It’s been an interesting week!

Last Thursday, we gave the 2nd round of our talk at R.O.X. Philippines’ “Backpacking around the world, Pinoy style” series. Robert Alejandro  and Jetro Rafael again gave their talk about backpacking throughout Southeast Asia on a tiny budget. The new thing about their talk now is that Robert’s book about their trip has already come out! R.O.X. gave a sneak peek at the book and a lot of people had autograph signing sessions with Robert.

The last speaker, Zia Morales was the hit of the evening. She looks like an ordinary, unassuming woman in her mid-20s but her story was very remarkable! Working out of Greece, she decided that she wanted to see Europe, and proceeded to spend almost 2 years afterwards wandering around Europe and doing a land trip to Asia! What’s more remarkable was that she did this entirely on her own, and on a budget that would make even most backpackers wince! She hitchhiked alone, pitched tents, survived on bananas and peanut butter, walked instead of taking buses or trains,  and from there proceeded to go to Europe, Northern Africa and Asia. Most of the questions from the crowd were for her - we were all inspired by someone just taking 2 years of their lives to see the world!

At the question and answer portion, one of the attendees recommended that we try out CouchSurfing -  it’s a website for travelers who wish to “trade couches” anywhere in the world. We signed up last Saturday, and have been hooked on it ever since! More than the free accommodations, it’s the beauty of meeting people both in your own country and around the world to exchange stories and cultures that is so amazing. It’s a wonderful community where strangers greet you and invite you to their homes, and we’re really excited to be part of it. We are hoping to be able to host someone soon, and hop on a few couches as well when we go on our honeymoon trip.

We finally have a date for our Manila to Morocco trip!

Mench and I have recently booked our long haul trip, Manila-London-Manila via Qatar Airways, with a brief stopover in Doha, Qatar. Why Qatar Airways? It was the cheapest of all the London flights we canvassed online, with the round trip for 2 coming out at around $2,200. Ouch, that’s the biggest chunk of our budget right there!

So our trip will be from October 3-28 of this year. Some of you might notice that it’s a few days longer than our original itinerary - Mench and I had quite a tussle over how many days our trip would be, and you know who always wins in the end That’s being married for you. But we did add a few “rest days” as some traveler friends mentioned that our itinerary was overly packed, and we didn’t have time to just relax, do some errands like washing your clothes (of course, you bring only 4 days’ worth for such a long trip!), etc.

There have been a few interesting things happening related to the trip, one of them being our talk that we gave at R.O.X. in Bonifacio High Street as part of the “Backpacking, Pinoy Style” series. We’ll give you more updates about that in a separate post.

Here goes our wedding day story (mench’s version :))…..

FEW HOURS BEFORE THE WEDDING

Just like in everything that we do, we started off taking it easy. We had leisurely breakfast with our friends, picture taking by the beach front, swimming at Anvaya’s pool complex. Then it started to get frantic. I got a call from our coordinator that the make-up team was already at our casita. I had to run to our room, quickly had the team settled and took an express shower (so much for the pampering that i was hoping for).
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We’re finally back in the real world! After the wedding, we spent the next couple of days as we had the day before, with our closest friends in Anvaya. We finally checked out Monday afternoon and reluctantly drove home, going back to our normal lives.

Thank you to everyone who attended the wedding, including those who couldn’t make it but participated in one way or another! It truly was the perfect wedding for us, the culmination of many sleepless nights. We had a grand vision of having a fun and informal beach wedding, but without breaking our bank accounts. Sure it cost a pretty penny, but it was well worth it, and many friends helped along the way to fit our budget into our dream wedding!

We’re also very happy people played along well with the “Manila to Morocco” theme - this was something Mench and I hatched up because out of everything in the world, we really love travel and we were racking our brains on how to make it possible. The idea of a honeymoon itinerary came to mind, and fortunately I was able to put up the website containing our travel plans.

Although the wedding is done, you will still see some activity on this site - we will share with you our planning as we figure out based on our work and financial plans when we are pushing through with our date to Morocco. Our ninong D wisely told us to put a date on the trip so that it will not get pushed back, and it’s a timely reminder as we go back to our daily lives with endless meetings and things to check off the to-do list.  We’ll pursue the planning of our trip as passionately as we did for our wedding!

Thanks again everyone! We wil be sharing pictures of the event as soon we get them

Love,

Gabby and Mench

This is our last post before the wedding. Yay!

After a quick meeting on my end (they were considerate enough to schedule it early), we leave for Subic in the morning. We’ll spend the day having fun with our closest friends at Anvaya, and relax from the hectic preparations so that we’re fresh and ready coming into the wedding.

