100 days and counting

that's right. we have exactly a hundred days before the wedding. we're down to the final stretch of this crazy period called wedding preps.

the big ticket items have been booked. the major decisions have been made. the little boxes on the side of my to-do list have been checked, except for a few:

• secure marriage license. no worries about this, though. the supporting documents are ready and all we need to do is hand them over to tita raquel to be filed.
• get moks's passport. just in case God gives us an out-of-the-country honeymoon.
• finalize and print invitations. this has been sitting for weeks, and our ninang's list still contains entries like "Mrs. (Nanay's friend, Ka Puyeng)". promise, i will finish this next week.
• Pastor Dong's ordination. he promised this would be done this month.
• pre-nup photo shoot. next week, if weather permits.

weirdly though, now that the big items are through, the small ones start their song-and-dance number ala willy wonka's happy little helpers in an attempt to remind me that they are not to be ignored:

• prepare program for the ceremony and reception. how do we make the ceremony short and concise, and still meaningful? how do we make the program fun? how do we get our guests to participate?
  
• souvenirs. to give or not to give, that is the question. i would love to D-I-Y this, but i don't know if my schedule would permit. besides, moks and i can't agree on what to give away.
• gifts for principal sponsors. what would be a nice enough token to say thank you without exceeding our budget?
• something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. hmmm...

this would have been the really really fun part in wedding preparations if only i had time to attend to them. what's the next major milestone after "100 days to go" anyway? i hope by that time i would have no more unchecked boxes on my list except "be at the wedding and smile".

(you should have surmised by now that moks takes care of the serious marriage stuff, while i mind the wedding details. so don't expect any substantial wedding posts from me. )

totally worth it

i didn't think i could say this ever, considering that i really wanted to scrimp on my wedding gown when we were first making our wedding budget, but i feel that my wedding gown will be totally worth the money we'll be paying for it.

i had my first fitting of the gown's lining last month, and the fit was perfect. i just asked tet, my designer, to cut the corset a bit shorter to make sure it won't poke my legs when i sit down.

my second fitting was last saturday, and i felt so good wearing the gown. it made me feel radiant, and beautiful, and sexy, and so bride-y.

i can't wait to fit the actual gown next month. i'm even afraid it will be heartbreaking for me to take it off again.

the pamamanhikan

The last major step to formalizing our engagement took place last Saturday. In true Filipino tradition, Moks’s family went to our house carrying tons of food his mother prepared, and his father asked my father for my hand in marriage. Well, sort of. It went like this:

my tatay: e ano pa bang pag-uusapan natin, e naiayos na naman nila (referring to moks and myself) lahat ng detalye e. iba na kasi ang panahon ngayon e, sila na ang nagdedesisyon.

moks’s tatay: oo nga po e. tinatanong ko nga po si mark kanina kung sasabihin ko bang hinihingi po sana namin ang kamay ni leah, e baka po kasi kako sabihin niyo e, kamay lang ba ang gusto niyo?

That was pretty much the entirety of the whole pamamanhikan. The rest of the time was spent chitchatting, eating Tita China’s sumptuous cooking, and laughing at Moks for his booboos and blunders before they got to our house. Tito Addit, Tita China and Tito Dennis took turns telling us about how, in his excitement and perhaps nervousness, Moks slid down their driveway while carrying the plate of crabs (good thing Tita China packed it nicely!), Moks loaded all the food in Hagibis (the car) and then left the door open while a stray dog lurked nearby, and how Moks, while sitting on the really terrible traffic on our way to our house, wanted to call his cousin to ask him to drive him in his motorbike to our house because they were already late. I guess I myself was pretty nervous that I didn’t notice that during all this time, Moks looked white (or at least that’s what Tita Raquel and Tito Dennis said) and that he could not stop sweating.

The evening turned out to be really fun. Tito Addit’s PR and socializing skills left me baffled as to how Moks turned out to be the way he is. Tita China’s ever-reliable cooking talent wowed all of us, my nanay included. And the fact that Moks’s lola from Quezon was there too made the night extra-eventful.

