December 19th, 2009 was our wedding day. The day before I was still really sick, I woke up with no voice and a terrible cough. I drank hot tea all day long and was taking Benadryl cough medicine. The next morning F.B. said he woke up at 5am because he couldn’t sleep, I woke up at 6am. Around 7am we got prepared for the wedding. My cold was much better, only slight sniffles.

We arrived at the Cainta Municipal hall before 10am. The mayor had a lot of appointments scheduled so he didn’t arrive until around 10:30am. F.B.’s parents hired a professional photographer, so we posed for some photos until the mayor arrived. F.B.’s sister had my camera to take photos and her camera to take video of the ceremony, etc.

The entire civil ceremony was in Tagalog, but the mayor gave an overview in English for me every now and then. When we were holding each others wedding rings I got nervous and was thinking real hard, “Which is his left hand!?” lol! F.B. got a little teary eyed when we exchanged rings and we each had to say a little something. After the ceremony we had to sign our marriage certificate, it has to be filed at the municipal hall so we will be able to pick it up the week after Christmas. Afterwards we took more photos with the mayor and outside the municipal building.

The Municipal Building:

Photos from the wedding ceremony:

When we arrived back at F.B.’s house we were greeted with his relatives throwing rice and rose petals. It was already around 12pm by then and we needed to leave for the Manila Hotel by 1pm, so we had a quick lunch at his house. His parents had a luncheon prepared for all the relatives.

Traffic is pretty bad on weekends and so close to the holidays. Even though we left around 1pm, we didn’t arrive at the Manila Hotel until just after 3pm! We checked in and relaxed for awhile, watching Spongebob and eating Ruffles chips!

Picture of the Lobby at the Manila Hotel:

We got prepared for our wedding reception and headed downstairs to the Champagne Salon around 7pm. F.B.’s sister announced us as we came into the room. She hosted the evening, with speeches from friends and relatives. My friend Gayle came with her sister to the wedding and also gave a nice speech for us. F’s sister also prepared two cute movie presentations for us. ‘On The Way’ down by Ryan Cabrera and ‘Happy Together’ by The Turtles were our songs! She also read some greetings from my family members. They also had a giveaway for whoever could guess when we made our relationship official! (4-1-2004).

Photo’s from our Wedding Reception:

My Rose Bouquet (30 Roses) from F.B.’s parents:

The pretty ice sculpture (F & S).

Everything is so fancy at the Manila Hotel! They had a little stage set up with a table for F.B. & I. Even though it was a buffet style dinner, because we were the bride and groom we had a waiter that would bring us each course in the buffet. If we wanted a drink, or more of certain dish we just had to ask.

Unfortunately there was a ton of picture taking, with the professional photographer. We kept having to stop eating to take more photos. I thought it was really funny when F’s sister announced, “I hope you’re all enjoying your dessert.” Because F & I hadn’t even begun to start our main course! I think I enjoyed dessert best, we made the waiter bring us more of the chocolate cake!

It was also really funny when everyone began clinking on their glasses and saying, “Kiss, Kiss”. F.B. thought they were saying “Speech, Speech.” So he shook his head ‘no’ and kept eating. Everyone was like, “Ooooh!” because he wouldn’t kiss me, so I held my fists up at him, haha. (I think the photographer got a photo of that, I hope, lol!) I had to explain to him later, they wanted him to kiss me!

Most of the guests started to leave around 9pm. But F.B. & I didn’t leave until after the cleanup around 10pm to go back to our hotel room. It was a longggg day! I don’t think we got to bed until 3am. They had this neat ipod dock in our hotel room, but the alarm was set on it accidentally so it ended up waking us up at 6am! We did get a nap later on though!

To view more of our wedding & honeymoon photos you can view our photobucket album here!

Also here:

Wedding Photographer Photos

Our Wedding & Honeymoon

NOTE: If you are getting married in the Philippines and you are a US citizen these requirements from the US Embassy in Manila Philippines, will be helpful: Getting Married in The Philippines.

