Boarding school

when i saw boarding pass save-the-date cards on a new york-based design site, i knew they'd be the perfect design peg for our travel-themed wedding.

so with some specialty papers from national, some help from my wonderful cubicle-mate cecil (a gifted and super kikay art director!), a gold gel pen, the office printer (shhh!!!) and a cutter, i produced a couple of save-the-date cards to give to marlon's guests from singapore!

the bar code font was a cute touch added by cecil!

i colored in these gold emblems by hand, baby! ... and almost went cross-eyed doing it! the effort was more than worth it though when marlon told me he absolutely loved them -- and so did everyone who received them a couple of months back. anyway, i only had to make around 20 pieces. (p.s. don't ask me to compute the cost per piece -- i really suck at things like that.)

now, on to the next challenge: finding a printer who can do our dream passport-inspired invites within budget. good luck to me!

Bubble girls, revealed

finally! pictures of the tamayo girls, dani and ela! these are not exactly recent, but their mommy aui hasn't updated her friendster page in a while!

ate dani:


and elapot:


aren't they adorable? too bad their baby sister, alexa (a.k.a. the most symmetrically-featured baby girl in the world) is too young to join them!

Here comes the dress

this dress is a lot of things.

it's a transition from my being a long-time fan of the amazing kate torralba to being her friend. a dress that wasn't going to happen -- i had already settled on a designer, i had this huge complex about how i couldn't possibly afford kate. a result of a quick exchange of text messages and a split-second, gut-feel decision to show up at kate's studio.

it's a real collaboration between me and kate. a testament not just to her creative genius but to how she really GOT me. it doesn't look like a single one of the many pegs i sent kate, but she GOT something from them too, and made it me! it's fun and inspiration and kakikayan and all the things that i enjoy whenever i pop on over to kate's colorful, whimsical apartment.

it's a confection of ivory tulle and gold thread, inspired by and embellished with patterns from a pair of enamel earrings i bought in a mumbai bangketa. (the trip to mumbai was for our fourth anniversary, and our last as boyfriend and girlfriend.) it has its own matching little purse and strands of beads draped across a low back -- girly touches that i love. it's corseted inside and has a little train -- perfect for our little chapel.

but maybe all it is is my dress. it's the dress i will be wearing on a saturday afternoon in december, when i marry my best friend.

so here it is!


and the earrings! i saw them on my last-minute shopping jaunt in colaba, and knew that i had to wear them to my own wedding. you would totally not believe how much they cost. wearing a bangketa find on my wedding day seems so me!


*giddy and excited*

Over the moon

i recently blogged about the honeymoon plans over at my regular blog, so i thought i'd repost them here.

with me in charge (more or less) of the wedding, marlon has been tasked with planning the honeymoon. it took us the greater part of a year to decide, but we finally set our sights on a couple of days in boracay, a short visit to the family in kolkata, and a week-plus roaming the wonders of rajasthan and agra. (palace of the winds! taj mahal! amber fort! gorgeousness!)

yesterday, marlon forwarded me a lengthy missive from a mr. tapas banerjee of trinetra tours in delhi. and by lengthy, i mean three pages when cut-and-pasted into a word document! within seconds i knew this was going to be interesting.

'Namaste' & Greetings Mr. Plazo !!Good Morning !!Many thanks for your mail. We take this opportunity to confirm our best intentions and knowledge to the cause of your trip. It is a pleasure to welcome you & your traveling partner to our country.

Before I serve my verbal barrage on to you, I just wish to inform you that I would be delighted to offer you references from All Over The World including Singapore too.

kapow! you've got me mr. banerjee! something about the self-deprecating, candid and enthusiastic tone just got me. and so i read on.

more choice excerpts:

For your entire journey, we are upgrading your transport to a fine Toyota MUV (Innova). This car will substantially add to your traveling comfort, especially on some bumpy roads where the top quality suspension would not let you feel any discomfort. However, the biggest and the single most achievement of this car is its Air-conditioning, [natawa talaga ako dito! omigosh! this is so true! especially in india!] which ensures that you are cool and fresh even if you are traveling under the mid day sun in warm country.

Besides the car, your driver would be special. He would be your 'Man Friday'. You would of course have local guides conducting your city tours in each city, but, besides that, your driver would be your most invaluable friend. He would not only be knowledgeable about places of interest in between journeys as also in cities, but, he would be a very nice human being with a pleasing personality for whom nothing would be trouble.

pero dito talaga nahulog yung loob ko sa kanya:

I apologise for my unending chin wagging, Mr. Plazo. I love the business and the gossip opportunities that come with it. Actually, the home dinner that I am proposing is in my house. Both me and my wife, Krishna love meeting people and making friends. I got into the business primarily because I could travel with tour groups making friends and sharing experiences. However, with the business expanding in the last 7-8 years, I am more or less now confined to my office ensuring standards that we are so paranoid about. Hence, whenever possible, I invite clients to our home for a meal with myself and my wife, Krishna. Home dinners are my major personal interaction with clients and I look forward to this eagerly. Little do the visitors realise that they would be subjected to my verbal diarrhea!!

ang sweet diba? anyway, i checked out a couple of the hotels and sites on his itinerary. and. oh. my. gawd.

behold rohet garh, a gorgeous 17th century home-turned-heritage hotel in jodhpur. swoon.

i may have died and gone into a taschen book.

and check out the luxe desert camping digs in manvar.

and one of the client references describes their driver as "a prince among drivers."

i do believe we have a winner.

i can't wait to go shopping for block-printed bedsheets in those rajasthani markets.

