Marriage Course - Feb-March 2008

„Marriage is like two pieces of paper glued together: they fit, they got used to each other so perfectly, and if you need to separate them, it takes a lot of pain and trouble.”

As we mentioned earlier, we have attended the „Marriage Course” as a criterion for getting married in the Reformed Church that we chose (it's a branch of the Christian Protestant Church). It was kind of a preparation before the wedding, the aim of the course was to establish patterns that will keep marriages alive for a lifetime.

The first part of the course was a week-end in the countryside of Hungary (at lake Velence), at a romantic hostel where we could sleep in our own room, in a double bed (Ryan was shocked to see that the Reformed Church in Hungary allows that before the wedding). :)

The agenda of the week-end was about topics around the marriage, such as:
The art of communication in the relationship, dealing with conflicts, dealing with the in-laws, etc.... and......believe or not....sex was also discussed as a topic of the marriage. :)

The minister gave a presentation about each topic, and after each of them, there were questions that we had to discuss between ourselves (just the two of us).

The second part of the Marriage Course was about a series of Monday-night discussions, around a dinner table, mainly about religeous topics.

And now that we are finished, I can truly say that it was awesome! We really loved it, we learnt a lot, and we hope that this experience will help us build a strong foundation for our future married life.

And even though in the beginning we thought that it might be difficult for Ryan to be amongst so many Hungarians, and not to understand much from the conversations, but guess what happened! There was another international couple, the girl being Hungarian, and the guy being exactly from New Zealand! In addition, they are having their wedding exactly in the same day as us: the 9th August!!!!! Such a coincidence! So cool!!!!! :)

Some of the pictures:

The two Hungaro-Kiwi couples :)

Dinner time

At the presentations

And if you wanna see more photos, click here!

New photos and videos uploaded

Hi all,

Just a quick note:
Since our last blog posting in English, we've uploaded new photos both on the Facebook group and for those who don't want to register there, on public sites, too.
Here are the links to the public sites:
Photos on Flickr - click here
1st video on YouTube -click here
2nd video on YouTube -click here
3rd video on YouTube -click here
4th video on YouTube -click here

Enjoy! :)

Rildi (Ryan és Ildikó) polgári esküvője - 2008. február 2.

Kedves családunk és barátaink!
Köszönjük szépen mindenkinek, aki már visszajelzett az e-mailes esküvői meghívással kapcsolatban, és aki elküldte nekünk a postai címét. Már nagyon várjuk az augusztusi esküvőt, ahol az egyházi szertartást és a nagy, nemzetközi lagzit tartjuk majd.
A múlt hétvégén viszont egy másik fontos esemény történt az életünkben: a polgári esküvőnk, ahol a Magyar Köztársaság családjogi törvénye értelmében házastársakká váltunk. :) A szertartás után egy kis vacsorára volt hivatalos a pöttöm násznép az édesanyám lakásán. Ott voltak a szüleim, testvérem, a hivatalos fordítónk, Bindes Bori, a két tanu Abhishek Singh Jadon Indiából és Kostyák Bori unokatestvérem, illetve természetesen Ryan és én.
Úgyhogy mostmár hivatalosan is Mr és Mrs Sheppard lettünk (Ryan Sheppard és Kostyák-Sheppard Ildikó). De azért a legjobban az augusztusi esküvőnket várjuk, ahol a családunk apraja-nagyja, és a barátaink mind ott lesznek, és velünk örülhetnek, amikor örök hűséget fogadunk egymásnak.
Szóval nemsokára érkeznek a meghívók, és még egyszer, ne felejtsétek el beírni a határidőnaplótokba az augusztus 9-ét, a budapesten tartandó esküvőnk időpontját! :)
A polgári szertartáson készített fotókat és videókat a Facebook nevű programban találjátok, illetve aki nem szeretne ide feliratkozni, annak ajánljuk figyelmébe a következő linkeket:
Fotok - kattints ide
1. video - kattints ide
2. video - kattints ide
3. video - kattints ide
4. video - kattints ide

Sok szeretettel,
a Sheppard család :)

Civil Ceremony for Rildi

Dear friends and family,

Thank you to everyone who has got back to us confirming their attendance at our wedding in August so far. We look forward to a big international gathering of all our friends and family later this year for our church wedding.

This weekend another major event occured, our civil wedding, and now officially as per Hungarian family law, we are now husband and wife :). We had a small gathering with Ildi's mother, father and brother, the best man for the church wedding in August as Ryan's witness (Abhishek Singh Jadon), the maid of honour in August as Ildi's witness (Bori Kostyak), and our official translator as required by Hungarian law (mutual friend, Bori Bindes).

So now officially we would like to introduce ourselves as Mr and Mrs Sheppard (Ryan Thomas Sheppard & Ildiko Kostyak-Sheppard). However we are even more excited to having a much larger ceremony in August where we can reaffirm our vows in church in front of our close friends and family. So please keep those addresses for the invites coming, and book August 9th for a Budapest wedding :).

Photos and videos of the civil ceremony have been uploaded onto the Facebook group, with more to be uploaded in the coming week.

Yours,

The Sheppards :)