Will you be my bridesmaid? Will you be my groomsman?

Hey girls!

Yo dudes!

A closer look at the details after the jump. 

Dressmaker - Check!

Hello! It's been a while. So where have we been? Well life recently threw us for a loop, but we're all good and now really in the thick of wedding preparations. Just because nothing has been happening on this blog doesn't mean nothing has been happening in real life. We've managed to get stuff done, so finally, here's an update.

First of all finding a dressmaker for my entourage dresses and my reception dress: done. My awesome sister-in-law, Ate Weng, knew this guy, Edgar Basilan, who runs a dress shop called The Secret Creations. The fiance and I met up with my sis-in-law, brother, and nephew and paid the dressmaker a visit last December 23. 

It was a good first meeting. I showed him my peg for the entourage dress, and also my reception dress. We talked about the dress details and then we picked swatches. The fiance also looked at swatches for his suit, though he ended up not getting Edgar's services for it. 

A Tiny Yet Incredible Wedding Favors Miracle

I've been having a horrible week so I retreated into my shell today because the world was too tough to handle. I was actually lying in bed doing nothing, with my heart literally and figuratively aching, when my phone rang its usual chiming BBM alert. It was Clang, one of our wedding fairies. As it turned out, she had a surprise for me and the fiance that really made me smile for the first time the entire day.

Such an awesome surprise!

Gown Design Presentation

As usual, the fiance and I have been super busy with work, so it took a while before we got to do wedding stuff again. We actually forgot about our wedding for a few weeks there, amid a haze of overtime and holiday/weekend work. We had to put off supplier meetings, and even simple research. Now that my big work project's winding down and I have my weekends back, and the fiance's also slowing down with work, we're busy catching up with our preparations. It's really a challenge trying to find the time for it.

Anyway, yesterday, we made it to our second meeting with my gown designer at last. After making our reservation deposit (a supplier standard to block off your wedding date), we had a meeting for the presentation of designs. I was shown three sketches to choose from, but I changed my mind about what I wanted so I was sketched another one on-the-fly. I had a hard time articulating what I had in mind, and I felt like I was too weird, not wanting any frills. The fiance actually kind of went on groomzilla mode too trying to help me, haha, but it was great because he asked all the right questions. Despite the trouble getting there, it was great. It became a collaborative effort, and I was happy with the result!

Sketches

Wedding Coordinator - Check!

The wedding coordinator is a non-negotiable for me and the fiance, and it was also one of the hardest decisions we've ever made with regards to our wedding. Having been to so many weddings where things went awry (some only slightly, some totally phobia-including), we knew we couldn't do it ourselves. We also didn't want to rely on our friends and family - we want them to enjoy the day with us, and not have to worry about anything. Our college friend Jason also gave us very good advice. He said that it's different when people are paid to do something, and we totally agree with him. 

Camille's super cute business cards on top of my wedding notebook, which contains several pages of notes with all the helpful info she provided us that day.

Gown Designer - Check!

Our wedding preparations have been up and down. We've been far too busy to do wedding stuff, so what happens is that we'll do a lot one month and then fail to do anything the next. This has to stop! Thankfully, we're getting some important things done in November. One of them is being able to book my gown designer, Edwin Uy.

What these fabric swatches are for, I'm not telling!

Save the Date: Behind the Scenes

A and I can be creative thinkers, but we definitely don't have the skills to execute artsy things. This is why my Wedding Fairies really played a huge part in our Save the Date stuff. We decided to go DIY (do-it-yourself) because they're just cards, and they're not as important as the actual wedding invitation. So A and I brought supplies, and Lek and Clang came over to my dingy little Yellow Pad a few times back in September to make them. I came up with the concept, they brought it to reality. Here go the behind-the-scenes pics.

Hard at work. This was the night when we finalized the card designs.

Save the date!

What's inside this little orange envelope?

Hotel Ocular - Century Park Sheraton Hotel and Manila Hotel

For the fiance and me, the hotel is an important part of the wedding. It is where we will be doing our preparations and staying with our families the night before the big day, where we will be taking a ton of photos, and it is where we will be spending our first night together as husband and wife. What part of that is not a big deal, right?

That is why an ocular of our prospect hotels had to be done. A and I wanted a hotel in the Roxas Boulevard area, so that it's easily accessible, has less traffic to worry about, and the area is pretty picturesque. We were suggested hotels in Quezon City, but it's far from our reception venue, has unpredictable traffic, looks pretty congested, and we really don't know much about that area, having grown up mainly in Manila. So Roxas Boulevard it is. Luckily, my fiance's mom and my future mother-in-law is in the airline industry and is pretty connected, and she was able to set up two oculars for two hotels in the vicinity of our church and reception venue.

Century Park Sheraton Hotel

Manila Hotel

Random Entourage Meetups

So the fiance and I have managed to skip another month with this blog. We're so bad at this! Haha. It's just that our jobs have really revved up tremendously lately, and while that's good for our life in general, our wedding plans have kind of taken a backseat. We're remedying that this month though because we're down to five months to go and just thinking about it kind of sends us into a wave of contained panic!

Anyway, despite our hectic schedules, we actually have been able to squeeze in some time with our family and friends, who are also members of our wedding and liturgical entourage. I thought I'd document it here, just for the memories.

September 7, 2012. One of our bridesmaids, my cousin Sheila who's based in Singapore, came home for a quick visit, and we got to meet up. We had dinner at Ramen Cool and she slept over at my place that night.