All hail the maid of honor

and for my zexy zeester, something that totally does not look like any of the other entourage gowns!

the lady:


and her dress:

Secondary style

for the secondary sponsors (mimi, justine and hershel -- close friends from acs, college and high school, respectively), tria and i flipped the color combinations around. they get aqua taffeta skirts with purple sashes -- the bridesmaids have purple skirts and aqua sashes.

they also get a different silhouette -- the same ruffled, girly tops but with a pencil skirt this time.

Bubble girls

for our two adorable flower girls, dani and ela (the super-cute daughters of my acs friends aui and jay), tria created bubble dresses in gold chiffon and taffeta. these two kiddies also get peter pan collars and sashes in purple and aqua.

(darn now i wish i had pictures of dani and ela!)

Playing dress-up

since i have the faces of the bridesmaids up, i thought i'd post sketches of their dresses too.

if you're a guy, i know it will probably be a matter of nanoseconds before i lose you.

first, the design pegs. i had a rather comprehensive list of no's, which included the generic long, spaghetti-strapped a-line dress in shantung silk. no shawls -- any bridesmaid seen wearing a wrap will be speedily defenestrated. (or maybe i should assign one of my gay friends to be a style bouncer.) no all-alike dresses -- each of the girls we chose has a unique beauty and body type. one dress does not fit all. and no beading.

before i begin to sound like bridezilla, what were my yeses? yes to reusable, and therefore, to separates. yes to dresses made with each bridesmaid in mind. yes to short, yes to casual, and a resounding yes to girly.



now, the designer.

my perpetually perfectly turned-out friend tria villasis-ramolete runs a garment business called dream bride. plus, she's super organized, stylish and a joy to work with.

at chris's despedida -- tria's in the cute mint green blouse

and she knows my kiliti -- she only had to bludgeon me over the head once with the weighty term "special price" for me to have dinner with her. and over a huge meal at burgoo, we put the dresses together.

and here they are, in tria's microscopic, stepford-neat hand.

tria will use gold chiffon for the soft, ruffled tops, aquamarine taffeta for the sashes, and purple (o sige na nga amethyst! hahaha!) taffeta for the skirts.

i must admit i am a bit antsy about seeing if the bold color scheme we chose will look good off the color board and out in the real world. luckily, the bridesmaids' first fitting is coming up next weekend, and i can't wait to see what the dresses look like!

Bye-bye bridesmaid

muniya (see previous post) can't make it to the wedding. she has exams.

i'd say more about it, but i'm still too bummed. i mean, she's only the only representative of my dad's family who was coming in the first place.

boo.

Word up

one fun thing marlon and i did together during my recent visit to singapore was put together the wording for our wedding invitations. it took us just about fifteen minutes, including picking out the fonts we would use.

what made it so easy? marlon was definite about creating wording that was simple and straightforward -- nothing gimmicky, cutesy or mushy. and i was definite about using what i had learned on the knot about wording etiquette!

we nicked the knot's handy fill-in-the-blanks guide:

__________________ [proper names of those hosting]
request the honor of your presence [request line]
at the marriage of their _________ [relationship of bride to host]__________________ [bride's first, middle names]
to__________________ [groom's full name]
_________, the __ of ________ [day of the week, date of wedding]
at ____ o'clock [time] in the _________ [time of day]
___________________ [location of wedding]_________,
____________ [city and state where wedding will take place]
Reception to follow

we made a few changes, like using just our nicknames, not our full names, for a more casual feel and adding our parents' names to honor their participation in our wedding. marlon also added the whole "year of our lord" bit, no doubt something his memory retained from prom and graduation ball invites of yesteryear.

we also had fun tweaking the request line ("request the honor of your presence at their marriage"). some phrases we came up with, and why we discarded them after much chortling:

"invite you to witness their union" = watch them do the nasty?
"invite you to join their union" = come to an orgy?

until we got to this!

Deepa and Marlon

together with their parents

Rodolfo F. Plazo

Ma. Gracia R. Plazo

and Imelda A. Paul

invite you to share in their joy

as they are joined in holy matrimony

Saturday, the twenty-ninth of December

in the year of our Lord two thousand and seven

two o'clock in the afternoon,

Chapel on the Hill

Batulao, Nasugbu, Batangas

there's another reason we love our wording -- but that's an inside joke for a silly engaged couple. ;-)

Two men down :(

just found out over the weekend that mike and eric, two of marlon's closest friends from high school (that's ateneo high, by the way) -- and two of our secondary sponsors -- can't make it to the wedding. :(

apparently his friend mike is getting married a day before we do... in davao! and eric is part of the entourage there too! truly, december is the new june. hopefully eric will be able to fly back for our wedding though.

but till we confirm that, we're short two secondary sponsors. will there be any volunteers from marlon's massive extended family? will our guest list continue to dwindle (hmmm somehow i don't think so)? abangan!