Funny, the first post I’ll made after such a long hiatus would be this. But you see, something like this shouldn’t really happen — there are so many ways it could have been avoided, and yet, it still happened.

Last December, my husband and I attended the wedding of our friends, Aileen and Jay. As a guest, we were very impressed with the way their wedding turned out. Not surprising really, as Aileen and Jay were very hands-on in planning their wedding. Everything went smoothly, save for one: their bridal car did not show up.

Aileen and Jay hired Jack and Jenn Catering to service their bridal car needs. They were supposed to pick up Aileen from the hotel and bring her to the Church, but they never came. The couple desperately tried contacting the supplier, but they were not answering their calls. Aileen had to use the taxi she hired to shuttle things around. Imagine that: taking a taxi to your wedding! Luckily, it was a white taxi. But that wasn’t the worse.

We really had no idea that such boo-boo happened. Well, not until the end of the reception, that is. My fellow blogger friends and I stayed behind a bit after the reception during clean-up, and thank goodness we did. Because as it turned out, Aileen and Jay didn’t have a ride going back to the hotel.

Unfortunately, the old second-hand Toyota Corolla my husband and I brought to the wedding took such an opportune moment to break down (our car was a victim of Ondoy, so we had no choice but to use a second-hand car until the parts we ordered from Hyundai arrives). The break pads were shot while we were parking at the church, so my husband had to bring it to a nearly car repair shop and pick it up after the reception. But the problem was, the car wasn’t ready until the evening. Aileen and Jay’s reception was done by 2pm, so waiting for the car was out of the question. Luckily though, Juned was there to offer help: his spanking red Tamaraw FX delivery van.

Photo by Blogie Robillo

Juned and I thought that Aileen would be changing out of her wedding gown before we left the reception venue. We were shocked when she said her clothes were at the hotel.

So there. In the absurdity of the situation, we couldn’t do anything else about it but just joke around amongst ourselves as we escorted the newly-weds to their hotel. To add insult to injury, another pair of newly-weds got off their sparkling white bridal car right in front of us at the hotel lobby, while our wedding couple got off a delivery van.

I was lucky that when Marc and I got married, one of our principal sponsors volunteered her Mercedes Benz for our bridal car. We experienced some minor mishaps like some technical issues with the background music of the reception presentation, but nothing really significant. I don’t know what I could have done if I were in their situation.

What Jack and Jenn Catering did to our friends was horrible. Just imagine the stress and embarrassment the couple experienced. After the wedding day, Aileen and Jay were finally able to contact the supplier. The couple had to demand that supplier personally hand over their refund and meet with them. Their excuse was that a staff member had to take a sudden leave. But the thing is, they booked way ahead of time and Jay even followed up with them days before the wedding. You’d expect that even if somebody in the staff had to take a leave, adjustments should have been made. For more information, take a look at Aileen’s post on her wedding blog.

I have to admire Aileen and Jay for the calm way they handled the situation. No use ruining a wedding day for an incompetent supplier.

I review a lot of wedding suppliers in this blog, as its main purpose is to help couples plan their wedding in some way or another. And I definitely won’t recommend Jack and Jenn Catering.

Here’s good news to all lovers and friends, South East Asian Airlines (SEAIR) has announced its Valentines promo – Manila-Boracay-Manila and Manila – Busuanga – Manila Buy 1, Take 2 promo or a Manila-Batanes-Manila Buy 1, Take 1 promo which may be booked only at The 16th Travel Tour Expo- “TRAVEL IN STYLE” 2009 on February 6, 7 and 8 at SEAIR Booths 85 & 95, SMX Convention Center, Seashell Lane, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City.

For only PhP 14,344 (“I love you very much”), travelers could spend a romantic getaway at the island paradise of Boracay or Coron on a Buy 1, Take 2 promo or at picturesque Batanes on a Buy 1, Take 1 promo.

The airline uses a fleet of Dornier 328 and LET 410 aircraft for the flights to Boracay. The Dornier 328 is a state-of-the-art 32-seater twin engine turboprop aircraft which allows SEAIR to fly its passengers from Manila to Caticlan in only 35 minutes — the fastest flight to Boracay offered by a local airline. Dornier 328s are also used for the Batanes flights, which assures passengers of the fastest flights to this northern paradise at only 1 hour and 20 minutes. The airline has the most number of flights to Boracay.

SEAIR is the nation’s second-oldest airline and has flown almost 3 million passengers to 11 local destinations including Busuanga, Puerto Princesa, Romblon, Clark , Zamboanga , Jolo, and Tawi-tawi. In November 2008, SEAIR launched its first international flight to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia .

