Happy Anniversary to Us! :)

It's been a year since we got up at the crack of dawn to prepare for one of our happiest day ever! I can't believe it... kase feeling ko ten years na with all the wrinkles and konsomisyon, LOL! 

Seriously though, it's been a fun ride... exciting and challenging, absolutely no dull moments... kase sa kin pa lang he already had his hands full. I'm sure he didn't expect me to be such a matigas na ulo partner, so I'm thankful that he still haven't left my side. Well either he's the most patient man ever, or magandang quality ng helmet ang nakuha ko, hehe! Swerte nya kaya, jackpot na jackpot sya ...sa sakit ng ulo, haha! 

The past year has been good to us, it was fair in giving us our share of happiness and tears. We've grown up a lot, from handling the simple day to day tasks of cleaning and eating, up to the more complex tasks that I personally used to depend on my parents like plumbing and maintenance. We are starting to handle grown-up problems now, and I think we are still doing 'ok.'  We do fight, though not as much as when we were just dating. We've matured in handling challenging conversations, though it's still a work in progress. We don't see eye to eye in a lot of things, but we do compromise when needed. Some health issues are in the way, but for now we will choose to celebrate our small and humble achievements. 

To my dear hubby, thank you for being crazy and laughing with me, for not leaving my side, and always cheering me on. I'm always a princess when I'm with you. 

Happy Anniversary to us :) 

Wedding Duties: Our DIY Wedding Cord

There was absolutely no plan to make our own wedding cord. Tito Boy assured me that he will provide us the rope that we can use for the ceremony, and I was totally fine with that. 2 months before the wedding, I was toying with the idea of making our own. No reason in particular, I just want to do some DIY, it's sort of a way for me to de-stress I guess. 

I did a bit of research and found some blogs that suggested to go to Wellmanson. You can read more about how we were able to get there, here. 

The original plan was for us to get raw materials so we can make a big rosary. True enough they were cheap at about 30 to 60 pesos per strand. We picked the colors we liked and started to compute how much we'll need. We walked around the store and I was looking for some nicer ones that I can use for the "Glory Be" beads when we spotted some bracelets. 

LJ was already tired, so guess what he did... got the bracelets, linked them together and proudly said "ayan! tapos na!" I was in shock, and a little sad about the idea that I won't make it from scratch, but he did have a point. The last thing we wanted is for me to be stressed about this DIY cord and be covered by strands of beads... and of course, crying.

The beads were already nice, and all I need to do now was to link the hooks together. So we did get the bracelets, and I also got the pliers and some extra rings, 

The CieLJ 12.08.12 Same Day Edit

Church: Mary the Queen, Greenhills

Reception: Oasis, Verandah

this can also be viewed in Vimeo http://vimeo.com/55445858

Credits to our wonderful suppliers

P/V: DB Phos

Bridal Gown: Boy Kastner Santos

Groom's Suit: Boy Kastner Santos

Entourage' Gowns and Suits: Alou Boutique 

Entourage Flowers: Serge Igonia
HMUA: Tippy Destacamento

OTD: The One Exclusive/Events by Thoffy Consulta

Church: Mary the Queen/ Annie/ Fr Rodney Hart S.J.

Venue: Oasis/ Jamie

Host: Missy Ferrer

Catering: Centertable/ Rina

Hotel: Astoria Plaza/ 2708, 2808

Bridal Car: Don Robert/ Jaguar Mark V

Photobooth: Purple Box

Wedding Rings: Hearts and Arrows/ Greenhills

Wedding Ring Plate: Trinkets and Favors by Designs Avenue

Wedding Cord: DIY, Materials from Wellmanson

Impromptu Post Nup: McDo Wilson ;p

The week after...

Exactly one week ago, we were in Astoria Plaza getting ready for the wedding. The plan was... or at least our abays plan for us was to make sure both of us were already in bed by 6pm Friday so we can wake up by 2am Saturday, in time for our our early morning ceremony. 

Well... that didn't happen. LOL! 

Friday, December 7

1pm - I was in High Street, looking for shoes! yup! less than 24 hours away and I don't have my shoes yet! 

2pm - LJ checked in for both our rooms in Astoria. I arrived about half an hour later. 

230pm - got some Mini Stop Chicken for late lunch (aren't Ministop chicken the best?!) 

