Wedding Planning for the Non-Bridezilla (aka Our Wedding) -Part One

Getting married to Gary (the other Kikay Exchange administrator as well as the administrator of our other fabulous blogs Mom Exchange and Basketball Exchange) (and Tech Exchange and Car Exchange! - Gary) was one of the easiest and most natural decisions I have ever made. Almost right after we made our announcement to our families, we decided to have an intimate wedding with strictly 50 guests with the reception to be held in our favorite restaurant. And so the wedding circus commenced.

We had about four months to prepare for the wedding and though I personally thought that that was enough time, some of my close friends started to panic when I told them of my time frame. The way I figured it, as long as I had all the documents, church, reception and outfits prepared, we were good to go. But apparently, there were all these other million tiny details (i.e. church music, misallettes, table arrangements, souvenirs etc) that needed to be threshed out.

However, I refused to be pressured with such trivialities and so I bought myself a clear book to store all our wedding stuff in and guided by a checklist of requirements (as well as a wedding checklist from a wedding magazine), I began to hunt down the documents to submit to the church and the state.

We had no problem with our birth certificates and Certificates of No Marriage (CENOMAR) because this could all be applied for online via the Ecensus website. The challenge was in obtaining our baptism and confirmation certificates.

Most Holy Rosary Parish in Multinational Village, Paranaque

I was baptized in Naval, Biliran and I asked my uncle to secure a copy of my birth certificate. I received the document about a week later (thanks to LBC) and found my name misspelled, my birth place wrong and another woman listed down as my mother. Gary had a much easier time because he was baptized in Manila and that parish had very organized baptismal records.

When it came to the confirmation certificates, I then had the upper hand because I was confirmed when I was in seventh grade and it was just a matter of applying for the certificate at my old school. But Gary did not undergo confirmation and so I signed him to be confirmed at our local parish. The most difficult thing about his confirmation was sitting through the two-hour lecture during siesta time (2pm-4pm). Thank goodness I could hide my face under my bangs while I took a nap:p

St. Jerome Emiliani church in Alabang

Choosing the church was a no-brainer because my uncle, Fr. Benjie Redoble, is the parish priest of the Multinational Village church. We were all set to have our wedding there until we realized how difficult it is to get to Multinational Village. The main gate is beside the Duty Free mall and there's always a fantastic traffic build-up right around that area. We usually take a shortcut from Sucat but it's one of those blink and you'll miss it streets so I knew that our guests might get lost getting there. And thus we settled on St. Jerome parish in Alabang, the same church where my brother got married a few years back. It was definitely more expensive than the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Multinational Village but at least it was easier to get to and more accessible to everyone as it was right along the main road.

The reception was another ticklish issue. As already mentioned, the plan was to hold a very intimate lunch/dinner at Chi's Brick Oven Kitchen inside BF Homes Paranaque, and after I labored over my 50 person guest list (bride and groom included), my parents declared that they wanted a bigger venue to accommodate their friends and more relatives. To ensure that I would give in to their request, they promised to shoulder part of the reception costs. And that's how we ended up at the courtyard of Sophia's Mediterranean in Alabang with a guest list of 120++.

So the documents were all ready, the marriage license acquired and church and reception area all accounted for. Next up, the wedding suppliers.

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