For inquiries and reservations, please call SEAIR at (632)8490100 or book online at www.flyseair.com. The SEAIR ticketing office is located at the La O’ Centre Bldg.1000 Arnaiz Ave. cor. Makati Ave. Makati City , Philippines . For packages please call SEAIR Leisure Escape Packages at (632) 8437308.

Being a web designer by profession had somehow turned me off a bit from buying online. I guess seeing the production of a shopping cart from concept to execution just made me think twice before inputting my credit card info. It’s not because I didn’t have faith in online transactions, but it’s simply due to the fact that we have always found alternatives for shopping cart payment gateways because Paypal isn’t available in the country yet. It was the issues on Philippine banking laws that prevented us from having fully-functional Paypal accounts, which kind of makes you wonder if it really is safe to transact online. But ever since the Paypal ban has been lifted, I must say that I’ve been less paranoid about buying stuff online with my credit card—which makes my husband frown every time he got our credit card bill. Hehe.

So what does all this tech talk have to do with wedding favors? A lot. Well, in the case of this review at least, because what I’ll be reviewing is an online store for wedding favors: Truly Wedding Favors.

The name says it all—Truly Wedding Favors is a website where you can get what else? Wedding favors, souvenirs your guests can take home and remind them of your special day. You can choose favors that are related to your theme and color motif, or simple get generic ones if you aren’t fussy.

If you’re tight on the budget, I’d still recommend getting favors from Divisoria. Because yes, wedding favors are still way cheaper there—especially since you won’t be paying for guarantee and quality, not to mention delivery. Those are the things you’d be saving up on if you go to Divisoria instead—the favors won’t be delivered on your doorstep ready for giving to your guests.

There are some local suppliers here who can provide you with delivery if you have allotted a tad bit more budget for your wedding favors. Most of them are able to replicate those you can find online like this Personalized Coffee Kit from Truly Wedding Favors, but don’t expect that it would be exact and the quality the same. There are those that are quite difficult to replicate, like this Calla Lily Candle—unless of course you know a supplier who actually makes custom candles and won’t require you to buy in bulk.

If you’re not going to factor in shipping costs (ugh, that’s the worse when you’re buying tangible products online), the costs of wedding souvenirs that Truly Wedding Favors offers are basically the same as those offered by local wedding suppliers. Take the Calla Lily Candle for example (I just love this candle, it’s so pretty).

Let’s say you needed to buy 100 pieces. A candle costs $1.79 each, but if you can get a volume discounted price of $1.29 each since you’re purchasing a hundred pieces ($1.29 for 80-143 pieces, $1.19 for 144++ pieces). If the current Dollar-Peso exchange rate is $1 = Php42, then each of the candles would cost you Php54.18. Multiply that by 100, and you’d be spending Php5,418 for the candles—which is actually the within the usual range of a bride’s wedding souvenir budget. If you get the souvenirs from a local wedding favors supplier, you’d probably pay the same. And yep, I’ve seen lower-quality candles similar to this one priced at around the same amount—sometimes they’re even more expensive.

According to their website, Truly Wedding Favors offers a satisfaction guarantee. If you aren’t pleased with the quality, you can send back the unused favors in exchange for better ones. I think local suppliers do that too, I’m not sure though. Read the contract or agreement you have with them to know if they do offer such guarantee as well.

As I have said, shipping is the main issue that you’ll have to face when buying wedding stuff online. International shipping is quite pricey, sometimes shipping alone costs more than the total expense of the products being shipped. However, this might not be much of a problem if you have relatives or friends in the United States who would be coming to the Philippines before your wedding. You wire them the payment and they’ll purchase the products for you and have them delivered to their address. They can then bring the favors to you when they get to the Philippines. The only risk you’ll have to worry about in this case is having your relative/friend’s baggage getting lost in the airport, or the person bringing the favors suddenly couldn’t make the trip.

If you ask me, I’d honestly tell you that buying raw materials from Divisoria and making your own stuff are still always the best way to save on expenses for your wedding. Though there isn’t a guarantee that the quality you get is always “premium” quality, it’s really up to you finding the Divisoria supplier who can give you that. However, I won’t totally rule out buying wedding stuff online or getting from a local supplier. Some people just don’t have the luxury of time. And when you really think about it, convenience is actually what you pay for when you’re not the one making your own wedding stuff—you pay for somebody else’s time and talent to make your wedding things.

