My Unconventional Bridal March Song :)

Initially, honey and I agreed that my Bridal March song would be our theme song Ï Could Not Ask for More by Edwin McCain (I turned this into our First Dance song during the reception).. But then I really wanted that moment to be not just mine but his as well, and so I thought of something really special..

I wanted to surprise him with the bridal march song :) After much thought I remembered how much he adores Michael Jackson, and so I excitedly researched on the best sentimental love song that I could use.. This research went in vain as most of his songs are really not suitable for a bridal march :( And then I remembered how much he loves this one MJ song, which he has in his mobile and he sings it all the time... :)

So I got in touch with Luan, an old college friend who has always been real talented in music, and asked her if she could help me out in making an acoustic version of that song.. Being the good friend that she is, I was relieved she did not laugh when I told her what song I would be having for the bridal march.. Instead she went to work right away! Prior to that we have already asked her and her cousin to be our band for the ceremony and reception, since we really wanted our wedding to be orchestrated by people who are special to us.. :)

Here is what she came up with (she also made this short video for us):

what can i say?? she made hubby and i cry all over again.. we both remembered that special moment, and we are forever grateful to her for making this beautiful sweet version for us.. Thanks so much again girl!

**moral of the story?? do not be afraid to explore all your options, no matter how unconventional or weird it may seem to others :D always follow your heart!**

You Know How I Feel
I Won't Stop Until
I Hear Your Voice Saying
"I Do"

a cozy wedding come true! :)

after a long long wait! we finally FINALLY got married last April 16th Friday at Caleruega, Tagaytay :D it was simply surreal.. exactly how we both want it.. the perfect cozy intimate wedding with just family and close friends present :) sabi ko nga, i got everything i wished for: my long-time dream heavenly church, my dream PINK wedding gown, dream theme of Cozy In The Rain (despite the sweltering summer heat!), dream pink petals as my aisle (no red carpets pls!), dream gorgeous pomanders on our church pews, dream cute parasols on our little flower girls, dream bouquets for me and my entourage, dream bridal march (acoustic of I Just Can't Stop Loving You customized just for us by my good friend Luan and her cuz Kuya Isko), dream colorful & happy balloons (which we almost never got! story on that next time hehe :P), and most importantly, my Dream Man waiting for me at the end of the aisle :) i truly could not ask for more!

here is our onsite video by Louie Reformado (http://louiereformado.com) :) just an intro, Kuya Louie is one of the most respected photographers/videographers in the south, and we are so lucky to have him.. he and his team were so hardworking our families were all impressed!

enjoy! :)

Of Monograms and Save-the-Dates

To give proper tribute to my rocker sister Ate Jo-an, who made our unique Monograms:

our cute pink and navy insignia

full-named monogram with the insignia at the center :)

with a country house background since she wanted to incorporate my cozy country theme too

Plus also our fab Save-the-Dates :) The following are the ones which did not make because I wanted the STDs to have at least three photos (vain much? ;P):

The one below is supposed to be the final STD but we opted to change the words COZ WE'RE GETTING MARRIED to FOR OUR WEDDING and changed the 3rd pic as well (para mas romantic and mas visible yung ES)..

Until finally...
Thanks again Ate! Love yah! :) You really rock! ;)

Lamps for our "Lights" :)

Choosing the proper gifts for our Principal Sponsors (Ninongs and Ninangs) have been quite challenging for us. We wanted them to be unique but useful, and not something that will just dust away after our wedding. We know there could be more options back home in Manila but due to time constraint, we have decided to get the gifts here.

We have been eyeing these beautiful glass lamps for a month now but did not know how we were gonna personalize them or if they were even feasible as wedding gifts:

And so we thought twice about getting them. However we were not able to find any other gift which would be suitable for our godparents, and we wanted to get them before i go home for the wedding by end of March coz we did not want to rush anymore..

Today I went back to the Festival City with my friend and again those elegantly simple lamps were there.. I really wanted to buy them as our gifts, I could imagine their potential. My imagination, albeit my lack of artistic talent, goes wild whenever I see them! To me they are like blank canvasses full of promises :) Plus the prices are quite reasonable considering it's something that they could definitely use again, be it at work or at home :) And so I called E and he agreed that we definitely should get the lamps at last :D

Here they are!

we're hoping we could get blue and pink bulbs somewhere, any suggestions? :)

We're thinking of glass etching at least the sponsor's initials vertically, then maybe our names and wedding dates in very small font at the bottom part of the lamp. We're basing this on our own opinion that we personally do not wish to use mugs/pens/lamps/whatever with another person's name marked in huge letters or worse, with their faces! Ugh!

The upside? These are like symbols of our godparents roles in our new life together: our Lights to guide us in this crazy married coexistence :)

The next big challenge (aside from finding colored bulbs) is to look for Glass Etching materials or company which could personalize our lamps for us.. If it proves to be quite expensive we could try to do them ourselves, or worst case scenario use those artistic glass paint with our Ate's help :)

Any suggestions please??

the tricky Monetary Gift wordings :)

to copyright these words as 100% MINE! :p

Your presence and prayers are always the best
Boxed gifts are precious nevertheless
But as we do reside far far away
An Enveloped Gift will come a long way...