3pm - Drove to Mary the Queen to check our contract. Good thing we did, since we missed a lot of primary sponsors names. 

4pm - dropped LJ in Greenhills, he still needs to buy shoes too! LOL!

430pm - I'm back at Astoria, just in time to see my parents pull over. Gina and Myra also just got there. Let the DIY cramming begin! 

6pm - My supposed beauty rest start time. LJ and I were cramming to get the Now and Then photos together. Astoria's wi-fi was failing us and we had to be creative. 

7pm - Ishy has joined us in the room. Souvenir bottles were prepped for some candy line-up. One of my bridesmaids, Stitch, dropped by to say hi. 

8pm - Nowhere near getting ready for bed. DIYs were in full swing. Ribbons! Ribbons! Tie those ribbons! 

9pm - off to Megamall to get my nails done. 

11pm - went to the condo to get my prep dress (which I will not wear in the morning, just because. LOL! 

12mn - we were still up... Mom's getting a mani/pedi, my kuya watching some videos, the bridesmaids (including a groomsman!) still in DIY mode, and Alou with Jake dropped by to lend me their arrhae. 

1am - Lights out for me at least. LJ decided to have a slumber party with his groomsmen and didn't sleep. Based from their stories, they even had the luxury of time to have some buffet breakfast. *inggit!* 

2am - Gina woke me up... we both fell asleep again!

4am - I got up... yup, just me. I took out the native fans and started to tie ribbons on them. I decided to enjoy the moment. Stitch arrived with KC and she helped me tie the ribbons. We joked that this was the 'calm before the storm' moment. 

430am - the DB Phos photo and video team arrived led by Chep, shortly followed by Tippy as my HMUA. 

5am - Tito Boy joined us and he immediately got to work setting up the gown. 

6am - well... we were preparing for a wedding. It was an organized chaos. I didn't feel panic, nor does it feel weird. Hair and Make-up was in full swing, people were in and out of the suite. 

7am - Finally got the chance to wear tito Boy's creation. There's so many words that you can describe it, awesome, amazing, and stunning were the top three words used. Friends and family however, described it with just one word --  "Cielo." It is exactly the gown that you will imagine me to want and to wear. Tito Boy did a great job, but more on this later.

8am - The pictorials were in full swing. This was the most awkward of all that happened that day. All those cheesy shots -- touch the gown, earrings shot, touch the curtain, look up from the flower shots -- well I had to do those. 

815am - mad dash to the church.  

840am - made it to the church. The bridal car was parked near the church office and I have a full view of the church doors. I had fun watching the guests gather up. 

9am - tito Boy was by my side, fixing up my gown, and making it all picture perfect. I heard the Manila String Machine start playing A Thousand Years and I was so ready to walk. 

I wouldn't say that the walk was a blur, I remember the faces, I even said 'hi' to a good number of them. I am aware of what's happening and what I need to do. It was just that I was too happy to care if anything goes wrong at that moment. Good thing everything went well though, and I finally reached LJ. We've been holding hands every moment we can since then. :) 

Wedding Duties: 30 day countdown begins!

It's almost midnight and we've been so busy recovering from the body aches of the pre-nup shoot, getting the song line-up together, figuring out the guest list, following up with suppliers and handling our own office duties that it took me this late to recognize that we are already at the last stretch of our wedding planning. 

We were officemates in the past but this has got to be our biggest project together to date. From the beginning we've always treated this as business project -- I do the research, and he's the closer. We've dealt with suppliers with this tag team approach and we're happy, that for the most part, it has worked for us. I remember the first supplier we booked at the wedding fair, at the time we didn't have any experience in dealing with wedding suppliers. Heck, we don't even have a checking account then nor did we bring any money with us. Good thing they were nice enough to help us get to an ATM. That experience will always be one for the books; it was a milestone which pretty much gave us a preview of how this whole planning will be -- find the best deal, know what we need and what is important to us, be prepared and just go for it.

Dozens of supplier meetings later, we now have a whole team to help us get this wedding celebration rolling. We are proud of the group that we've gathered but more than anything, we are proud of each other.  Our tag team has helped us survive the emotional roller coaster that came along with the planning. I'm confident that after this whole crazy adventure, we can accomplish even bigger projects -- like having our own kid grow up with a British accent and make him learn a second language before he's three...?!?! whew!  