It’s already Wednesday December 16th here at 2am. (My blog settings are still on my home time.) We are down to just 3 days until the wedding… and even though I’ve been in the Philippines 3 weeks now, it’s the week of my wedding I come down with a cold!!!

Sunday afternoon my nose started running and by the evening my throat was really sore. F.B.’s dad had some leftover cold medicine so that held me over until we could get some more medicine on Monday. Early Monday morning F.B. went to the grocery to get me some Gatorade and menthol cough drops. (Menthol candy here in the Philippines!) Today my nose has just been running & I've been sneezing!!!

Monday we had to go to the Cainta municipal hall to pick up our marriage license. We dropped it off at the mayor’s office for our wedding on December 19th. I also mailed some Christmas cards and we picked up more cold medicine, soup and Listerine at the grocery. We went to Robinson’s Galleria that evening and had dinner at Tokyo Tokyo and Starbucks afterwards… hot coffee feels so good on my throat right now!

Last Saturday we went to Mall of Asia in the afternoon and had lunch at Chow King. I discovered I could get the Peppermint Mocha as a light blended frappucino, yay! F.B. had a toffee nut frapp.(These pictures are especially for Shannon! Sorry, lol!)

Afterwards we met up with F.B.’s parents at the Manila Hotel so we could confirm the reservations, etc for the wedding buffet dinner on December 19th. I was happy because there was free wi-fi at the hotel. I recently had to pay my cell phone company an exorbitant amount of money for blackberry roaming charges, blah. So now I can only use internet on my phone when there’s free wi-fi.

Some pictures of the Manila Hotel:

I thought I would share what our invitations look like all done up:

And these are the favors we are giving away at the wedding. They are in heart shaped boxes. It’s a keychain with our wedding date and an American flag on one side and a Philippine Flag on the other. (A big thank you to F.B.’s family for all of the wedding planning, reservations, favors, etc!)

Our titanium wedding rings!

After the Manila Hotel we decided to go to Trinoma Mall for dinner but it was sooo mobbed with weekend Christmas Shoppers that we just ended up at Big R near F.B.’s house for dinner. We tried a new Japanese restaurant named ‘Kitaro’. I had a chicken teriyaki meal and F.B. had “yakiniku” which was a beef meal. (I told him it looked like Philadelphia cheese steak meat without the cheese!) We also had our favorite sushi, California Maki. Which is just cooked crab meat & mango, mayo. (The USA version has avocado instead of mango.) Kitaro’s had little fish eggs on top too, but it was really good. We will definitely be having dinner there again sometime.

I got some more keychain mice at the 85 Peso store in Robinson’s Galleria. I’ve got a whole collection now!

We also found these weird sunglasses there- I bought them mainly because F & I thought the the “English” on the package is hysterical. I think I may have to submit them to Engrishfunny.com. (Click to make the pictures larger.) Most all of the items from the 85 Peso store are from Japan.

F.B. was excited to have Ruffles the other night, he hasn’t had any since before the flood. I was excited to find plain Snyder’s Pretzels at SM Marikina’s supermarket! (Since I'm still doing my pre-wedding dieting. Which is mainly no junk foods and smaller portions.)

F.B. likes to create sandwiches. Here’s his 3 layer salami sandwich from last week! He and my brother Seth will definitely get along; Seth likes to make 3 layer sandwiches too.

Mugwort was hanging out in front of F’s house the other night he made himself at home on the decorative stone.

Dinner at Gerry’s Grill last week:

Just hanging out at the house:

Saturday morning 12/19 we will be getting married at the Cainta Municipal hall by the mayor. (Which means at home in Philadelphia it will actually be Friday, 12/18 at 9pm!) Around 2pm we will have to check into the Manila Hotel. We are staying 2 nights as a gift from F.B.’s parents. 6pm-10pm will be our wedding dinner. It’s going to be a long day so I will probably be doing a blog sometime the week after the wedding. You can always check my Facebook page for more current updates!

NOTE: If you are getting married in the Philippines and you are a US citizen these requirements from the US Embassy in Manila Philippines, will be helpful: Getting Married in The Philippines.

