Valéria Jones de Oliveira

&

David Jess Borough

Wedding Reception in Rio

13 October 2007

• Keep this website posted with details for family or friends who might want to join us.
• Buy our tickets and reserve our spaces at least 6 months before the event.
• Rent one house or apartment and one bus or van for everybody who is coming to stay in one group.
• Plan a few basic things to do as a group, each with its own RSVP list.
• Go all together as a group to each event in our bus or van, including the reception.
• Arrange in advance who is going to pick each person up at the airport.
• Families and individuals can do their own thing when not participating in group events.
• Maybe we can rent the house for 4 days before and 3 days after the reception (1 week).
• We can help with hotels if people want to come earlier or stay longer.
• We can plan a few special events like a trips to Petropolis, Búzios, and Rio das Ostras
• At least one Churrascaria (BBQ that comes to your table every few minutes) and at least one comidas á kilo (and probably many more--A Brazilian buffet that you pay for by the gram each time you fill your plate for about $5 to $15 dollars per kilogram--and usually a very large variety of fruit, vegetable (casserol) and meat dishes).
• Trips to Cristo Redentor (Christ statue), Vista Chinesa (Chinese view), PUC (the Catholic university), Parque de cidade (the city park that is really a forest mountain nature preserve), Jardim Botânico (the royal gardens with a real Boabab tree--from the Little Prince, and a display of insect-eating plants), and Maracanã, the soccer stadium (a game?).

Well, those are our ideas for now. We will keep posting details for anybody who might want to plan to come.

Anybody who wants to go meet Valéria's family should plan ahead by getting a passport with at expiration in February 2008 or later. We can help with discount airfare. It may be as low as $800 to $1000 round-trip if we are lucky. And we will help with airports, transportation, housing, all that kind of stuff.

For all the rest of you who obviously cannot go, we still want you to participate in meeting Valéria's family (or David's family, as the case may be). We'll keep coming up with ideas about how to get everybody together online. Maybe we can put up some big screen TVs in the USA and one at the reception with microphones and video cameras, and people can walk up to the TVs and talk to each other in English and Portuguese.