And oh yeah, Tito Addit surprised everyone other than himself when he asked my parents if they would allow me to spend the Halloween weekend in Quezon with them. And it was a testimony to my parents' grace under pressure that they did not fall off their seats.

one ring to bind them

you have got to see it for yourself. seriously. my photography skills - actually, the utter lack of it - will never ever do justice to the magnificence that is my engagement ring. its five - FIVE! - diamonds look like interdimensional portals. i see worlds when i look inside each stone.





moks presented it to me last sunday. i say "presented" instead of "proposed" because, as this wedding blog attests to, we have decided to get married even before i got the ring. in fact, we have decided to get married when we got back together almost a year ago now. it's pretty much a topsy-turvy love affair. we were together for almost two years. we broke up. when we started seeing each other again in 2006, we took our time praying and thinking about whether it would be good to commit to each other again. and when we did commit, we committed for life. two days after we got back together, moks proposed that we open a joint account and start saving up for our wedding. so we did. and then almost a year later, he gave me these really beautiful rocks.


the proposal was no easy feat either. moks knew all along that i wanted drama when he gives me the engagement ring. he, on the other hand, wants to sit me down and talk to me about how he sees our married life would be. he was able to do both. moks asked me to walk around UP last sunday, in the guise of visiting again the places we love there so we can check where we want to hold our pre-nup shoot. we got tired after walking just from CMC to vanguard, so we went back to batibot - the tree in CMC where we sat and prayed the first time we became boyfriend and girlfriend. while resting, he read me a poem he wrote for me. the poem rhymed, and just the thought that i made him rhyme brought me so much kilig. i don't want to disclose the rest of the things he told me before he gave me the ring. sufficie it to say that i know my husband-to-be has got a clear head and he knows - more than i do perhaps - what we're getting into.


he asked me to be his companion in the journey God has set out for him. of course, i accepted.


so now i have this ring - the one ring that binds us. and each time i look at it (which is like, every 2 seconds) all i keep thinking is: what a way to be bound!

on a totally different topic

i need to have a life. i want to travel more! hmm...i wonder if the office would allow me to have a three-month honeymoon... =)

My Lakbayan grade is C!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out at Lakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.

what's the fuss about wedding gowns anyway?

i have asked myself this question so many times over the past couple of months, and never have i come up with a logical, satisfactory answer. nonetheless, the search for that one special dress that i will wear for about 6 hours - 8 max - continues.

i remember the very first time i imagined what my wedding gown would look like. it was about 6 years ago, while i was watching a school play starring my niece. she played the role of the bida pero kawawang princess, and her evil stepsister wore a royal blue gown that, at the time, looked simply magnificent to me. i vowed then: i will wear a royal blue gown when i get married, exactly like what evil stepsister was wearing.

i won't.

the next gown i pictured myself wearing when i wed was a gown i saw on teri hatcher in a magazine my officemate lent me. it was a combination of pastels - pink, peach, orange, yellow, layered one on top of another. i can't quite describe how it looks - only that when i saw it, the word "shimmering" suddenly became visible to me. but my officemate has left for vietnam and i can't remember what magazine that was and i have spent hours browsing the net looking at pictures of teri hatcher and i still can't find that gown. so that's down the drain, too.

moks has his own idea of what he wants to see on me at our wedding. his vision can be summed up in one word: tight. the thing about him is that he's very articulate but he's not much of an illustrator. actually, he is no illustrator at all. here's his rendition of my wedding gown.

looks more like a tooth, or a zipper, than anything to me.

i'm certainly more creative than moks, but my visualization of his idea was not much of an improvement either.

which is why thank God, really, for creative designers and wedding magazines and wedding sites in the net. i found the gown design i want - and would most probably go with - in a site selling designer gowns. i've been imagining the alterations and additions to the gown design from the pictures i've seen in the mags. and i've alreaady sat down with two designers to discuss the details. the second designer i met with put on paper exactly what i had in mind for the entourage without me describing it, and her drawings were far better than what i was able to sketch even in my mind.

i still have to meet with three other designers this week, after which we will decide who to go with. considerations, of course, are affordability and dependability. i have already decided to drop from my options a designer whose creations are quite affordable but who cancelled on two meetings with me. i think it's too risky to trust a designer who can't even be professional enough to make time for a pre-arranged meeting. i' m not worried anymore though - from our meetings with the two other designers, looks like our search for our perfect gown-maker will not go unrewarded.

moks is already complaining, though, that i am only making arrangements for what i'm gonna wear, and that i'm not paying any mind on what he will don on our wedding. so just to pacify him, i'm making another call for help here. moks doesn't want to wear barongs or suits for the wedding. he wants something he would be more comfortable in - something like a cross between a barong and an indian kaftan. anyone know any tailor who can make this?

The road to tomorrow

Leah's taking care of a thousand and one things to ensure the wedding day will run smoothly, and she's doing a remarkable job at it. But while I am happy to support her on her choices on the details she want for the wedding, there is one thing in all the preparations that we need to do which I'm not only vigilant with, but actually eager to pursue: the marriage counseling.