In the meantime, here are some sneak peeks at the pre-nup pics that we’ll be showing at the wedding. Our photographer, Alfred took a lot of really great pics at our pre-nup entitled “Marrakesh.” And no, we haven’t been to Morocco yet - this was shot at our good friend Pao’s house in Tagaytay!

Yes, we borrowed costumes for this shoot

That’s it for now, you’ll see more of the pics soon. See you at the wedding!

This week is just crazy!

It actually started during Holy Week - the wedding preparations seem to be taking over our entire lives. Although we’ve prepared well for the wedding, now it’s time to tie up all the loose ends, meet with key suppliers to finalize details, and turn over everything to our wonderful coordinator, Liza. It’s been taking up all of our time the past few days and it really is tiring!

This part of the preparations are the hardest - the wedding is coming up so quickly, and you just can’t wait for it to arrive already! As we’re preparing the turnover though, the stress fades and it starts turning into real excitement - part of us still can’t believe that this day is really about the both of us, and that is the main reason why roughly 150 of our loved ones, family, friends, and associates are traveling out of town, just to see us celebrate our vows. It’s a great feeling, and we feel very humbled because of it. We’ll see the fruits of our preparation soon enough, and we hope that you will truly enjoy the wedding!

Our wedding site has been featured in CNET Asia!

Iggy, a good friend of ours has featured us in his CNET blog “Sensible Netnonsense.” The article is entitled “How to Finance Your Honeymoon via PayPal.”

Thanks for the mention Iggs!

I’ve always wanted to have a personalized wedding, complete with all the tiny little details that make the experience more special. For the past days, this is what i’ve been trying to achieve with my do-it-yourself kit. I’ve been cutting, pasting, measuring and printing stuff. I’ve have also commissioned household help to form an assembly line of sorts to help me with this project. Namecards, menu cards, table labels, napkin holders, etc are all products of this cottage industry of ours.

It would’ve been easy to just outsource this and spend the time to do other “more important things”. But this is something that i really enjoy doing (apart from being a good way to save up on costs :)). It is important to me because it allows me to concretely bring a part of myself into this wedding celebration. And besides, it’s not everyday that you get a chance to be crafty.

Happy Easter, everyone! Now that Holy Week draws to a close, we’re down to our final week before the wedding. We spent our Holy Week mostly at home, although we visited Anvaya with my parents on Wednesday to get a final ocular before the event. The rest of the days were spent preparing for the wedding.

Speaking of the wedding, we’d like to thank a few more friends whose contributions helped to make this wedding extra special:

Jenny Infante-Reyes and Jake de Guzman for our AVP: Jake is a real whiz when it comes to making videos, and we’re very lucky that they’re making the AVP for our wedding, despite such short notice. Thanks so much, Jen and Jake!

Dax Tee - Dax designed the Manila to Morocco wedding site using a modified Wordpress theme. If you’d like to use his services for your website, you can contact him via www.daxtee.com

Donny and Christine, our hosts - our original host and Rockeoke conspirator JC had to beg out because of a family trip to Macau. Boo-hoo! Fortunately, we have a couple of friends who have willingly stepped up to do the hosting duties during the evening. Thanks so much, you two!

Indra Manahan of CakeBiz - our wedding cake is extra special - a two-layer peanut butter cake with embedded Reese’s pieces. All thank to Ku, who have been feeding us with our favorite cakes since high school. Thanks, Ku!

And last but not least, Genn Dizon-Garcia and her family, who made sure that we got the perfect venue for our wedding.

Say it with me: “and I get by with a little help from my friends…”

Our invite states that attire for our wedding is resort chic. What does resort chic mean? It means:

• Flowing Dresses
• Mumu Dresses
• Wrap Around Pants or Skirt
• Drawstring Pants
• Tunics
• FABRICS: Chiffon, Linen or anything lightweight and breathable.
• COLORS: Neutrals (white, beige, sand) or Burst of Deep Moroccan Colors (violet, emerald, turquoise, sapphire, ruby, citrine, etc.)
• FOOTWEAR: Sandals - Wedge, Low Heels or Flats are best.
• COVER UP: A lightweight cover up may be useful (for propriety – at the church and for necessity – against the wind chill)
• IMPORTANT: Resort Chic is not “Hawaiian” so please save your Hawaiian prints for another trip

Our wedding is a relaxed and laid back event devoid of any formality so feel free to get creative with your outfits. The tips we mentioned are not strict rules and may be interpreted in any which way that may appeal to you (but we’re pretty serious on the Hawaiian thing ).