Wedding Bouquet Display

For some time now, I’ve been keeping my eye out for a glass cloche or dome at thrift stores. I wanted them for my wedding bouquet, which I had left sitting in a glass vase (without any water) so it had dried out nicely. I wanted to further protect it from elements like water and moving people. I had checked online too and the size that I had needed cost upward of $45 which was a little too pricy for a piece of glass in my opinion. (The ones below start from $89! They are pretty though.)

photo from www.wisteria.com

So here’s my shabby chic inspired version for displaying my wedding bouquet:

 The Lanstalle lantern for candles purchased from… Ikea. Though it may not be as airtight as the cloche, I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out. And since dust mostly settles from on top, I covered the air duct at the very top of the lantern with a round piece of contact paper.

Now my wedding flowers are happily sitting in their new home, protected from the elements. (Well mostly at least.) And the price of this glass lantern? $14.99. Wanting to save does make you think out of the box! Or in this case, in it.

Not Another Moleskine

I'm taking a break from assembling Ikea furniture (yes, we get the standard newlywed Ikea furniture) cause I wanted to write about another awesome wedding gift we got from my good friend, Pia.

When the Moleskine Passions Journals came out, I had my eye on two of them: The Moleskine Passions Book Journal and the Moleskine Passions Recipe Journal. Being the avid reader that I am, I eventually bought the book journal for myself and Pia bought the Recipe Journal for us as a wedding gift! (FYI, Moleskines are a line of "legendary" notebooks and sketchbooks" that have Van Gogh as its most famous user. )

I thought it was perfect because Gerard is a chef and I love to bake. What better way to keep all our favorite recipes all in one place! So a few days ago, I finally got around to opening it and writing down our first recipe!

I got this recipe for yummy sweet chicken bacon wraps from our good friend Abby, when she made them for her daughter's birthday last year. They're so good but so easy to make!

Here's what a blank page looks like. It has all these different sections for difficulty, servings, ingredients, cooking times, cooking process, etc.

And here are the tabbed dividers for different categories of recipes.

I can't wait to fill it with all the special recipes from our life together, like our pumpkin soup, my chocolate chip cookies, and Gerard's mashed sweet potatoes!

Aside from the book and recipes journal, there are also journals for music, films, wellness, and wine. I think they'd make awesome gifts for people who love these things and writing about them, as I do! 

Thanks so much for the Journal, Pi! It was an awesome wedding gift. I look forward to someday cooking for you!

Our First Impression with The Write Impression

Due to the fact that I was so busy wedding planning at that time, I barely blogged about the wedding at all! But now that I've got more time on my hands, I aim to chronicle the wonderful wacky journey that lead up to April 9, 2010, for posterity's sake.

So I'm going to start where a lot of weddings start.

Invitations!

(Over and over I've read that the first impression of your wedding comes from your wedding invitations. I don't know how true that it is but I sure didn't need an excuse! I wanted beautiful, elegant wedding invites.)

Right from the start, I knew I wanted to go with The Write Impression, a Manila based company for our wedding invitations. I had seen so many wonderful invitations they had made for various people that I knew. Thing is, I just hadn't quite decided on the design yet. I had a few in mind, from their look book, but none had really given me that "this is it" bang of emotion.

Then a few months before the wedding, The Write Impression had a booth at a Bridal Fair at the Ayala mall in Cebu. I finally got to meet Jong, this wonderful lady who I'd been e-mailing with for months! And in their current look book, I found the "Elena" design. (Their wedding invitations designs are often named after the bride they make the design for.) One perusal of "Elena" and my heart fell in love.

Just so you know, I LOVE paper. I love paper, pens, and ink. I love fonts. I love stationery.  I was EXTREMELY picky about anything paper-related to our wedding. (FYI, it took over a year and a half to finalize my wedding invitations.)

So I fell in love with "Elena." I loved the horizontal chocolate pocket. The textured inserts made from Italian paper. And the beautiful font, Miss Le Gatees that made took my breath away.

20 working days after finalizing proofs, this is what we got:

A  horizontal, chocolate brown pocket with the main invitation card in the middle panel and two pretty inserts in the right pocket (entourage card and rsvp card) bound by a wine red satin ribbon complete with our monogram.

Too bad I don't have a photo of the complete invitation but I do have these photos from our wedding day itself.

All photos of course, by Joey Reyna and Nelson Petilla

This is what the outside looked like. 
But with a brown background. (And no rings of course!)