What is God's will in marriage? How can we love our in laws, despite the initial difficulties we have encountered? How should we handle the issue of money, especially since she's earning a ton more than I do? What's the godly way of raising kids? Is it better to keep the things that happened in the past buried or should we raise them like zombies? How do you keep the romance alive through the years? How do we break down the walls that we have built our entire lives and start living as one? Why is a man asked to love the woman, while the woman asked to submit to the man? What are the tips to having a mind-blowing sex life? And most importantly, on the moments when the thing we want most is to stab each other to pieces, where is the safest place to hide the knives?

These are just some of the questions Kuya Dong, our pastor, would guide us through in our sessions. They are far from being easy. Most of the discussions require us to look deep inside ourselves, oftentimes in areas we would rather keep hidden, and drag these baggages up into the open so we could surrender them to God.

It's difficult. It's painful. We think that some aspects of our personalities determine who we are (like Leah's fierce independence or my contempt for drama), but sometimes these traits are exactly what we need to work on. It's obtrusive, bothersome. Oftentimes I pity Kuya Dong when we're in our sessions -- with all our rants, he has to be our psychologist, our counselor, our Kuya, our pastor, our friend.

Truth be told, I would not normally allow myself to be subjected to such in-depth evaluation. Surprisingly, while I am usually set in my ways and 'obstinate' is the more polite description used for me (hard-headed ass is the common term), I approach these marriage counseling sessions not only with openness, but with hunger, because I know we need it. Past the pictures and the flowers, the venue and the food, the number of guests or the honeymoon, or even how much we profess to love each other now, facing these issues and realigning our lives with biblical principles is the only way to ensure that we would still be honoring each other five decades from now. It's not our money or our jobs or any form of preparation that will determine our future -- it is this: the surrender to our God, the gift of His grace, His headship in our marriage.

And though we are imperfect and -- as Kuya Dong is unfortunately subjected to every session -- and we still have a lot of things we need to work on, I am confident of this wedding not because of what we can do, but because I know my God is faithful to His promises (that He will not stop until the good work He started in us is finished), regardless of how flawed we are.

gowngowngowngown

i'm going to write a more substantial post on this when i have the time. (right now, i'm just so busy i can't even think of a nicer way to phrase it.) but i do need some suggestions asap, so here's another cry for help:

would you know of a good but cheap gown designer? i really don't want to spend too much on my gown, i'm gonna wear it just once anyway (and i have good shoulders and a shapely butt so any simple gown would look spectacular on me... kidding!). but i'm a bit scared of trying the baclaran and divisoria gown-makers - i've read one too many horror stories about them in w@w. could you recommend one?

pre-nups (no, not the agreement)

looks like our first major wedding planning obstacle will be resolved very soon. we spent hours (and almost a tankful of gas!) last weekend driving around pampanga and cavite looking for potential venues, and we found one that's beautiful and practical (because the wedding package they offer takes care of most of the big supply requirements already). just have to pay the reservation fee tomorrow and we're set. the details can be ironed out later.

so on to the next item on the list: the pre-nup pictorial venue.

as with most other tasks in our wedding checklist, moks and i have endured callused feet and sweat-drenched backs looking for that spot where we can do our pre-nup shoot. our requirements are quite complicated: we want something different, not the typical meadow shot ala echo and kristine in pangako sa 'yo. but we also want something that shows the beauty of nature. it can't be somewhere too serene because serene is just not us, but it can't also be too loud because i won't be able to stand it. the place has to have access to good restrooms for our outfit changes (!), and it can't be too hot there too or moks will melt. and finally, the place has to be within metro manila because we can't afford the additional charge for an out-of-town shoot anymore!

we walked the walls of intramuros two weekends ago, thinking maybe there's some remote, undiscovered place in intramuros that will have the qualities we're looking for. well, judging from the pictures we took of ourselves, there's none.

there's me with my knees buckling and very near hyperventilating in fear that i will slide down the slope of the walls and fall face flat on the golf course down below.

then there's moks who couldn't seem to stop imagining himself as a soldier-cum-streetfighter. very, very bad idea to make him hold my umbrella - he had the perfect prop for his gun, sword, bayonet, etc.

in fairness, love was scribbled all over the intramuros walls. just, um, not so much the type we were looking for. =p

we were able to walk more than half of the entire intramuros walls when we got to a portion that was locked from public access. we had no choice but to abandon our quest.

we went to the piers afterwards - we were hoping to see some abandoned, rusty ships that is open to the public, but there didn't seem to be any. there were rusty ships, admittedly. but they did not look abandoned, and we dared not insist on coming in.