So before things get wilder, we just want to say, "Thank you!" 

To our suppliers na forever na namin kinukulit and yet, ever supportive pa rin...
Jamie of Oasis, Rina of Centertable, Thoffy of The One Exclusive, Joseph and Mark of DB Phos, Hearts and Arrows Greenhills, Lei of LilWhiskers, Andrew Villar for the comic cover, Annie and Noemi of Mary the Queen, Ted of Manila String Machine, Tippy and team (Loi and Julius), Kerwin of Printed Matter for our amazing invite layout, our dearest Tito Boy, and of course ang pinakamagandang designer namin ng entourage gown... Alou! 

We still need to touch base with the rest of the suppliers -- Missy for the programme, Serge for the flowers, Fin of Purplebox for the layout... it seems there's still a lot more things to do even with just a month to go but we're confident we'll wrap all of these up nicely...

We are grateful for our parents who keeps us grounded and shower us with TLC.Thank God for wonderful friends that we can lean on, for our whole entourage along with my wonderful MOH Gina, and our beautiful abay Ishy... they are keeping us from losing our minds.

Through the highs and lows, the tears and laughter, everything that came along with this experience will end up becoming priceless memories.

30 days to go... leshdothis! ",)

Wedding Duties: Engagement Shoot BTS

Nearly a year after booking our photographers, we finally had the chance to schedule our engagement shoot. The location choices ranged from EK, to date night/action in Eastwood, Greenbelt or Fort, to 'work/recruitment,' and finally we landed at the Philippine Air Force Museum. 

LJ wanted a Mr and Mrs Smith appeal...

while I was hesitant to join that bandwagon. After a little "let's do this!" talk, I finally agreed to the action theme... BUT... gusto ko Nikita! haha! 

To prepare ourselves, we even watched Skyfall. The whole time I was thinking, ok... we need that dress, and that one... ohhh... and THAT one! 

The day before the shoot, we borrowed the guns (Shoutout to Alou! mwahh!), got our outfits together, shopped for some baon and prayed for the best. 

Knowing our luck, I was already anticipating rain. According to all the weather websites I checked, there's 30% to 33% precipitation... In tagalog... malabong umulan! 

we'll... 

umulan! 

Wedding Duties: Engagement Shoot Location

Can you just imagine where we would be in this stage of the wedding planning without the internet??! All of us have to agree that this is such a great tool! For this particular assignment, I don't think I would have the strength to go through every nook and cranny of Manila just to check out locations that would be suitable for our photo shoot. 

While I was ready to pull out my hair trying to figure out a location for our engagement shoot when LJ found this article in Spot.ph. If you are also searching, we highly recommend that you browse through the different locations that they've suggested. 

SPOT.ph

Wedding Duties: Bargain Hunt

My lovely Maid of Honor went with me to Divisoria to scout for good deals. The plan is to find items at wholesale prices so that it will be cheaper compared to the mall. LJ wasn't going with us so we had no plans to buy anything. I can tell you right now that this plan failed! hehe! 

Wedding Duties: Pre Cana Seminar

We were lucky that Mary the Queen offers a pre-cana seminar. We didn't have to book at another church or pay an additional fee. 

Prepare to give up a weekend and be stuck in a room to complete this activity! But seriously, it isn't so bad. It's just two 8am-5pm days and both of them could end up interesting. We know ours did! haha!

They have a room, specifically arranged for the pre-cana seminar, the seats are comfortable enough, and the space was well air-conditioned. 

Wedding Duties: CieLJ SaveTheDate Magnets

We've talked about how much we love the comic cover that Andrew Villar created for us here. It's been two weeks since we received it in our email and we are still raving about it. Best decision so far! ",) 

We never intended to have the image printed out, we just wanted to use it for our on-line invite, an event image in FB, and probably use it here in the blog. When we received it though, it was just too cool to keep in the internet and we decided to move a bit of money to have some photo magnets made.

Since this wasn't part of the budget we had to look for a supplier with the best rates. I stumbled upon Lil Whiskers by browsing through Sulit.com.ph. I'm not sure what to use as keyword so I just entered photo magnets. The list came back with photo 'booths.' nye!

Wedding Duties: CieLJ Saves the Date!

