So today we were finally able to go to the Cainta, Municipal Hall to pick up our marriage certificate. It didn't take long, when we got back to the car to look it over we discovered it said our date of marriage was December 18th, 2009 instead of December 19th, 2009! We went back to the building to find out why it had the incorrect date. Turns out because December 19th was a Saturday it is not considered a working day. So they take it back to the last working day, which would be Friday December 18th. Needless to say I'm a little upset about this. So even though technially we were married on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at the mayors office. In the eyes of the law, legally we were married December 18th, 2009. It's like they erased my wedding day. I don't know why they just didn't marry us on that Friday instead. Why do a wedding on a Saturday when it can't be filed as a legal date?! So now when we celebrate our anniversary every year on December 19th, legally that is not the day we were married. When I fill out any legal paperwork in the future, it will have to have the December 18th date. All I can say is blah.....

We got our photos back from the Wedding Photographer a few days ago.

F.B. & I have been married two weeks now. We got to spend our first Christmas & New Years together as husband and wife.

Christmas Eve day F.B. & I went to Robinson’s Metro East early in the morning. We hung out at a net café for a couple hours while I uploaded more wedding photos, etc. Afterwards we had lunch at Wendy’s in Sta. Lucia Mall. (Baconator…mmmm… deadly, but delicious! Hehe!)

We stopped at an electronics store after lunch so F.B. could get me a Christmas gift. He got me an 8GB USB Flash Drive. Yay! We also stopped at the Guess store again… I have a bad addiction with that store in the Philippines! I’ve gotten 4 t-shirts from there already, and it’s not exactly cheap. They were all around P800-P1300. ($17-28 USD).

Christmas Eve we went to church around 9:30pm. The church was packed with people. When we got back to F.B.’s house we had ‘Noche Buena’ around 12am. We exchanged Christmas gifts with the family and took pictures. We had dinner around 1am and didn’t get to bed until around 3am Christmas Morning.

Christmas Day we stayed home and relaxed. Around 6:30pm we went to Mega Mall to Saisaki Buffet to have dinner with F.B.’s family & relatives. Afterwards we had Starbucks.

Christmas Photos:

F.B.’s aunt got me this cute wooden mouse pen and wooden mouse toy for Christmas.

Mugwort eating in the kitchen:

December 28th we had a free overnight stay at the Malayan Plaza Hotel in Pasig City. It was a gift from one of F.B.’s aunts. It’s just around the corner from Mega Mall and Robinson’s Galleria in Pasig City. Our hotel suite had its own little kitchen, with a microwave, stove and full fridge. There was also a DVD player, but we didn’t bring any DVD’s with us!

Our Room:

Our Kitchen!

View from our hotel room:

We wanted to go to the IMAX Theater at Mall of Asia, but it was still packed with holiday shoppers, etc so we ended up going to Robinson’s Manila to spend the afternoon there. I got another cute keychain mouse/rat to add to my collection! We also checked out Fort Santiago but it was really hot that day so we didn't stay long.

New Years Eve we headed to church around 9:30pm. We got back home around 11pm. It was pretty loud with people setting off firecrackers and fireworks all over the place. At 12am we had dinner. F.B. & I had Spongebob necklaces that light up from Ate Malou’s daughter, Jenny.

New Years Photos:

With Jenny:

I also got to call home to my family on Christmas & New Years. My ratties are doing well while I'm away. They even got banana chips as a Christmas Gift from my Mom. Hehe. Here's a photo of Saffy they sent to me, she's wearing a Santa Hat!

Sunday we are headed to the Best Western Astor Hotel in Makati City for 5 days, 4 nights. We check out on the 7th. We also still have to pick up our marriage certificate sometime soon and we are also still waiting on the professional wedding photos. We want to head back to Tagaytay one day this month too. For our first wedding “monthiversary” on January 19th, we are going to go back to the Manila Hotel.

The 23rd I will be heading home. I've already been in touch with our lawyer. I will be contacting him when I'm back in the USA, so we can start F.B.'s immigration process. It's estimated to take 1 year to 2 years at the most. We are doing a longer process on purpose because it will save us money in the long run and F.B. will be a permanent resident when he finally steps off the plane in the USA.