after a tiring afternoon, we rested while watching the manila bay sunset. cliche, i know, but it was the first place we could get to that offered a place to sit and relax with ready access to food and drinks. moks took this picture using my nokia 6600 phone. now, imagining the same shot by a professional photographer with high-tech cameras, i just realized manila bay may just be the place for us.

where oh where???

waaaahhhh!!!

first actual wedding-related panic attack.

we have to ditch our initial choice for venue. looks like it can't accomodate the number of our guests. so sad really, considering we were able to draw up the layout plans and check the lighting of the place just last saturday.

but it appears to be a choice between finding a new place, or ditching our guests. and right now, we're more partial to wanting to see our family and friends (and our families' friends) at our wedding, so we're back to venue hunting.

it shouldn't be so hard, if it weren't for the fact that i have already imagined the wedding there and liked it. it's our first choice for our venue, and when we visited the place the first time, it felt right. it was such a relief to be able to find a good place that is reasonably priced without compromising on the details i want. so now, to have to drop all those... *sigh*.

but oh well, life's like that. now i need to stop myself from whining because that is such an energy-drainer and i really don't have spare energy to waste. we need to stretch our days to be able to attend to our work, call suppliers, do oculars, and still have quality time for our families, ourselves, and each other.

any recommendations on a good but cheap garden that can seat 150 to 200 guests? suggestions will be devoured, pramis.

baby i'm-a want you!

moks and i do not agree over most of the details of our wedding.

he wants 40 guests, i want three times that number.

he wants earth colors, i want brights.

he wants me to wear a mermaid cut dress, i.just.won't.

but there's one detail that we agree on - that in fact we are willing to spend on, eventhough it's not a necessity, and it's outrageously expensive.

we want a chocolate fondue fountain.

oh yeah. pure melted belgian chocoloate continuously flowing and seemingly inexhaustible. oh. yeah.

we are not particular about what to "dip" into this sugar bounty - we don't care it it's fruits, marshmallows, nuts, bread, meat, fish, rice, soup, whatever anyone wants. to me, the very idea behind the free-flowing chocolate fountain (the stuff my childhood daydreams are made of, to the tune of the Goya Fun Factory jingle) is to abandon all sense and reason and just go for the goodness that you want. heck, moks even wants to wear a bib and just position his mouth between the first and second layers of this baby!

and me, i'm not eating carbs and seriously cutting back on sweets these days, and ideally, until the wedding. but once my wedding pictures are taken, and i have already spent an hour beautifully fitting into that wedding dress, well hell would freeze over before i stop myself from feasting on this sinful goodness. babawi ako!

1...2...3...banana!!!

it's overwhelming.

my office workload is just crazy it's driving me crazy! it's not just up to my neck - my neck is like my waistline now with the to do's that i have! i don't know how to do this.

so i don't.

i blog. and i plan my wedding.

and i go even crazier.

i hardly realized i could spend a whole afternoon buried under brochures and pamphlets and flyers and magazines, all tied together by the overly stretched phoneline, and still wish i have cable internet so i can check my emails at the same time! i have shepherded multinational transactions, syndicated loans, mergers and acquisitions - right now i'm even handholding a stupid and whiny client while it acquires a company that promises to be a major pain in the ass later - but i have not given any of those much more thought than i have to planning the layout of my wedding venue. do i want round tables or long tables? do i want vines on the railing over the lake, or do io want to keep it as is? do i want red? or copper? will copper look nice in the morning? will i look nice in the morning?

but well, of all the headaches i have and i have had to go through, of all the planning i have and i have had to mind, of all the "projects" i had to spend my energies on - ito ang pinakamasarap pag-isipan.

it's too beautiful

every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. - closing time, semisonic.

well, not for me. yes, i went through a beginning and an end, but only to pick up from where i left off and begin again.

this is the story of my life and moks's. we met, we got together, we went apart, and then met again. he actually predicted it would happen that way - on the very first book he gave me (oliver's story, by erich segal, on the pretense that he's sorry about accidentally putting a crease on a book i lent him), he wrote "in case we meet again." good thing we did.

now we're planning our wedding. and in the hopes that i will have a creative outlet to rant and rave about the details (and in so doing spare him the hassle of having to listen to me all the time about stuff he doesn't understand, like fuchsia and mauve, motifs and themes), we've decided to set up this new blog.

comments, well-wishes, and supplier referrals are welcome and will be greatly appreciated.

there are some people who meet that somebody that they can never

stop loving, no matter how hard they try.

i wouldn't expect you to understand that, or even believe it,

but trust me, there are some love that don't go away.

and maybe that makes them crazy, but we should

all be lucky to end up with that somebody who has a little

of that insanity. somebody who never lets go.

somebody who cherishes you forever.

-ally mcbeal