Church and reception venue.... almost checked!!!

After almost 4 months of search and various oculars at numerous churches and reception venues, me and Christian agreed that the church will be at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Cubao, Quezon City. We previously talked about having the ceremony in a small church but due to budget constraints we decided to have it in Immaculate Conception Cathedral instead. I never imagined myself getting married in a cathedral... I don't like a long walk down the aisle! The reason for this is that I am not really good in heels.... so I will now end up having a pair of flat wedding shoes! I just saw the outside of the church when we did our ocular a few months ago but I searched for pictures online of the altar of the church and what can I say it is indeed beautiful.

Photos of the church came from Immaculate's official website.

I remembered my sister, Andie, had her nurse capping ceremony here and I bet it is really big inside. I just hope that it will be sufficiently be filled with guests. I am keeping my fingers cross for that. That is why we want a smaller church to have an intimate environment but then it is God's will to have it here.

For our reception, I went to checked out the clubhouse at Northeast Greenhills. The place is within our budget and our on-the-day coordinator is from the village. The covered area is small but the administrator for the clubhouse said that we can use the garden area. They will also have some folks at the area to help out with the parking of the guests.

I can say that it is really nice and we can simply jazz it up to make it look nicer with luminaries and other stuffs that I planned to DIY with my mom and sisters...

You can see the garden venue from the covered area.... It is big and can really accommodate our less than 100 guests.... Just a little jazzing up of venue

Nice lights....
Photos came from multiply sites with list of venues

We are almost done with our suppliers. I just need to reserve the photobooth supposedly this weekend but the bridal fair was cancel due to the Ondoy tradegy so I will have to book it during the next bridal fair to get the freebies and discounts. Next month I will need to look for other gown supplier for my gown and my entourage's dresses and to pay the sound system supplier. We still have to discuss about the mobile bar that we want. We just have to go next week to Immaculate and Northeast Greenhills to pay the down payments.

So far so good...

Caterer - checked... reservation paid
- detailing by December or January and payment of 50%
Photo-video - paid reservation
OTD Coordinator - contract signed, payment after event
Lights and sounds - need to 50% but already reserved for our wedding date
Rings - good to go... c/o my cousins
Invites - already booked... gift from Ate Pamela

Soon to book...

Church - next week
Reception - next week
Photobooth - next bridal fair... gift from one of our principal sponsors, Tita Prexy

Need to look for...

Gown - need to look for other options
Hair & Make up artist - no idea where to start but hoping my friend is really ok with her doing my make up
Flowers - need to scout around Dangwa (Manila's flower retailers district)

Only 7 months to go... By next month, we have to arrange our wedding documents. I am not to patient with lines. Need to find an alternative for it.

Operation project management of a wedding

I attended a training about project management conducted by our company. It is with regard to managing a project for the processes that we handle. One portion of the training stuck in my head that I can apply to our wedding. It has something to do with having your main task first and then thinking of the dependent tasks what will lead to your main task. The process of a wedding day came into my mind while I am at that training! I know I was bad for not listening attentively but I cannot help but think of it. I have even drawn the chart in my head on how it will look like!!!!


The chart that I have here is just a sample... but the list can go on and on depending on what you want to have. I was just very satisfied with what I learn yesterday.

DIY: Created our wedding map

Needing a break from all the work load that I have and from working on the other stuff that I need to accomplish by week's end, I fooled around making our wedding map. Using the website of www.weddingmapper.com, I just played around it and ended up with this one:

This is just a rough draft. There are still more editing to this one. I might also send up doing a map that will be easier for our guests to read. However, based from experience I am not a very good map maker... I have my friends complain about me giving directions since I will usually ask them what road they will take and start giving directions from there!!! I'm really bad at this.

But wait.... You have to wait for our map to jive with our YM inspired wedding and for our other DIY projects.

Presenting... our wedding theme....

Hello hello to everyone... A few days ago me and Christian were discussing what will be our theme for the wedding. We cannot think of anything until a surge of electricity ran through me! I told him that we can have a Yahoo Messenger theme or more of a chat theme, since we met through the wonderful world of chatrooms! He totally agreed with me on this and hence we have our wedding theme... everything of our stationery will be YM inspired. Checked out the photos of the invites draft that I have placed here...
This is a very rough draft of our invites. I worked on it using MS Word but will try to work on it using Adobe Photoshop when I go home to my mom's place this weekend. Our invites suppliers will be printing the final layout and I asked help with the fonts that we can use. I just wish my sister have good fonts installed in her PC.