NOTE: Our lawyers Peter J. Gonzales & Shanna Stanton have changed firms. They are no longer with Kahiga Tiagha. They are now with Green and Spiegel LLC, but still located in Philadelphia. 

F.B.’s parents booked a two night stay at the Manila hotel as a wedding gift to us. We checked into the hotel around 3pm on Saturday. The hotel was really nice. We had a large room with a huge memory foam bed. There was a 40 inch flat screen TV in the room and in the bathroom there was another flat screen TV built into the wall above the bathtub. If you wanted you could watch TV from the toilet, hehe! There was also a huge separate shower.

Pictures of our room:

F.B. really enjoyed the complimentary robe. He showed off his karate moves! Lol!

He also enjoyed his ruffles!

At the hotel:

Out to dinner:

We spent a lot of time watching Spongebob, Nickelodeon and eating junk food on our honeymoon! Sunday we planned on going to Manila Ocean Park. They’ve been doing a lot of construction and part of the new mall is open now. We had lunch at Gerry’s Grill. Afterwards we went to get tickets, but there were so many people they were making you take a number to wait for your turn. There were over 100 people ahead of us, so we decided to head to Mall of Asia instead, which also turned out to be a bad idea because of all the weekend holiday shoppers.

We were going to watch a movie at the IMAX theater but it was sold out. So we decided we’d head to a net café, only there were no seats left. Finally we decided to go to a different mall in hopes there would be less people. We headed to Robinson’s Galleria and went to a net café first. F.B. updated our relationship statuses and I changed my last name. Afterwards we had dinner at Yellow Cab where we got Hawaiian pizza and tried their Alfredo Pasta. We picked up some bottled water and snacks to take back to the hotel.

Monday we checked out of the hotel around 12pm. We decided to head back to Manila Ocean Park since it was a weekday. This time we were able to get tickets and got to check out of the park again. They also had a special Jelly Fish exhibit that we had to pay P150 extra for ($3). It was nothing special though.

We got pictures with Tiki Dude this year! Yay!

Also… why does Tiki Dude have a little tiki?

I called this fish Crazy Eyes he just kept staring at us!

Another fish:

Seahorse:

Stingray:

Crazy cowfish, but looked like an alien fish to F & I!

This crab looked like it was meditating!

I got a cute little mouse/rat made out of seashells at one of the gift stalls:

We were planning on having Saisaki Buffet for dinner so we didn’t really have lunch. Instead we went to Robinson’s Manila and got Frappucinos and Egg & Sausage sandwiches from Starbucks. We walked around a lot and I got a new book by Jennifer Weiner. Later on we headed to another net café to check stuff online.

In the bookstore I was really confused because we saw Where’s Waldo books, only he’s called Wally over here?!

We left Robinson’s Manila around 5pm to head to Mega Mall for Saisaki buffet but we hit horrible traffic. We were stuck in traffic for 3 hours so by the time we were close to Mega Mall it was too late for the buffet. We headed to the 24 Burger King and decided to have a Burger King buffet instead, lol! Whoppers, fries, onion rings, chicken Tenders and dessert! I think our honeymoon was the weekend of eating, hehe! (After all the wedding dieting!)

When we arrived back to F.B.’s house after the honeymoon there was a sign greeting us in the dining room:

We also had a ton of wedding gifts to open when we got back home:

Tuesday we finally got to have dinner at Saisaki Buffet. We had lots of sushi and tempura and some other stuff too. And we actually got to try the desserts this time. We also picked up two pairs of my jeans from the alteration shop. They needed new zippers. We spent a long time at Mega Mall on Tuesday we didn’t arrive home until around 12 midnight!

It’s been such a busy week so far! We’re exhausted. We slept until 3pm this afternoon! And there are still a lot of things coming up, Christmas Eve tomorrow night, Christmas Day on Friday. And on the 28th we’re staying overnight at The Malayan Plaza.

To view all of our wedding & honeymoon photos click here!

Happy Holidays!!!

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.