Another Wedding Nightmare??

woke up to another stupid wedding nightmare.. apparently we got married in this Big church (again!) and it was a disaster coz the Misalette was not ours (meaning ibang names ang andun and ibang motif) ..

what the hell is wrong why am i getting all these nightmares?! am i really that stressed na?! ugh!

here's a couple of my fave girls Lorelai Gilmore and Beyonce in their "wedding"dress, just to keep me positive:

lovely dress
l

lovely bride

only Beyonce can pull off this kind of wedding gown :)

one hot bride ;)

Our Cozy Rainy Invites :D

When it comes to the our Invitations, we only had three rules: 1) They should be designed by my sister Ate Jo-an. 2) Should NOT be too formal! So not us! 3) Should have some cozy in the rain theme, and of course in our wedding colors Pink and Navy.

We trusted my sister completely on the layout and design. I just sent her some pegs i got online, gave some ideas on the layout of our photos, and also emphasized that I really wanted to incorporate the Cozy in the Rain theme so I sent her pics of umbrellas, coffee mugs, and pink boots. :)

She wanted the layout to be sort of like a Windows page wherein there will be tabs/windows at the bottom where you will see what page you're at. She had a Home Page, a Who's Who page and an RSVP page, and she sent me this initial pic to show the tabs she was referring to:

The following are the initial designs/layout she sent me for the first page (after I told her I wanted more pics in front hehe) :

Until I realized I really did not want it to be too formal with the blessings of parents thing (no offense to anyone!) and so I decided to come up with my own wordings..

Yup, my proud contribution is the wordings: they are 100% MINE :D Being a frustrated writer the wordings are quite important to me; I wanted them to be fun yet heartwarming and not too tacky.. And I think I did a great job ;)

Also I wanted the Home Page to be just our monogram, and some wordings until I remembered one of our most loved verses from the Bible which got us through our dark sad days apart (when E had to come in Dubai and I was to stay in Manila)...

Then came the You're Invited page as per my request, so 4 pages na sila.. Lotsa revisions, and here are the final designs and layout.. Exactly how we wanted them to be!

the Home Page with our monogram and fave Bible verse

the You're Invited page (notice our insignia on top right and boots/umbrella on left side!)

the Entourage (Who's Who) page
*with Twin Towers Burj Al Arab and Jumeirah Hotel, plus more visible raindrops :)*

my personal fave the RSVP page
*we changed the RSVP name and number to mine*

my surprise! the Location Map from Graphizar!
*yipee i'm wearing pink boots!*

We put them inside navy blue envelopes which I got from Magrudy's and we used a pink tulle ribbon to wrap around them. Hon printed our monograms on stickers to be used as seals on the envelopes, and I used a pink gel ink pen to write each guest's name :)

Here are our finished products, all printed from home! Completely DIY talaga, yey! :P

The best invitations EVER! Thank God for my sister! :D

Sharing Some Good News :)

Good News #1: We got an Officiating Priest already: Rev. Fr. Gerard Zabala, O.P. :) And I've already read good feedbacks about him from W@W :)

Good News #2: My headache of a seamstress for the Entourage Aling Baby (Makati) finally followed through with her promise of two gowns for my Secondary Sponsors and two for my Flower Girls.. Thank God! I was really worried that we would have to pullout..

Faye our Flower Girl
(will ask to shorten the skirt; I wanted it just below the knee so they could wear white stockings)

for my Veil Sponsor Jam (who is the model here)

for my Cord Sponsor Eileen (was not present then)

Good News #3: Finally someone agreed to make the Cake Topper that I would like for us: Bride in Boots and Groom with Umbrella.. Thanks to our Kuya Meng and Ate Grace! :)

meeting our future little girls :)

something to de-stress the bridezilla in me.. courtesy of morphthing.com :)

cutie little baby girl! :D

looks more like E :)

super fun! that's my cheeks, erick's eyes... hmm not sure about the other parts hahaha! but in fairness i can see the similarities h?? :)

happy bored lazy bride on board :)

Don't Mock the Mock Dress! :D

What exactly is a mock dress?? That was the main question in my mind when my designer Ms. Gretchen Pichay (http://gretchenpichay.multiply.com) suggested that she sends me mine for fitting.. I had no idea how we were gonna do my fitting through that, until she clarified that a MOCK DRESS is a very simple fabric which has the exact same measurements she took from me when I went home for the Measurements last year. The cut would be somewhat similar too to the real Dress though not exactly the same. This is really helpful and a great idea for overseas brides who cannot go home for fittings until weeks before the wedding. They can have the mock dress shipped or sent through families or friends on vacation! Genius!