You might be getting tired of me saying this, but yes, it’s always up to you. Should you make your own favors, get from a local supplier, or buy online? You’re the one (and your groom-to-be) who decides. Just remember to study both the advantages and disadvantages of all the options in relation to your situation (ask yourself: “Do you have time to make your own?” “Can you find ways to lower the cost of shipping?” “Can your budget accommodate getting ready-made souvenirs?”) before coming to a decision. You wouldn’t want to waste your money would you?

UPDATE: Melissa of TrulyWeddingFavors.Com has generously offered the readers of My Filipino Wedding an additional 5% discount!!! Just use the promotion code TRULY5 upon checkout and you’ll get your discount.

I have always been fond of Chocnut, a local candy distributed here in the Philippines. It has a flavor of peanuts and chocolate at the same time. I just really like it, so much so that I named one of my favorite dogs, Choknat!

Anyway, during the course of our planning, I thought of giving away personalized Chocnuts to our guests. Marc liked the idea, but it came up a little bit too late—just a month before our wedding day. We didn’t have enough time to create these little yummy giveaways.

Since it’s a local candy, Chocnut comes in packs that are pretty cheap. You can get raw materials for decorating it in Divisoria (again, materials there are very cheap). The cost for these personalized candies isn’t a problem—it’s personalizing them that would take up most of your time. But if you aren’t busy, and still months away from your wedding, you can give this idea a try.

What you’ll need:

• Chocnut candy
• Regular bond paper (or shiny specialty paper if you want to go fancy, but avoid using the scented ones)
• Sinamay cloth
• Satin ribbon
• Glue
• Cutter
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Disposable paint brush
• Color printer
• Graphic-editing software (ex. Photoshop or PaintShop Pro)

Here’s what you need to do:
Create the design you want using a graphics-editing software. Make sure that your print area for each of the labels is 2” x 3” inches. On the image below, the red marks indicate the folds of the label when you stick it on the candy’s silver cover. (Once I upgrade this site’s hosting, I’ll provide a link to my Photoshop template file download The Photoshop template file is now available at the Downloads page). Make sure that you put in tiny light gray marks on the edges of the document so you’ll know where to cut.

Once you’re done, lay out the labels on a 7.5” x 9” inches graphic canvass. That way, when you print, you won’t waste paper and maximize the entire page. Print it out and leave the sheet to dry. Cut the labels carefully using a sharp cutter and a ruler.

Remove the labels on the Chocnut candies, but leave the silver cover on (the candy will break apart if you don’t). Put the labels you just made around it and seal with a bit of glue using a disposal paint brush (the bristles tend to harden if you don’t clean it properly afterwards, so it’s best to just get a disposable, cheap one). Don’t put too much glue, or you’ll smear the print.

When you finish labeling, cut a small piece of Sinamay and put a few candies in the middle. Take the four sides of the cloth and bring them up on top of the candies so they will be covered. With one hand holding the make-shift bag, tie it up with a satin ribbon. You’re done!

Chocnut isn’t the only candy you can personalize. Personalize any candy bar you want, just make sure you don’t remove the inner cover—glue on candy isn’t healthy You can even put tags and jazz up the candy bag as you see fit. Let your creativity run wild!

These albums are actually becoming a trend already. Why? Well, for one, you can truly show the essence of your wedding through its limitless possibilities in album layout designs. Each page can tell a story through the creative use of graphic effects, patterns, and filters, as well as fancy fontography and catchy texts. Unlike traditional albums, each page is mounted on a stiff board, then laminated. Some even have magnetic page corners, thereby protecting your albums from the test of time.

Marc and I are actually going to get a digital album to store memories of our wedding. As a graphic designer, I can’t help but want to design the pages myself (it would be nice to show my children and say, “hey, your mommy designed this!”). Admittedly, I haven’t finished designing ours yet hehehe (and to think we’ve been married for almost a year now! Haha). Seriously though… Choosing this type of album from the traditional one was greatly influenced by the fact that each page is by all means sturdy. My family has more than a dozen picture-full of traditional albums (one of the perks of having a photographer for a dad), and we’ve had to be very careful in storing them so they won’t degrade further.

Anyway, it’s your choice. These albums are a tad bit more expensive than traditional ones, though in fairness, they’re much more cheaper. And usually, when you acquire services of a wedding photography studio, digital albums and layout are part of their wedding packages.

You can check out Ultravision Photo and Video or Tri-Color Photo and Video Studio for their digital wedding album samples and photo packages.

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).

The best thing to do in these events is to ask questions—a lot of them. The caterers’ sales representatives are usually scattered about in the venue, and they’ll make sure that you get the information you need (what’s the point of feeding you for free if they don’t have an opportunity to give you a sales pitch, right?). Ask them all the questions that you need to know about their service: food servings, table setup, stuff included in the packages, number of waiters, additional services, buffet setup, payment, etc. etc. Don’t worry, the sales representatives are used to answering a lot of questions. Their main objective is to get you reserve with them—it’s part of their job.

