to keep everything organized for our wedding accidently turned into something much, much larger. It became a way for us to share all of our thoughts on getting married and a way for us to blow off steam when childish drama occurred, which happened multiple times.
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About the Book
Every married couple has their own meaningful tales—and occasionally horror stories—of wedding preparation. Few couples, however, have that time as intricately and intimately documented as Alexander and Ahesha Catalano. 365 Days Until …: The Journey to Our Wedding details the year-long journey to the Alexander and Ahesha Catalano’s wedding day. Every night, for 365 days prior to their wedding, they recorded everything they did in preparation for the wedding. They chronicled all of the foolishness, the things they learned about each other, and the things they learned about marriage, each in their own journal. They considered everything from mundane details to what it would take for them to reach their golden anniversary. Most importantly, they wrote about all the fun they had coordinating their wedding and how much they truly adore one another. But there’s a twist—neither of them read each other’s journal until after they were married. Independent of each other, they captured all of their emotions at each step in the process of organizing their most important day. What began as a way for them to keep everything organized for their wedding accidently turned into something much, much more important. 365 Days Until …: The Journey to Our Wedding offered an opportunity for Alex and Esha to share all of their most intimate thoughts and fears about getting married with each other, and it will encourage others in preparation for their own wedding day.
About the Author
Alexander and Ahesha Shamil Catalano are from Philadelphia and were married on August 8, 2010, in front of family, close friends, and a few peacocks. They look forward to their journey through married life, traveling together on the road to their golden anniversary. This is the first book they’ve written together.