Working without a Photoshop did not stop me from thinking of other ways of incorporating our theme in our wedding. We talked about having our table numbers as smiley YM emoticons instead of the regular numbers. Hehehehe... Again, I worked on a draft of it.

I am still trying to search for other emoticons that we can use. We need seven all together. I really want the emoticons from YM instead of the other messengers since YM is where we met. Hope someone can help me with that! We are also making the escort cards and I will write about that soon. More YM inspired DIYs to come.

One more bridal fair.... not getting tired of it!!!

Me and my cousin went to the Wedding Expo of Themes & Motifs today. We went early to avoid the crowd of people that might go today since it is the last day of the event. Before we got in the venue, my cousin met one of her former officemates --- well she is my former officemate as well since we all worked the same call center before. She is one of the exhibitors for the bridal fair.

I think we spent near two hours in the venue. Looking around suppliers... since I need to get the prices of invite suppliers and photobooth. I also wanted to try the food of Josiah's to see if I really made a mistake in booking Hizon's earlier in our preparation and without even trying other caterers. Well... what can I say... I like the food of our caterer.... I am just happy that I booked Hizon's. We even went to the food tasting of Hizon's at Palacio de Maynila just to see the difference between the two. My cousin liked the food of Hizon's as well.

While we were eating, my cousin just told me if I want to book Calliope for our invites, since they are offering a 10% discount on their invites and they are willing to work with me to get the design that I want.... I said I will really book them but will just walk around. She just then said that she will pay for it as her gift to us.... I am so happy to hear those words and I am really thankful for it. At least we have one supplier checked and we don't have to spend for it.... So we have both our rings and invites as gifts. That really made my day!!!

We also talked to our former officemate and she will work out something to meet our budget for the services that they render. I guess I will just have to pay the downpayment soon to get that check from our list as well. Everything is really taking shape but with the venue we are still zero on that one. As we went around the venue, we came across one of the designers, Merlene Marcelo and we just both laughed out loud.... Our middle names are both Marcelo and we told Merlene about it.... She just laughed as well. She had a promo this September where she will work around the budget of the bride for the dress as well as the entourage if you visit her shop. I will try to go to the place and check it out and probably bring my mom with me since I really don't know anything about dresses!!!!

Of course there are the photobooths!!!! I just went around and we tried the one by Baicapture and my photo was like yuck!!! My face was too oily... I really need to find a remedy for that one.... I know powder is a quick fix but I need a solution to stop my face from being too oily.... Hmm.....

As I mentioned earlier, we went to the food tasting of Hizon's since I want to see Palacio de Maynila and man.... I can't believe that the venue is 100,000 pesos... it is just a tent with a concrete facade for crying out loud.... My cousin told me that it was not worth it.... We just enjoyed the food especially the pritchon wrap and the cheezy lasagna.... as well as the creme brulee with blueberries .... it was so good... I don't have to eat dinner anymore since I was so full with the two food tasting that we have today!!!!

I just posted some pictures of the loot bag and the agreement slip with Calliope to document this day!!!

I thought I found the ONE... I am so WRONG!!!

Browsing the internet can really be a culprit… buying more wedding magazines is another thing to blame…. I think I found the dress that I want but NO!!!!! Whenever I go online and try to look at dresses… I found a cut or a design that I want. Whenever I turn the pages of a new magazine, I would put a post-it tab on the page where a wedding dress inspires me!!!! This is really getting out of hand….

Well, it is really hard to find a good dress that will suit my built… my very big built!!! Just to prove this craziness, here are some of the dresses that I really like…..

From one of the magazines that I have. See the post-it tab on the side!!! hehehehe...

I like the style of this gown.. It brings out the era of the Little Women...

I love the one in the middle!!!! I think me and my mom will have an argument about having a knee-length wedding dress.... let's see!!!

I am really not a dress person... I have no fashion sense... I am not the girlie girlie type... But for my dress I want just these things:

• a V-neckline - to show my cleavage.... wink wink
  
• an empire-cut waist --- to make me look thinner... (ASA!!!!!)
• no shiny cloth... don't wanna have a shiny glow on our wedding pictures!
  
• no long train...
  

I just really love this dress... I like it very very much.... I have to post it one more time!!! With the matching french net thingy (an item I learn from w@wie!)...

Nice isn't it???