The Main Invitation Card

And all three cards

Clockwise from top left, Main Invitation Card, Envelope and Ribbon, RSVP Card, Entourage Card. 

Too bad I really don't have a photo of the chocolate pocket. 

I will get one cause the whole effect of everything together is what made it gorgeous.

So, I guess you could say that I was very, very happy with our wedding invitations. 

Thank you, The Write-Impression for giving me invites so beautiful that I didn't want to give them away! So happy you have offices in the USA!

Our "Sweet and Civil" Ceremony

We got married! (Again!)

This time we had a short "Sweet and Civil" ceremony to formally legalize our marriage.

We had a short ceremony followed by a fun, intimate party at this wonderful little place called the Bancroft Hotel in Berkeley. It was held at this lovely room called the Great Hall which had three tiers, albeit "floors" which was perfect for our set-up. We had the ceremony in one section, dinner at the middle, and the back section we used as an impromptu "stage".

We were truly expecting something simple but my cousin Grace surprised us all by providing wonderful decor and flowers! And my bouquet was lovely!

I'll let the photos tell the rest. They were all taken by my sister, who did a great job in capturing these even more precious memories.

Marriage is...

Do you...

With all our families and guests!

A lovely shot of my bouquet taken by my sister

Pretty Table Settings

Our yummy cakes from (drum roll please...) Safeway!

View of the Great Hall

Thank you to all our guests for coming and to the Bancroft Hotel for the wonderful service!

Our weddings are done! One more celebration to go! Then the next one will be our one year anniversary. I'd say married life has been pretty good so far.

An Opal Engagement Ring

A few days ago, a photo popped up on my phone of a beautiful opal ring on a very familiar hand. I didn't quite get the meaning until I read the words "He proposed!" in the text message. Imagine my surprise and joy at the fact that one of my dearest friends of earth was engaged to her longtime boyfriend of five years!

The photo on my phone

Maybe it's a year for wedding and engagements and new things. Perhaps its the age group were in, (late twenties) that is "typical" if I daresay of such events such as marriage, moves, and births of babies. It seems that in the last few years, we've been talking of weddings and babies more and more! (One of my other friends just gave birth and I am godmother to her a child, another friend is pregnant, Rhoda and I were bridesmaids at her wedding, and Rhoda was a bridesmaid at mine!) So much has come full circle.

Rhoda showing off her ring :D

But why an opal ring you may ask, not the traditional diamond? Well, her boyfriend listened to her last year when she said she didn't want a regular diamond ring, and the opal is her birthstone! He had to get it especially made for her. Isn't that different? I thought it was a wonderful idea!

I really wish I could be home in Cebu at this exciting time of my Rhoda's life. All the choices you have to make, dress designs, color motifs, venue, food, music, etc! (Yes you can tell I just got married too.) She and have seen each other through so much, through elementary, and high school, and college, not to mention through relationships! She's such a dear friend of mine, who's always seen me through thick and thin and I am deeply happy that we are both settled with good men to be beside us for the rest of our lives. 

So Rhods, if you're reading this too, I am so happy that you're happy with Jim. I love you and I wish you nothing but the best! And I promise. I'll be there on your special day!

Rayvin + Louanne, The Perfect Blend

Over the weekend, my whole family drove to Dumaguete to see my cousin Louanne marry her longtime sweetheart, Rayvin Pinero.

It was a lovely morning full of love, joy, and tears, as the eldest daughter of a brood of four officially tied the knot. Yes, I said morning! They had a beautiful ceremony at 7 AM at the grounds of the South Sea Resort in Dumaguete. The weather was perfect, windy, and not too warm nor humid. A yummy brunch followed, held at the hotel as well. (I loved that we could eat lechon at 9 in the morning!)

As you can see from the photos, Louanne and Rayvin chose the cheerful colors of yellow, orange and brown as their wedding motif and coffee as the emblem of their wedding as they got to know each other over many cups of coffee.

Here are some photos from that beautiful day.

My mother's magic. From this...

To this!

With the maid of honor, my cousin Issa

My parents getting to ready to march as Principal Sponsors

The beautiful bride being escorted down the aisle by her mom and uncle. And while she was walking, her groom was singing "Bless the Broken Road." I couldn't help but shed a few tears!


Welcome to the Family!


Issa, maid of honor, got picked for the garter!

Beautiful shot taken by one of the groomsmen, Meltoy Ferrero. How do you like the dresses I designed? The secondary sponsors dresses were orange and brown as well! I love how the colors came out!

Congratulations to the newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Rayvin Pinero! So happy for you guys! It was a beautiful wedding!