If it’s the first caterer you’ve ever tried, it’s better that you put off reservation until you’ve really canvassed and tried others. Take pictures so you’ll have a reminder of what food they served, then sit down with your groom-to-be to discuss which you liked best.

There are other caterers that don’t hold free food tasting events (the no-strings-attached events), and require you to give a down payment before you could even taste the food. Quality of food in such cases is very hard to determine, and you must really study their packages as well as presentation before making up your mind. It’s also advisable that you ask around—research on the net, or ask friends, colleagues, and relatives for feedback if they’ve already tried the service. If you’re totally lost (or don’t really have anybody to ask), you could try joining mailing lists for grooms and brides-to-be like the one they have on Weddings At Work and ask.

Catering will probably take up most of your budget (well, at least in ours it did), so it’s best to make sure that you really get the best (and at the most reasonable price) food for your guests.

* * *

Hizon’s Catering will be hosting a food tasting event on Sunday, August 5, 2007 at the Mango Farm Special Events Venue, 22 Shield Street, Kingsville Court, Antipolo. You must be registered to join.

Robert Camba Catering, on the other hand, has free food tasting every weekend at their showroom (#12 Resthaven St., Baler, Quezon City). The showroom is a bit small, make sure to give them a call first to set an appointment (Phone: 371-1098 / 372-9755) so there won’t be any problems accommodating you.

I’m still waiting for Josiah’s Catering to send me their scheduled food tasting events (I think they have a number of them this year).

Happy planning and eating!

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.

I think there are more sites out there offering free wedding sites/blogs for couples, but I only know of two more popular ones: Wedding Announcer and The Knot. These sites let you have your own wedding site for free, and choose from a variety of templates that will fit your wedding theme and motif. I’m not sure of the extent of customization that you can do with a free account, but it’s relatively easy to use if you’re not a techie person. You can easily add pages where you can put your entourage details, suppliers, photos, a write-up on how you met, etc.

If you got a bit more cash lying around, you can always hire a professional to make a customized wedding website for you. You’d get your own domain name and hosting, which is good if you want your website to be easily remembered by your guests. The extent of customization will depend on your provider, and so will the cost.

Either way, you’d easily be able to stay in touch with your guests no matter where they are (unless they’re in the middle of some faraway forest where internet connection is unheard of). And yeah, it’s still cheaper—you’d get to save yourself from adding gazillion of inserts to your wedding invitation (the more invitation inserts you have, the more expensive the cost will be… unless your invitations supplier will be generous enough to give them all to you for free).

You can basically put anything and everything that pertains to your wedding on your wedding website. It’s really up to you if you want to put enough and let uninvited guests know about them

Yep, RSVP cards weren’t the usual during the time of my parents. I’ve taken a look at my parents’ and my uncle’s wedding invitations (for research when I was doing my own), and they didn’t include inserts other than the Bridal Entourage.

The RSVP card was actually one of the issues my dad and I had when I was planning my own wedding. He said that he understood why we wanted to specify the reserved seats for each guest, but we do have some old-fashioned relatives who would actually find it offensive. Weird? Yeah, I thought so too. But I guess you really can’t blame them. It’s not something that they’re used to.

I asked my dad why it’s going to be offensive, and he said our older guests could perceive it as a form of disrespect. Why disrespect? Well, to them it may seem that you’re giving them a limit (although that’s the point, isn’t it?), and they’re “not special enough” to deserve more than an X number of seats.

For the non-traditional bride, this reasoning sounds a bit ridiculous. Yeah, maybe it is. But, you’d also have to be understanding. Filipinos value respect for our elders, and it won’t really hurt to go the extra mile for your more traditional relatives.

I have to admit that my dad and I argued about this a bit until I understood his point. I’m a practical person, and printing special RSVP cards for a very small number of guests just didn’t seem very economical. I was strongly opposed to giving our guests an impression that they could bring their entire clan to our wedding—we were on a very limited budget. But, as always, there’s always a compromise.

My dad agreed to have RSVP cards, but we left the number of guests blank for those whom he thought would find the limit offensive. I was afraid of the number of people these guests would bring, but my dad assured me that he would explain it personally to the guest that seats are limited. The idea of an RSVP card may seem disrespectful to them, but, they’ll understand the need for limiting the seats better if explained personally.

