Wednesday, February 18, 2015

How to Start Planning Your Wedding

It seems just like yesterday when we tied the knot. We have been through a lot in the last five years, doing our first grocery shopping, our first cooking attempt, first laundry day, experienced mishaps like our smoking sink, our washing machine that broke down after first use, the septic tank nightmare, getting poisoned and many other experiences that we're just laughing about now.

The last five years has been fun, full of love and there were humps and potholes along the way, but we've stayed solid. We can't say we are newlyweds anymore so we thought we'd start sharing thoughts on different topics. Please also send in your questions and we'll try to answer based on our experience how we'd probably work on it if we have not gone through it.

For our first "He Said, She Said" post we answer the question, "What is your advise for couples who are about to start planning their wedding?"



Jay says,

"Do some research. Talk with friends for referrals and search online for suppliers. Nowadays, it's easy to find reviews of wedding suppliers to give you an idea about their service. The research also gives you an idea of what kind of budget you can work with.

Be committed with planning as much as you're committed to marrying. This is one of the very first major events you'll be making joint decisions on. Consider this a preview of what to expect after marriage as many many more joint decisions will be made almost on a daily basis.

 Don't forget to enjoy the entire wedding planning process. It shouldn't be stressful. And so no stress would be added to the process, plan early."

Aileen says,

"Start with an objective in mind, agree on your priorities, e.g. your budget, who will be attending the wedding, whether you want a grand or simple wedding. Everyone has a budget in mind and you can't really get everything that you want so the best thing to do is identify which components of the wedding is important for the two of you. For us it was making sure that the venue is near to both our relatives, we'd have good photos and a great video and the food would be delicious. We focused our efforts on these three aspects and we both feel fulfilled with our choices.

We did not hire a wedding coordinator, we did all the legwork ourselves and what helped was having a list (from Wedding Essentials magazine) that helped us go through everything month by month. We also really spent time every week planning our next steps and we delegated work between us and involved our family and friends. This made our wedding more special because everyone who attended pitched in to make the day successful."

More wedding tips here.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

5 Years, 1,825 Clicks

We happily celebrated our fifth year anniversary last December 26, 2014. We marked our 5th wedding anniversary by having a simple family lunch and by purchasing a new fridge!

On Christmas Eve we had a crisis, our 5-year old refrigerator stopped working. We just heard mass at the community club house and was surprised when we returned to our unit to see our fridge dead. Jay tried to revive it by having it cool down and checking if it was the voltage regulator that needed repair. Despite our prodding the fridge just died on us. :(

As with many dilemmas we faced in the last five years we assessed the situation and thought of our plan of action. It was Christmas Eve and our fridge was filled to the brim with Christmas food. We had a lot of perishable food so we decided to just bring it to my Mom's house. I woke up early on Christmas day to bake and cook some of the food and brought it to my in-laws. It was quite stressful, but we were conscious about keeping things happy since it was Christmas.

After assessing the situation we decided to invest on a new refrigerator since we just had a few days before our big family trip to Japan and couldn't find anyone who could repair the fridge at such a short time. I also always wanted to have a bigger fridge, so after a lot of research and getting advise from our parents we selected a fridge that would likely be with us for the next 20 years.

So that's how we have been in the last five years. We try to identify things that we need, want, must do, want to do (priorities and essentials) and work on a sensible plan of action. The last five years have been blissful despite some potholes on the road that we had to go through - losing my Dad, health issues, me moving to Singapore for work and other family matters. We've held on strong because of love, faith and respect and we've achieved a lot in the last 5 years -

- Home: renting 2 homes and then finally moving to a tiny place we now own (this was a target we had for our third year)
- Schooling: Miguel graduating from high school and he's now in university
- Family vacations: we try to slip in a few throughout the year
- Keeping healthy: getting by to ensure our quality of life is good
- Baby: no plans right now, we already have one big baby!


Keeping ones individual interests is very important as well, so we pretty much give each other space. I think though I've been pretty spoiled by the boys (lucky me!) since I'm not supposed to get stressed (hahaha). We do have our different opinions so I proposed to Sweetie if we should turn this blog into a "he said, she said" blog since there isn't that much new stuff we're experiencing (except for the new recipes I've been trying).

What do you think dear reader? Would you like to ask me and Jay about married life?

*Total Clicks = 2,625

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Mabuhay ang Bagong Kasal: Jimmy and Kring

It was such a pleasure watching Jimmy and Kring on TV when they embarked on their "I Do" journey. It was certainly a pre-cana journey on steroids. They both did beautifully well in the show, especially working out issues prior to finally tying the knot. We met Kring at blogger events (circa 2007!) and eventually she brought Jimmy to one of our blogger dinners where the trending topic that night was "Korea is the best!" (Jimmy at that time didn't speak that much Filipino).

Two weeks ago together with friends we feverishly campaigned for the lovely couple, Jimmy and Kring, to become the first "I Do" grand couple. We were all on our toes and it brought us so much happiness to see them win since we thought they really deserved the title and were really ready to tie the knot.

Congratulations Krimmy couple! Your love story is a testament that having God navigate your lives is the best thing to do. True love wins!


Mabuhay ang bagong kasal!