Unless you’re too busy to even have weekends for yourself, there are a lot of things for your wedding that you can do on your own. A little patience, research and creativity can go a long way—especially when it comes to cost.

Whenever you hire a service provider, you don’t only pay for the product, but the cost of labor and creativity as well. My husband Marc and I run a small design firm, so we kind of know this for a fact. We don’t just factor in the hours worked on a project, but the value of the design as well. When you do things on your own, you only need to consider the cost of raw materials—you won’t need to pay for labor nor for design value, because you’d be the one doing it. Unless, of course, you need to “bribe” a creative cousin or nephew to do some “arts and crafts” for you. But still, it won’t cost as much as hiring a pro.

Realistically, you can’t do everything on your own. If you’re not an owner of a catering business, you’d definitely need to hire a caterer (you wouldn’t want to spend the night before your wedding cooking loads of food, do you?). Same with flowers. Hiring a florist would be logical if you don’t own a flower shop. But there are things that you can do ahead of time. Here are some ideas… Read more »

I honestly don’t know how much a wedding is going to cost in other countries, I’m only telling you this in context of the Filipino culture. And when you talk of Filipino weddings, you would know that weddings here in this country is not just a family affair—it’s a celebration that involves, most often than not, the entire clans of the bride and groom.

I don’t understand it much either, to tell you the truth. Weddings here are such huge events that even if a family isn’t well-off (like us!), they’d want an extravagant wedding (or “bongga,” in colloquial terms). A “simple” wedding here in the Philippines can mean a lot of things—having 50 guests instead of 100, or having a judge perform the rite and treat just about a dozen people to dinner for a reception. With all these different perceptions of what a “simple” wedding here means, allow me to just describe to you our wedding so you’ll have a pretty good idea of what came about with that Php155,000 (approximately US$3,000) budget. Read more »

For me and my husband (Marc), food tasting was the best part of planning our wedding. Why? Free food, of course! But, as we’ve found it out the hard way, depending your lunch on a food tasting event is bad idea if you have a big appetite.

The food servings given at events like these are only small portions—basically, just enough for you to have an idea of how their food tastes like. And because there are a lot of people going to these events, you won’t be able to see the actual table arrangements (they’ll show you photos of real weddings for those). Sometimes the caterers go all out on decorating their buffet tables (like Josiah’s Catering did on a bridal fair I attended), but there are also times when the setup is just simple (not the real thing in weddings, obviously). Read more »

Last Saturday, Marc (my husband) and I attended the Latino-themed wedding of his high school and college volleyball coach. I heard from Marc’s old teammate how Sherwin (the volleyball coach) proposed, but I never could have imagined how he actually did it until I saw an AVP presentation of the proposal during the reception.

Though my husband is very fond of volleyball, I’m not (definitely not)—I’m more of a basketball person. So I’m really sure when the proposal took place (I think it was during the Shakeys’ V-League last year, if I’m not mistaken).

Imagine proposing in front of hundreds of people (with video coverage to boot)… Read more »

It’s quite common to have relatives and friends abroad. It’s easy to send them invitations via mail (though you got to go the extra mile and cash to pay for the delivery), but it’s really not that easy to get them here in the Philippines to attend your wedding due to time and budget constraints. But what if you’d like to share with them what will happen on your wedding day?

The easiest (and cheapest) way to do this: get a wedding website.

A lot of people already have access to the World Wide Web, and what’s better than taking advantage of this technology? With a wedding website, you can show the progress of your planning and share wedding info with relatives who can’t be physically with you. Face it, brides have a tendency to want to talk about their wedding plans to anybody who would listen (I know I did!).

There are two ways you can acquire your own wedding website: sign up for a free account, or hire a professional. Read more »