Meeting Plan

"In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged."

 (Hans Nouwens)

After that we did much works to be able to meet each other in person. At first Dennis asked me to come to his place in USA, but the US Embassy here rejected my visa since I applied for a tourist one. They said I should have him applied for fiance visa, which we could not do since we had not meet in person before. We also thought that it could take forever, while we really wanted to meet soon.

So we tried another way around, Dennis would come here and meet my families too. It would be easier since he only need a passport to get here without any visa.  He submitted an application to make a passport to the court house. We were really excited, we thought that we just had to wait for a couple of weeks then he could fly in.

In the mean time, we exchanged gifts for each other. He sent me stuffed dog, white bear and a little dog dolls, along with 2 of his shirts. I sent him 2 of my clothes, a shirt and a babydoll pajama. I loved all the stuff from him, they really helped us to heal our missing feelings a little bit.

After waiting for 1 month, the court house called him and said that he submit the wrong document. We were quite upset about that because they did not check the documents at first and told him right away when he submitted them. But we had to accept our 'fate'. Dennis need to request for a state birth certificate from Mississippi, where he was born, and make a new ID card. He lost his wallet couple of months ago so he did not have recent ID card with him. The birth certificate came in his mailbox on the week  after, but the ID card would be done within 3-6 weeks ! And after that we had to wait for another month to get his passport ! That was quite a long waiting time !

Meanwhile political situation between our countries were not good at all. Lots of demonstration everywhere in Indonesia against US because of terrorism issue. The tension was getting high every day, threats against Americans here also became more real. Many of Dennis' friends told him not to come here. They did not know the real situation of course, but we could not pretend that it's not happened.

Dennis suggested that we met in Canada instead. It would be faster for us since he just need a birth certificate and ID card to get there. The problem is on my side. I needed a visa to get there and it was quite difficult for Indonesian to get visa to any western countries at that time. Dennis insisted that I should try to get one so we could meet soon. So I applied for a tourist visa to Canadian Embassy. They called me for an interview a week after, it was September 30, asking me about my purpose coming to Canada. I told them the truth, that I wanted to meet my boyfriend there since I could not go to US without fiance visa. Two hours after the interview they called me and told me that they have decided to give me the visa ! We were soooo happy ... !! Now we just have to wait for Dennis' ID card and there would be no reason they would not give it to him.

Just two weeks after I got my visa, there was a big terrible terrorist attack in Indonesia. There was big bombs in Bali, created huge explosions at some of night clubs there, killed nearly 200 people, mostly foreigners. This accident really turned my country upside down, everything became jeopardize, especially tourisms. Thank goodness I have got my visa by that time, otherwise it would be even more difficult.

Learning from this unpredictable accident and the bad political situations between our countries, we decided that when we met, we would get married right away. It was so difficult and hard for us to meet in person so we would not waste any chance to be together and legalize our relationship. Dennis told my parents that he wanted to marry me and asked for their blessings. They were hesitate at first, especially my mom, since they have not seen him in person at all. My mom also wanted us to stay here in Indonesia after we got married. But it would be very difficult for Dennis since he could not find a proper job here. To calm them I said that I wanted to meet Dennis soon and I would tell them the progress after that. They allowed me to go to Canada to meet him.

The next thing we did was looking for plane tickets, a hotel and everything that we need to get married there. We decided that we would meet in Vancouver, because it was easier for me to get there. I could go to Singapore and there was a direct flight from Singapore to Vancouver without transiting in USA. Dennis would use another flight from Rochester - Minneapolis - Vancouver. Everything was quite a big mess for us to work on since neither of us lived there and even none of us have ever been in Canada before !

This was the moment when we realized that internet was really a great source for information. We got some hotel choices from internet and the most important thing was we figured out what we need to get married in Vancouver. It seemed that every state in Canada has their own regulations for getting married, but Vancouver's was really a quite simple one. We just need our proof of identification to get marriage license and a marriage commissioner to perform our wedding ceremony. Since we had different religions, we decided to get married in civil way rather than religious one. There was a list of marriage commissioners that we could contact so we sent e-mails to 5 of them.

We got replies only from 2 of them, but Diane Brown really caught our interest. She was so nice and helpful, gave us many advice and choices of marriage ceremonies. They were really beautiful ! We decided to have her as our marriage commissioner and she really gave an excellent respond. She even recommended some good hotels that we could contact for our accommodation there. Dennis wanted me to choose which marriage ceremonies that we would use and also contacted the hotel, but I only wanted to do that after we got the exact meeting date.

On October 30 Dennis called me when I was already asleep. He got his ID card in his mailbox ! We were really so happy ! Finally we could set our fixed meeting date ! We decided that we would get married on Saturday, November 23 and fly in to Vancouver 2 days before that. We booked all the airplane tickets right away and contacted the hotels based on Diane recommendation. We finally choose Best Western Downtown to be our wedding venue. We also got a very good deal with them since it was almost winter and the hotel was not very busy and full. They would prepare 2 of their staffs to be our witness and they even gave us a penthouse room for 2 nights as our wedding gift ! We contacted Diane and she was available to serve us on the intended day, and we chose our wedding ceremony. Everything was ready ... CANADA, HERE WE COME !!!