going country: a filipino country-style wedding theme
It was the first choice. A country-style theme for our wedding, I feel, will best reflect our personalities. We have no wish for a grand and formal setting, but we’re not too bold and playful either for a more whimsical setup. Although early in the preps, I almost deviated to a ‘paper and lace’ theme (because of my love for the two materials), the country-style theme has won me over again in the end.
But I had a slight problem. Our theme, as defined as it may sound, is actually quite vague, especially if you’ll consider that different parts of the world conjure different images of the term ‘country-style’. British country-style depicts an English countryside landscape with its cottage houses, floral gardens and courtyards, with tea and teapots and bread pudding on the table. American country-style, particularly those in the Southern regions, paints the picture with a barn or a farm or a river view as the backdrop, complemented and accentuated with materials you would commonly see in these places. I’m sure other prominent cultures like Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Spanish, etc have their own take on what is ‘country’ for them.
So my challenge was to define a country-style wedding in Philippine setting. And the Filipino culture being so diverse and multi-faceted doesn’t help that much. I also had to go easy with ‘Filipino details’ so as not to cross the line between a Filipino country-style and a Filipiniana theme. To find ideas to work on, I had to revisit old memories of childhood summers spent in the province, because the province is where lies the true heart of a Filipino countryside. And what was I reminded of?
I was reminded of fruit-trees growing in the backyard; of potted plants lining the front yard; of pieces of furniture and home decors and almost everything inside the house made up of native materials such as wood, wicker, rattan and Capiz shells; of grandma’s laces and pearls and jewelry boxes; of oil lamps and wooden picture frames.
Warm, homey, laid-back and rustic notes dominate my memories and I want the same to resonate during our wedding.
the missing necklace
My aunt had commented that my neck looked bare during our wedding. And I have to agree with her. It wasn’t on purpose but I had no choice. I did intend to wear something, a DIY bib necklace that unfortunately I was not able to finish in time for our big day.
It was 10 p.m. on the eve of our wedding and I was holding the unfinished craft on my hand, thinking whether or not I should spend the next two or three hours to finish it or sleep.
I decided to sleep. But before I did, I just took a picture of what I consider as my most ambitious DIY project. That didn’t make it on our wedding day.
our wedding thingies
I was supposed to share our wedding novelties and DIYs before the big day but found no time. But I have more of it now so better late than never.
Here they are:
Our DIY wedding cord made of faux pearls, metal beads (rose, Celtic, etc) and featuring
the Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal that I wore all throughout my high school years.
more paperie
The great thing about doing your own graphic design is that you can easily achieve a coordinated look in all your printed supplies.
You’ve seen the invite, the map and the monogram. Now, I’m sharing two more. First one is our menu card:
I told Maja, our event stylist, to place a menu card for each seat. And I volunteered to design and print all 150 of them. During our mock setup, I printed a few pieces to see how it will go with the table setting that she prepared for us. And we were surprised that it complements the linen and the accent leaves very well.
i invite you
Some say that you shouldn’t spend much thought (and money) on invitations. After all, guests will just throw them away after or even before your event. But others argue that your wedding invitation will give those invited a foresight on the kind of wedding you will have. They say, to create a first impression is the second purpose of the invitation, the first one being to invite. Hand a sloppy card and it will reflect a sloppy event.
This is actually what’s going through my head as I was creating the design for our wedding invitation. D, having objected to my first few samples–because they were either too contemporary or has too much going on, said that it doesn’t have to look formal and conventional, just decent enough to make guests think they’re being invited to a decent wedding.
On my end, I also wanted our wedding invites to illustrate our romantic country-style theme and make use of our green and white color motif. But incorporating all those ideas was no easy feat. And coupling it with the desire to make the perfect design–because it is for our wedding–made it even harder.
We almost settled for a contemporary-country-birdie wedding template that I made months before. But it didn’t came out well with the new printer that we’re using and our choice of paper. So I sat back in front of the computer again and tried to wring out the last of my creative juices, hoping to create IT. December was fast approaching then and we barely had a month before we’re scheduled to hand/send out our invitations.
And that last attempt yielded the best result. Like pieces of the puzzle falling into place–the images, the fonts, the colors–everything came together wonderfully just as how we want them. We finally had our design:
the map
The map is an essential part of a wedding invitation. It will tell your guests, especially those unfamiliar to the place, how to get to the Church and to the Reception venue. However important, the map was never the highlight of an invitation. It often consists of boring arrows and straight lines and corners and an X to mark the spot.
I wanted to do away with such dullness and give the map the respect it is due. But of course, I also wanted it to be accurate and possibly show our guests the easier and faster routes to get to us. I figured the best way to start the journey was in Google Maps. And here’s what happened when I converted the map I found via Google Maps:
into our very own Map To Happy Ever After:
Makes you wanna go there, doesn’t it?
Click here for the instructions on how to create your own DIY wedding map using MS PowerPoint.
the monogram
For our monogram, I initially wanted to join our initials together in such a way that they will merge into a single character. Here you can find my first designs.
But alas, none of them became our official monogram. I wanted something that will fit our theme and blend well with the design of our invitation and none of them seemed to be it. So, after creating the design for our invite, I came up with this:
In the next post (actually, the succeeding post after the next post), you will see how this monogram and our invite mesh perfectly.
the search for the wedding shoes
As a young girl, I only had two pairs of shoes: my school shoes and my other shoes. I’m not sure if it’s because of that, that I grew up with little interest in shoes or I just don’t have the Imelda genes in me.
I usually buy shoes that go with most of my wardrobe, which is predominantly jeans and tees, so I won’t have to buy many pairs. I also favor neutral colors such as black and brown for the same reason. (Just recently, I added shades of white and gray/silver to my palette).
But since I’m getting married, I realized that choosing the bridal shoes is a bit more complicated than my shoe-shopping habit. And to add to that, I am also burdened to choose something that I can wear again. Heck, most of my wedding stuffs are for one-time use only, I am determined to bestow the wedding shoes with a different fate.
I’ve ‘looked around’. But the stilettos scare me. And so do the wedges, and the clogs and the platforms. Anything that is taller than 2 inches and my knees will wobble. I’ve walked on flats for most of my life and I’m still not sure if I’m ready to trade-in the comfort for glamor even for a day.
just sharing: our caketopper
We don’t have a wedding cake yet. But we already have a caketopper!
But first, a bit about our love story:
D and I first met in cyberspace. I was waiting for my new computer to be installed in my room. I was bored. I had nothing to do so I decided to log in a chatroom. D, according to him, was playing an online game and got tired and decided to log in a chatroom. My nick was Shinta. He was intrigued as it sounded something familiar. And the rest, as we all know, is history.
Shinta was taken from my favorite Anime series, Samurai X (Rurouni Kenshin). Like me, D also loves Anime, that’s why the name sounded familiar to him. Our fondness for Anime is one of the many interests that we share in common and somehow helped ease out the transition from being strangers to being lovers.
When I was thinking of a perfect caketopper that will reflect something about us, nothing came close to being suitable as Kenshin and Kaoru of the Samurai X fame.
In many ways, we are like Kenshin and Kaoru. I, stubborn and strong-willed. D, would fight for the values he believes in. And they both love each other very much and would go to any lengths to support one another. I believe our love is very much like that. And Shinta is Kenshin’s real name before he became the famous Battosai. Shinta represents our lives before we knew each other.
Note: This might not be the actual caketopper. D wants a funnier version of Kenshin and Kaoru and he’s still looking for it. If he doesn’t find any, then we’ll settle for this one. Either way, I love that we’ll have Kenshin and Kaoru atop our wedding cake.
