Trip to Caleruega

This would be my second time to visit caleruega, this is where our college retreat(2002) took place and the first time i saw it, i was "Whoa!!!", it was nature and beauty put together. At that time, i'm with my girlfriend, Arlene, who happens to be my bride to be (whew), and we bowed that when the time came for us to tie the knot, caleruega will be that place, and seven years have passed and we came back... but there's a downside, our planned date which is December 18, 2010 was no longer available (LoL), jackie told us that our date was reserved last year(2008), since december was the peek for weddings (aside from june) and the caleruega church was so indemand for weddings, there's no question why our date was taken from us that early... huhu... we are planning to move the date, a day in january 2011 would be likely the date...

The Day She said "Yes"

In the early morning of Oct 26 2009, i slept at her house, just got a little sleep and woke up exactly at 5am, i texted my friends to come in her house like we planned, i told them to come as early as 5:30am because they have this tendency of getting late at times... but i was shocked to see them all with their motorcycles in front of the house... i got out and told them to wait...

I called home, my tita doyie picked-up the phone and said that they are ready... and i told them to come... i immediately woke up joy(her sister), her mama and papa, and also her aunts,uncles and her tatay and nanay(her grandparents) who happens to lived along side their house...

here are some of the photos...

originally, the plan is to gather them all up outside the gate, and i will go wake her up to go outside... but its harder than i expected it to be... she refuses to wake up... its almost 6:30am, and yes, she was not used in waking up early in the morning unless she has work to do... i tried and so her mama but we failed several times... but then, i told to all of them to go inside the house (of course, as with the approval of her mama) and wait outside the door to her room... then i go inside her room... and finally, after so many reasonings, lullabies and allibies, i convinced her to go out off her room (with her familiar angry lion face of course)... hehe...

and shocked like she'd ever been in her life (in her natural post-sleep aura) when she saw everybody on their living room ...
with a tear in her eye, i guess at this moment she knew what was coming... then i start to speak... and everybody stood still and listened...
then wholeheartedly, i spoke
"sabi nga nila, sa hinaba-haba man ng pursisyon... tayo din naman pla... "
at this point, i saw her mama and my mom crying...
"alam mo, sa tinagal tagal natin magkasama, marami na tayong pinagdaanan... halos nasabi ko na sa'yo lahat ng dapat mong malaman sa akin pero ngayon ko lang sasabihin sa'yo 'to...
Sa pagsikat ng araw, sa harap ng mga mahal natin sa buhay,
i... am... asking you... "
i knelt and pulled a ring and said...
"Will you marry me??..."
and after she said sarcastically, "Nakakainis ka talaga!!!"... while she was crying, she looked at me and said...  "Yes... Yes... Yes..." then she bear-hugged me... and end it with a kiss...

Everyone went crazy... some of them shed a tear... while some shed more... and later that she realized she didn't brush her teeth yet, comb her hair and even wore a bra... she rushed to the wash room and go to her room to fixed herself up... well, funny as it is... but that's what this is all about... i plan it to be so natural, maybe not as formal as it supposed to be... but in a natural way in our natural real self in front of all the people that we loved over the years... and for me, that is the most important thing...

At the Expo

Last Sept. 3 2009, We are having a hard time surfing the net finding some details about wedding photographers and videographers, then we bumped into this link called wedding expo, we found out that this "thing" is the biggest gathering of wedding paraphernalia, i mean, all you want to know about weddings is all there... from wedding planners, venues to cakes, invitations and bridal cars... and we found out that the event will took place on Sept. 5-6 at PICC complex, and immediately, we pre-register to their site and we both got a free pass, nice... hehe...

At Sept. 5, we went to PICC complex, thank god are there's no traffic, we went off early in the morning, and we are just in time for the opening remarks... first off i try to take pictures on one of the catering booths, but the lady there forbids me to take pictures, maybe she though i will going to copy their table setting... LoL... then we bump into a couple of wedding photography booths, first was Ariel Javelosa, the shots are great, album was fine and reasonably priced and then there's East Digital, we fell in love the first time we saw their booth, the shots are magnificent with a stunningly designed pack of albums with a style macthing briefcase, a nice package (with a 40% discount, yeah...) and a bunch of freebies... but we told Nolie (from east digital) that we will going to roam around first, but at that time we knew we picked the right one for photography on our wedding... next stop is the cake, there are so many cake booths to choose from but there's one that stood up, Sugarbox, we were bedazzled when we saw their cake design, it was 50 pcs of cute and tasty minicakes perfectly placed from top to bottom in a revolving layered glass... the reason we picked minicakes instead of the traditional layered cake is that, we want to make it as a giveaway to our important guests, we want to share our cake in a cute way as a token for attending our wedding, actually,besides the bride and groom, who eats cakes on a wedding in the first place... hehe... that day we reserved East Digital Studios and SugarBox for our wedding... thanks to the Internet and the Wedding Expo...