Planning an Out of Town Wedding | The Nitty Gritty

Needless to say, everything was a blur from the moment we set foot back in Manila. You can even say we encountered a lot of “resistance”.

Having the wedding out of town meant not being able to invite everyone in the family. My older sister’s comment actually struck me at first — If you have your wedding in the Philippines, that means you are obliged to invite a lot of people, and if it’s out of town, it has to be immediate family only. My attitude towards this was pwede bang in between? In the end, we came up with an initial list of 60, which somehow ballooned to as much as 120. So much for keeping it small.

Aside from the guest count, we had to find out if our suppliers would be available out of town. Fortunately, our esteemed photographer was, as well as our designer who actually lived in Cebu (how convenient!). Mariel’s makeup artist was not however because of a previous engagement the same night. But no problem, we were able to find another suitable and able replacement. You can say that having built a few years worth of contacts in the magazine industry did have its perks. One thing we had to do though was let go of P30,000 worth of reservation fees and down payments. Oh well…

The next challenge we encountered was one of the most time sensitive of all — the flights. If you’ve booked any flights online (be it Cebu Pacific, PAL, or Zest), you would know how frustrating it is to see a good price one minute, and see it immediately increase a significant amount the next. Imagine the urgency to disseminate all the wedding details to our invited guests even though details of the wedding were not yet final. The plan of action? I had to send out a “sort of” invite (The actual ones weren’t printed until the 3rd week of January!). In a span of 3 weeks, we were able to coerce our friends and family to purchase tickets.  I hope this can also serve as our “sort of” apology to everyone (specially those who live abroad) for not being able to give out the invites and details sooner.

Since we were coordinating everything in Manila, someone had to take care of our business in Cebu. Fortunately, we found someone who frequented Manila once or twice a month. Bong Abella of Koncepts and More was our first and last choice actually (because we were able to meet with him personally right away). We had already decided on the Archbishop’s Palace and made a reservation when he informed us that they did not allow Sunday weddings there. Stress! After scouring the interwebs and looking for an alternate venue, we had settled on the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral. You’ll find out later why this turned out to be one of the most pleasant accidents in our planning.

The Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral (Beautiful isn’t it?)

The last and most time consuming task for the wedding was of course, taking note of the flight details, room bookings, and reception. As the wedding was approaching, I was still following up on flight details and room bookings. Just to give you an idea of how tedious it was, I had an excel sheet with the guest complete guest list (with matching attending or not attending opposite each name). I also had to ask each guest if they wanted to book the rooms through our party so we could get them the bulk discount. On another sheet, were the room reservations, detailed with whether the guest was booking a standard, premium, or suite room. And on another sheet (whew), each reservation name had beside it the names of the people who would be staying in the same room (The hotel required this list, but I wanted to do it anyway just so we knew where everyone was staying). I did this every single day after Christmas, leading up to the wedding.

If you think about it, we could have moved the wedding to a later date to ensure that everyone would have ample time to take care of their arrangements. This could have spared us the unnecessary stress too. This however, was a non negotiable, as Mariel’s lola happened to have her 85th birthday on the very same day. We had made arrangements for her to fly from Angeles to Cebu, and there was no way we were moving the date a day early or later.

Next: The Big Day | Alvin and Mariel’s Cebu Wedding

Similar Posts:

None Found