Wonderful Wedding Photographers

I, the queen of promptness, is being told that she was late for her own wedding.

I had wonderful wedding photographers, and I couldn't have been happier with them.

Let me introduce you to the men, Joey Reyna and his partner, Nelson Petilla.

Joey Reyna was referred to me by a friend and since I felt I hadn't quite found the right photographer in Cebu, I decided to check his work out and see how I felt about it. With all the stress and everything, I just decided to go with my gut, hired Joey and Nelson, and hoped I'd made the best decision.

When it came to our wedding photos, I knew that a good wedding photographer was on my top 5 list of non negotiables. That was one thing that I was willing to really budget for. You have your dress, cake, flowers, and everything else, but long after your wedding, you'll still have your wedding photos.

One month after our wedding, I've received 5 DVDs of raw files, and I feel that I could not have hired a better tandem.

One of the things I love about their style is their ability to capture emotion, and "moments" if you must. Sure you'll still have posed photos. But so many of Joey's and Nelson's photos are unexpected surprises which I really love.

So, thank you, Joey and Nelson, for all the wonderful moments that you captured for us! Thank you a million times!

You can view Joey's blog entry about our wedding here.

On Tying the Knot

So I've dropped off Gerard at the airport already, not quite knowing when I'll see him again. But that's ok! We're married! (Well sort of. Before our families, friends, and God, but not yet before the government.)

And now, I take a step back and think about how wonderful the last two weeks were.

Getting married (albeit non-legally as we'll do that in the USA) was an overwhelming experience, one that I thought I was prepared for, yet it totally caught me off guard.

Starting from the Despedida de Soltera wherein our guests from out of town started arriving. To leaving for Casino Espanol (and having to turn back!) walking down the aisle, being pronounced man and wife, and the awesome party afterward!

I think what hits me the most (aside from the fact that Gerard and I are now married) was all the love that surrounded us. It was so amazing, having so many people that we loved, all at the same place, all in the same room! That's one of the things I'll never really forget.

And even though there were people missing, most especially one, we held you closely in our hearts, and you were thought off, missed, and never forgotten.

I won't make this long. I'll save the longer entry for the next time.

But from the bottom of our hearts, Gerard and I are so grateful to everyone, for all good wishes, for your presence on our wedding day, for all the love, for EVERYTHING.

Special Edition Floor Length Infinity Evening Gown

This is a sample of the infinity dress I'm thinking of giving my bridesmaids for the wedding.

It's a floor length, evening gown, with special gathers down the front, and extra long straps for more wrapping possibilities. And it uses 5 meters of gorgeous fabric!






I don't mean to toot my own horn but I love it!

Wedding Ring Inscriptions

Last night, while driving home, I started to think about what Gerard and I would have engraved in our wedding rings. Originally, we wanted to do the fingerprint engraving, that is, engrave each other's fingerprints on the underside of our ring. However, it seems that the technology isn't available yet here in the Philippines. I thought it was a unique idea though!

So instead, we're each deciding on words to engrave in each other's ring.

These are some of our favorites:

"Gotcha!"

"Your love is better than chocolate."

"May the force be with you."

"A deal's a deal." (Taken from Courteny Cox and David Arquette rings)

"I will be here."

However, this is my personal favorite and what I'm leaning towards.

"Today I marry my friend. April 9, 2010"

I feel it to be very fitting, because more than anything, Gerard has always been my friend.

Now I just have to wait for what he'll place in my ring :).

First Wedding Post.

I can't help it. Though I know we are only a tiny bit into wedding planning, I can't help but become excited about the little things that we are accomplishing. Designing invitations (I love paper!), looking for a photographer, working with a wedding coordinator. All these little steps that lead to one big day! (I just have to pour this all out into writing.)

Last week, my mom and I went to the "mini" wedding expo at the Cebu International Convention Center and we collected a bunch of fliers of suppliers and photographers. We're currently in the process of contacting them and deciding which ones were most comfortable with.

As always, one of the biggest considerations is our guest list.

I wish with all my heart that we could invite everyone in the world who has touched our hearts and has been part of our lives. But due to our recent loss and the fact that Gerard and I are still starting our careers, we are opting to have a smaller, more intimate wedding. Perhaps in the future, we can have a bigger celebration.

But for now, I'm just trying to enjoy the ride of preparing to be a bride! So much to do! So many decisions to make!

I'll leave you with one of the cutest wedding cakes I have ever seen, by Trina Ang. I got it off her multiply website and here's the link . Isn't it adorable?