Making a “big deal” out of RSVP cards definitely adds unnecessary stress to a Filipino bride-to-be, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. One just needs to exert a bit more effort to be understanding, and it’s important to note that we should still remember to show respect to our more traditional guests.

What I mean by elaborate is, well, everything just seemed so… Fussy. The flowers (geez, her bridal bouquet looked like it weighed a ton), the gowns, the make-up, the headdress.

I’m not a fashion expert or anything, but it really seems that “simple and minimal” is the “in” style nowadays.

I couldn’t help but put my bridal photo and my mom’s side by side to compare. I’ve seen gowns with ruffles (you know, the more daring designs) and brides who actually wore them (they don’t look bad anyway if not overdone), but I’ve been seeing floral crowns less and less. The only time I’ve seen one is probably at my friend’s parent’s silver anniversary sans renewal of vows. Other than that, I haven’t been to a wedding or encountered a bride who told me they’d wear an elaborate floral crown.

Nowadays, I’ve been seeing a lot of brides who would opt for a simple flower on their hair (like, just one or two), beads, Swarovski accessories, or little tiaras. I, for one, had a tiara when I got married. I’m not really into the “princess look,” but my hair and make-up artist advised me that it would look nice (and it actually turned out quite pretty). If I had a Christmas-themed wedding, I’d probably want to put something a bit more unique, like a Poinsettia perhaps But our theme was modern Filipiniana, so the tiara worked just fine.

How about you? What would you like to put on your hair when you get married?

CREDITS: Photo by Tri-Color Studio.

Nothing changed when I was searching for the perfect gown. Although some of my high society relatives insisted on it, I didn’t really see the need for having a designer gown. Besides, my budget couldn’t afford it.

Being the artist that I am, you really couldn’t help but want to have your entourage’s gowns be color-coordinated—and the same. My husband-to-be and I at that time didn’t have much to spend with. I was about to accept the fact that my entourage’s gowns will probably just be similarly colored (but not uniformed), until an aunt reminded me of the gowns in Divisoria.

I totally forgot about it. You see, there’s this one-floor building (the Yangco building, to be more specific) beside Ilaya Street in Divisoria that’s so saturated with wedding and debut gowns, you’d think you’ve died and gone to gown heaven. Each booth is lined with the prettiest gowns. And read this: the gowns can go as cheap as P1,000.

You can get this RTW gown from FNB Boutique (in Pasillo V-II of the Yangco Building), at around P3,000 (not sure though, but I do recall it’s not more than Php5,000). Pretty, isn’t it? How’s that for a $60 wedding gown?

The trick in getting the best deal in Divisoria is knowing how to haggle. I’ve tried to canvass for the best price, but they’re basically the same (not surprising, since these stores probably have a standard price). But if you get lucky (like we did), you’d get a dressmaker willing to lower the price for you. However, in order to do that, you have to “buy in bulk.” Meaning, the entire entourage.

Nice, don’t you think? Even the guys’ Barong Tagalog are aqua blue. It was quite a sight seeing them go marching down the aisle.

For about P35,000 (around $700), I was able to get these custom-made: blue Barongs for my hubby’s bestman and groomsmen, a child’s blue Barong for my ring and coin bearer, gowns for all three of the women secondary sponsors, gowns for my maid-of-honor, bridesmaids, junior bridesmaids and flower girls, as well as the Barong for my dad and the motif gowns for my mom and my mother-in-law. Oh, don’t forget my husband’s Barong Tagalog made of finest piña, and my elaborate cut-work wedding gown with an intricate beadwork. Hard to believe we spent less than a thousand dollars for all these? Well, believe it. That’s Divisoria fashion for you, baby.

Oddly enough, I could have gotten it cheaper. If I opted for the ready-to-wear wedding gown (I’m too scientific to take the pamahiin of getting bad luck if you try on your bridal gown before the wedding day seriously), I probably wouldn’t have spent more than $500 for the entire thing. But I wanted it prettier. And made use of my own designs.

I printed out a photo of my dream gown (which I got from the Net), and have FNB Boutique copy it. Not exactly though, I wanted it to have a Filipiniana touch. I did the same thing for the women in my entourage, but I modified the samples a bit in Photoshop so the printout will look exactly as I pictured them. They’re not designer gowns, but hey, they’re pretty and cheap anyway.

If you want to get in touch with the couturier who made my entourage’s formal wear, you can try FNB Boutique. Look for Nita Blanco (she’s the owner). You can reach her at 309-31-82. You can also talk to one of her assistants, Rona (she’s the one who took care of my account), through mobile 0921-975-42-34. Just tell her you got their info from one of their clients (Gail Dela Cruz-Villanueva), and she might actually give you a better deal.