Friday, January 29, 2010

Wedding Blog: Southern California Dream Wedding Giveaway!

Posted by Ben at 12:21 AM

About 10 days ago, Rashida and I entered into the Southern California Dream Wedding Giveaway. If we were to win, we'd receive a "Platinum Affair" wedding for 100 guests valued at about $100,000 at the beautiful Rancho de Las Palmas in Moorpark, California on Sunday, June 27, 2010. We would get to work with our own personal wedding planner and designer as well as over 50 of the best wedding event vendors (a.k.a. "The Dream Crew") to create the wedding of our (probably more so Rashida's) dreams.

The contest opened up way back in October and closes this Sunday, January 31st so we just made it! The winning Dream Couple will be chosen on Valentine's Day, so that's only a couple of weeks away. Up until January 10th, all of the entries were being posted on their blog, but in the last 2 weeks alone they've received over 200 entries (after only receiving 400 in the first 3 months), so "Dream Couple stories" are no longer being posted on their site.

I believe we posted ours around the 17th, so we were one of the 200. It's too bad because I had a whole plan of blogging about it and posting on facebook in order to get everyone I know to descend on the blog to leave us comments in hopes of our entry getting a lot of visibility by the Dream Crew. You see they are going to look through all 600+ entries (starting January 31st) and pick the top 10 (announcing on February 3rd). Then it'll be up for a public vote to whittle the contestants down to only 3 (announced on February 12th). Then the winning "Dream Couple" will be picked from the 3 by the "Dream Sponsors" on Valentine's Day.

Even though our entry didn't make it to the web, it's still eligible and hopefully will be picked in the Top 10. Then the huge publicity effort can begin to get us into the final 3! If you're interested, I've included our entry below (it's written from Rashida's perspective):


Ben & Rashida Engagement
Dream Couple™: Rashida Bridges & Ben Ilegbodu
Palo Alto, California and Hayward, California

Tell us your Dream Couple™ Story (how you met, the engagement, etc. We want the full scoop).
Ben and I attended Stanford University together. He was one year ahead of me. We were pretty good friends in college, but nothing ever materialized romantically. The year following his graduation in the summer of '06 we lost contact and our friendship dissipated.

However in early 2008 we began talking via IM and started getting to know each other all over again. We also began teaching together in our Sunday School program in church. By the summer of 2008 we were talking to each other nearly every day for multiple hours. Although we both were interested in each other, neither one of us made a move. It wasn't until I helped him & his roommates pack up their apartment the night before they moved (until 3AM) that he FINALLY made a move.

We began dating shortly thereafter, and even before the word got out, people were suggesting that we would be a good couple. Our dating matured into a committed relationship and we got to know each other deeper & deeper. All of our friends who knew us both, gave the relationship two thumbs up and were hoping (as we were) that the relationship would end in marriage.

Well, shortly after finishing pre-engagement class at our church, Ben proposed to me. It was so sweet. He used my 1st and 2nd grade kids to assist in the proposal. He spelled out the question "WILL YOU MARRY ME?" on 15 sheets of paper and had them hold it up. When I walked into the room they yelled "Will you marry Mr. Ben?!?!" and there he was on bended knee asking me to do him the honor of becoming his wife. Of course I said YESSSSS!! I can't even describe all the feelings that were going through my mind & body during the whole proposal. I was shocked, excited, surprised, sort of embarrassed, shocked again, and probably thousands of other emotions that don't even have names! Ben planned it so well that he had a friend of his take pictures of the whole proposal: http://www.benmvp.com/2010/01/wedding-blog-proposal.html.

After I was done with the kids, I went around showing my family and friends at church the ring and telling them the amazingly cute story. Naturally they approved... of Ben, of the proposal, and of the ring! It was really pretty and he picked it out all by himself too. Many months ago he had apparently "borrowed" one of my rings and found out its size, so that my ring fit perfectly!