Thankfully our good friend Lanie was back home for a two-week vacay, and we asked her if she could bring that dress along with the Invitations for the Dubai invitees (yey!).. She arrived two nights ago, and I had to fight every urge from calling or texting her coz I know she must be tired :) Finally this morning we saw each other at the locker room at work and we both shrieked like stupid high school girls hahaha! :P So much fun! :D She then gave me the small package sent by my mom... Hay thank God for friends! :)

On my way back from work I could not stop thinking about my dress and finally I called another friend Shawie and asked if she could dropby at out flat to help me fit the dress :D To which of course she said yes. Fun girl bonding moment! :)

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

front (gotta shorten that skirt)

back (wahhh! i gotta lose weight!:()

sitting pic (kelangan may ganyan daw haha!)

this is me asking E to call back later hehe :D

my photographer and seamstress this afternoon :) thanks Sha! muah!

So what do you think?? I actually love it in front, I was quite surprised that I did not look as chubby as I thought I would be with that neckline.. However I really hate it at the back :( This sucks because the back part is what is seen for a full one hour during the ceremony.. What should I do??? :(

Anyway I will email Gretchen that I got the dress already, so we could schedule the online webcam fitting.. Will update you guys on that one ASAP :)

I gotta say though that I love how she cut my dress, I can already picture it :) And again this idea is so fab! Perfect for thousands of Overseas Brides like me! :D

Happy preps!

Band-ed for Life :)

I wish there was some colorful way to describe how we found our Wedding Bands.. But truthfully, it was almost too easy and flawless, it almost felt like finding our way home... :)

Initially, we have decided that for sure we wanted our Rings to be two-toned (yellow and white gold) and not just plain white or plain yellow gold rings.

which one?? :)

get a load of that! :)

We did not have any particular design in mind. Finally on one of our Gold Souk visits we saw a ring which has several diamonds on top shaped into a cross-like image.. It was the first ring which struck my fancy, simply because of the Cross.. I fell in love with the idea that our wedding bands would have Crosses (or small lovely crucifix) in them as sign of our being one in Christ :D

This started our online search for our wedding ring in mind: simple classic two-toned rings with crosses in them.. Of all the rings we found, this is what we loved the most :) :

And so today finally we back to Gold Souk in search of our wedding bands. Prior to that we were actually checking our budget and were so sad to realize that we are a bit over already, and it was our fault since we did not include the rings in this budget, can you believe it?? :( We actually got a bit depressed that we delayed our ring-hunting until 530pm. Finally we knew we couldn't put it off anymore since it's just a month to go and so off we went. We both agreed that we would find our rings, just as long as we stick to our simple design and budget. We planned to check for shops which would customize rings at the most affordable price, and if the price would be beyond our budget our Plan B was to choose their most budget-friendly ready-made two-toned rings and at least have the cross incripted on top.

The first shop we visited was not selling two-toned rings, and so we went inside the second one. We were ushered to their two-toned rings. Honey immediately got excited upon seeing these wedding bands which are so simple yet their laser-cut cover made them look so shiny and unique :) The yellow gold was lined on the side of the ring, and also on the inside of the ring, and the white gold was on the cover (on the laser cuts). I'm not very good in describing jewelry, I apologize. To be frank, I do not really mind about the design as long as the Cross would be present in our rings and they would be elegantly timeless (remember forever itong susuutin! :D). So since I got most of my way on the whole wedding she-bang anyway, I let honey choose the rings. He was so excited over those shiny rings it made me smile.. And when we asked how much, we couldn't believe it! It was half of our budget! Woo-hooooo! :D

Unfortunately the laser-cut would not let us have the crosses inscripted on top, so honey, being the sweetie that he is (coz he knows the crosses mean a lot to me), picked another set which are thicker and plainer, but a little too ordinary for me.. I was slowly accepting the idea though that hey, the crosses do not need to be seen on top of the rings itself. They could just be engraved inside the rings with our names and wedding date:) The meaning would still be the same. And so I conceded.. Mainly because I wanted E to have the rings that he fell in love with at first sight. Also I thought maybe this was God's gift for us since as I mentioned we are getting a bit worried on the budget already.. You should have seen honey's face when I told him we would go for those laser-cut rings heheh :P But I gave very strict instructions on the shape of the Cross since I was worried they wouldn't get it bearing in mind this is a Moslem country (they may not be too familiar with the difference of a Cross to the normal plus sign if you know what I mean). I told them, Pardon me but I'm a devout Catholic :) And you know how I was assured?? The salesman we were talking to said he is one too :D And I saw his name badge, it showed Philip so I believed him and felt better :)

After seeing the engraved rings, I couldn't help but smile:) Honey's ring showed my name, the lovely cross, and our wedding date: Sarah + 04.16.10, and mine would show Erick + 04.16.10 :) And take note the crosses were perfect! Hope you can see them from this pic:

Here are some more pics of our Wedding Bands, though pardon our not-so-hitech camera. Honey took the pics (with lots of effort yan!).. I just wish on our Big Day the photographer would capture its unique laser-cut design on top :D I think it can be seen here naman:


When I got home, I kept on trying mine on honey got a bit irritated haha! :P What can I say, I love our rings! :) God is really amazing for giving us these lovely rings which are not only timelessly beautiful but quite budget-friendly as well. Imagine finding The One on the second shop we went in?! Praise God! talaga! Ask and you shall indeed receive.. :D