This past Saturday we went to Mall of Asia for the afternoon. We saw the movie Planet 51. Which is a CG film. It was a twist on alien invasion- because the human lands on the alien planet and thinks he is the alien. It was pretty cute.

F.B. wanted to get me new Havaianas sandals but the store at Mall of Asia had a really long line just waiting to get into the store. We checked after the movie to see if it would be shorter and it was actually longer! I got a cute purple t-shirt at SM Department store and some new pearl bracelets at Kultura.

We also had Starbucks again… of course, lol! Though I’m trying to behave before the wedding, so whenever we go I order a tall nonfat coffee. I discovered you can also get light blended frappucinos for 100-200 calories instead of 400-500 calories. I had a tall Mocha light blended frapp the other day without whipped cream and it’s just as good as a regular frapp. I decided to try non fat iced Peppermint Mocha when we were at Mall of Asia… (Can’t wait until after the wedding to try it as a frappucino!)

Since Mall of Asia was really crowded on Saturday we went to Robinson’s Galleria for dinner. We tried The Old Spaghetti House. I got a dish with salmon and rice, but it wasn’t the best meal I’ve ever had. Kinda bland and the cut of salmon wasn't very good. I think I ate more of our appetizer, calamari.

They had a sign on the table with ads of their newest dishes and I thought this was kind of odd... I like peanut butter and banana sandwiches… but peanut butter, banana and BACON?!?! I dunno!

We saw this funny sign down in the parking garage. From our angle it looked like it said; “leave valuables inside your vehicle.” The “please do not” was covered. Hehe!

Sunday morning we were surprised to find F.B.’s Christmas gift had been delivered. We had it scheduled to be delivered Monday, but it came early. I got him a new cell phone. It was a belated Birthday/Christmas gift. (I had ordered him a phone for his birthday but with the flood, I had to cancel the order during the clean up.) Here’s his new shiny Nokia 2630, I ordered from Filgifts.com. It even came with headphones and has a radio built into it!

We went to Ayala for the day to Glorietta Mall. We got to check out Glorietta 5 one of the new areas. Just went to National Bookstore while in there to get a magazine and playing cards. I taught F.B. to play the game ‘war’. Hehe.

We went to ‘All Flip Flops’ to get my new Havaianas sandals. I really like them; they are super shiny, haha! They were my Christmas gift from F.B.

Starbucks at Glorietta Mall and me with my light blended mocha frapp! (No whip!) F.B. got a Coffee Jelly frappucino but it wasn't so good.

We headed back to Robinson’s Mall near F.B.’s house so we could stop at the grocery. Then we went to Sta. Lucia mall for dinner. We went to Yoshinoya which is like a Tokyo Tokyo. I had a rice bowl with chicken teriyaki and vegetables. F.B. had a beef and rice bowl. We also had these dumplings with crab called, Kani Shu-mai.

After dinner we were heading back downstairs when the Guess store distracted me. I saw this really cute pink t-shirt with butterflies that wasn’t even in the window so we went to check it out… P990 though! (Almost $20). I think that’s the most I’ve paid for a t-shirt, lol. I usually get mine on clearance in the USA. But it was too cute to pass up.

F.B. and I browsed the “Louis Vuitton” bags after the Guess store. He haggled the bag I wanted down to P900, which is a bit more than we paid for my last bag but they originally wanted P1200. ($24). I love it, it’s really big inside. I told F.B. he will have to take me to all the “rich” places now with my “Louis Vuitton” bag, my Guess t-shirt and Havaianas sandals, hehehe!

The weather hasn’t been too bad here. It hasn’t rained yet and it’s been very cold at night to me. F.B. laughs at me because he lives here year round and I’m the one cold at night in the Philippines. I’m also the one the heat doesn’t bother so much.

Next Monday we get to pick up our marriage license at the Cainta municipal hall and we may be going to the Manila Hotel this coming Saturday to confirm our reservations for the wedding dinner on 12/19!

NOTE: If you are getting married in the Philippines and you are a US citizen these requirements from the US Embassy in Manila Philippines, will be helpful: Getting Married in The Philippines.