Tell us about the hardest thing you as a couple have had to face to date.
Something that all couples face is how to communicate effectively with each other verbally. While Ben and I struggle with expressing our feelings when we're upset, jumping to conclusions without asking for clarification, and other common verbal communication issues, we also have to deal with how to communicate to each other physically. Before Ben and I even started dating, I had decided that I would abstain from sex before marriage. It turns out that a year earlier, Ben had made a similar commitment.

So here we are, two young lovebirds trying to figure out how to physically show each other how much we love each other without breaking our commitments. Needless to say, it's been very difficult, especially knowing that we've been wanting to get married for quite some time. Moreover, we had to learn what we could and could not do in order to keep ourselves from slipping. While our friends & coworkers were having sleepovers with their significant others and going on fun & exciting vacations together, we reluctantly & painstakingly made red-eye car trips back to our respective homes and never went on overnight vacations. We quickly realized that those environments were not conducive to us following through with our prior promises.

But in the face of numerous temptations, what's kept us focused is the faith that God will reward our faithfulness when we do finally come together as one in marriage. Society teaches us that we should seek instant gratification, and sexual gratification is no different, but we've actually found that abstaining has enabled us to enhance or verbal communication. We've no doubt gotten into more arguments with the "extra time" on our hands, but we've also learned to resolve each conflict and that has resulted in a stronger relationship and hopefully a stronger marriage.


Tell us about what you think is the key to a successful marriage.
Ben and I had the opportunity to participate in a 15-week long pre-engagement class that was offered by the church. It's similar to pre-marital counseling, except it's in a group format and it's supposed to educate us in what it means to be married so that we could make an informed decision on whether or not to pursue engagement and ultimately marriage. The class boasts of a 100% success rate: either you A) move on to marriage B) realize you need more time to figure things out or C) break up. Breaking up is a success because they rather the relationship end in the class and not in the courthouse.

From the class we learned that having a threesome in marriage is a must! There are three people involved in a successful, loving & committed marriage: the wife, the husband, and most importantly God. With God at head of the relationship, the couple can withstand any trials that they may face and love each other unconditionally as God loves his children.

In addition, we learned that communication is key. Communication has been our struggling point. If I don't understand what Ben is saying or where he's coming from and I make assumptions, that can lead to hours and days of discontentment or fights (which generally are in the form of the silent treatment). But if we make the effort to be patient and listen to what each other has to say (and ask for clarification when necessary), we can avoid a lot of that ugliness.

In a nutshell, the most important aspect of a relationship is love. Financial wealth, fame, and fantastic sex are all great to have, but it's love that will sustain a marriage. Love comes in three facets. There's the erotic love which is how we'll physically express our love for each other. There's the friendship love in which we share roll through live together enjoying each other's company and sharing in each others hopes & dreams. And finally there's the unconditional love that loves even when the other person doesn't deserve it. As opposed to treating marriage as a contract where both sides say "I will love you if you do this or that", we want to treat marriage as a holy covenant in which we say "I will love you no matter what and I am in this thing 'til the END."


Tell us why you deserve to be the Southern California Dream Wedding Giveaway Dream Couple™.
Ben's an amazing man who I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with. I love him dearly and I know he feels the same way about me. He's my other half, my support, my best friend, my encouragement, the one I know I'll be able to count on forever. He's my blessing from God!

Now we're knee-deep in the planning process and a dream wedding getaway would be both a blessing and an amazing way to start or marriage and life-long commitment to each other with our friends and family all over the world. How cool would it be for some of Ben's family to fly in all the way from Nigeria and experience such a wonderful ceremony. Our wedding would be something that would be talked about for years to come all over the world!


Yeah, we kinda wrote a lot. That became even more apparently when we read some of the other "Dream Couple stores." If you've made it this far you must either be really interested or really bored (maybe a lil' of both?). In either case, you may also want to read all the many, many things we'd get if we won:



Yeah, that's a whole bunch of stuff! Most of which would not be in our wedding that we'd be paying for ourselves. In any event, we're hoping and praying that we win. Feel free to join us in praying for God's favor!

Previous Wedding Blog post: How about an Asian wedding???
Next Wedding Blog plost: Wedding University Running Diary

See all Wedding Blog posts...

Add to Technorati Favorites
Topics: ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)