It’s finally here! Our much awaited Save the Date illustration. LJ really wanted to have this old school style comic cover ever since he saw samples in the internet. He said I can do anything I want with the formal Invite, but he’ll be the design master for the Save the Dates.

After much delay, LJ sent an inquiry email to Andrew Villar. He’s the creator of the popular weekly comic strip seen in Manila Bulletin’s Entertainment Section, “Ambush.” Fortunately, he was open to our idea, and asked more questions to better understand the concept of what we would want to appear in our 'comic cover.'

Here’s the scene set-up that LJ provided… the advantages of being engaged to a writer, hehe!

Without further adieu, here’s Andrew Villar’s masterpiece for us…

Wedding Duties: Invitation Design

The rain and the fear that the roads were already flooded on that Saturday afternoon did not stop us from heading over to Printed Matter's concept store in Quezon City. I'm glad we went there since the invites displayed in the bridal fair were conveniently transferred to the store, making it very easy for us to recall which ones we liked. 

Just in case you are heading over to the Printed Matter Concept store in QC, they've posted a map online. You can view it through their website. 
Before going there, we browsed through some sample invites from the web, 

we were thinking post card, 

we were thinking simple, 

we were thinking washed out map background, 

semi-rustic... 

Wedding Duties: Hear ye! Hell yeah!

Less than 3 months left and we finally got a supplier for our wedding invites! Yey! We booked Printed Matter when we attended the Themes and Motifs bridal fair held at SMX. 

We weren’t really planning to hire anyone, this was supposed to be my DIY project… 

LJ thought otherwise; he was already imagining how I would look like -- a month close to the wedding, I'm covered with wrapping paper and entangled in ribbons, while crying that I can’t finish it. LOL! 

123rf.com

So to prevent the drama, we went ahead searched for a reasonably priced invite.

Wedding Duties: NSO Documents

Amidst the fun and colorful wedding preparations, we simply can’t ignore the boring legal requirements.

One fine afternoon, LJ and I headed over to the Makati City hall to request for copies of our Birth Certificates and Cenomar. Oh! Fun!

CieLJ Tips: How to Get to Tito Boy's Shop?

A small help for those who needs to get to the shop of the ever famous and well loved BKS. I'm sure there are more available routes, but these are the ones that we've tried. ",)

Here's the full address:

Unit 13 Cuevasville Commercial Bldg. 
Cuevasville Subd. along Daang Hari Road

Getting Ready for the Wedding

We will be having a morning wedding, not necessarily by choice, but I guess you can say, by fate. That being said, well for one -- good luck sa puffy eyes! I am a bit nervous about the preps. Since we'll start setting up at 3am, it's going to be very difficult to have a plan B in case we need to buy something or find an alternative if a supplier doesn't do well. 

demeblog.com

I ran across this article from theknot.com and found it helpful so I'm sharing it here. I particularly love Tip# 5, I'm pretty sure that will easily be confirmed on our wedding day. 

5 Tips To Getting Ready The Morning-Of Your Wedding

Wedding Duties: 3 month Stretch

It's three months to go until the 3am call time. Our major suppliers are booked, but now comes the hard part -- details. 

tybinc.com

Wedding Duties: Bridal Cruisin'

After months of browsing for a bridal car supplier, we've finally booked one from Don Robert's! You can read more about it here. 

For a while, I really considered not getting a car supplier anymore. We liked the cars from Don Robert's ever since we saw their list of available sedans, but they are pricey and we had to think of alternatives. 

Wedding Duties: from Bug to Jag

I've never really thought much of bridal cars. All I know is that they're supposed to be white. I remember when I was younger, my family had a fondness for white cars, so whenever someone would be getting married, there's a good chance they'll be borrowing our Toyota Crown for the bridal car.

I once saw a red bridal car when I was a kid and I kept asking my mom, "ay baket hindi puti? pwede ba yun?" It was such out of the norm for me. Bridal cars should be white, regardless if luma or bago, basta white, yun lang requirement. 

http://yeahitsjm.tumblr.com/

Wedding Duties: String of Good Luck

We finally decided to get a music supplier, and with just a few months to go, I was prepared to receive email replies saying that they were already booked. We were lucky to get a response from most of them telling us that they are still available, well almost. All of them were available except for one -- Manila String Machine -- the one that we really wanted.