the LOPEZ monogram

I honestly never thought I'd ever use a monogram, but when I was going through wedding websites and magazines, I realized that this is one easy and simple way to personalize our wedding.

I just played around with the lay-out of the letters, but I definitely wanted the L to be the center of it. I tried maybe 20 different fonts but I found this the most appealing.

*Thank you, Adobe Illustrator! - I made a vector image so that I wouldn't have any problems when I have to keep resizing it for all the things I was going to use it for.

I also made a turquoise version, just in case. =)

it's all in the details..

I didn't have to worry about getting a cake supplier because our wedding package from Discovery Shores included a 3-tiered wedding cake. One of their early requirements for me was the design of the cake to see if it was doable. Because I didn't want anything too extravagant, I thought we could just spruce up a plain wedding cake with stargazer lilies. I saw these online and thought it was OK but somehow, I didn't really wanna settle for OK.

Even if it's just a cake, I wanted it to make a statement. 

Then I saw this cake in one of my numerous wedding magazines - 

I fell in love with the design. It's so simple yet elegant but not too much.

Our cake will be a 3-tiered square cake with chocolate fondant and our monogram (more on that later) will be in white icing. Tommee is not a big fan of desserts, unlike moi. Most of the time, he doesn't eat dessert unless it's chocolate, so our wedding cake will be chocolate (no complaints here! who doesn't love chocolate?)

ceremony

Discovery Shores will be setting up our ceremony at the shoreline in front of their resort. This is what their actual beachfront looks like:

               

Photo courtesy of Discovery Shores, Boracay

I also wanted the beach beds for our seating, unfortunately, they don't allow it anymore. So, this is what our seating will look like:

Photo courtesy of Discovery Shores, Boracay

For the aisle, we will be using hurricane vases with white petals & floating candles, with petals strewn along the aisle.

Image source: theknot.com

Tommee wanted a very simple set-up for us. No tents, no canopies, no wooden frameworks, so we decided to just stand on a bed of different shades of white petals. 

We're not too worried about the details for the ceremony (ok, Tommee isn't worried, but I am still taking care of the little details for this) because our whole ceremony will only last 2o minutes. Our program will be very basic. It's a good thing our pastor is so easygoing and let us plan the flow our the ceremony with no restrictions. He says it is our wedding and we should have it any way we want. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Speaking of our pastor, our officiant is Pastor Vincent Burke, "Pastor Vince" to us, from our church, CCF (Christ's Commission Fellowship). He's an awesome guy, really funny and easy to talk to. You sometimes forget he's a pastor!

reception set-up

This will be our centerpiece. It just so happens that my favorite flower is the stargazer lily and I love japanese style designs, so this was perfect! plus, it gives me that touch of black I wanted, as well.

I will be using a mix of aquamarine, turquoise, and ivory/beige candles all throughout the decorations. (Pillars, votives, and floating candles) Since our reception is in the evening, I am going to use more candles than flowers for the guest tables.  

something like this:

Photo courtesy of Discovery Shores, Boracay

The tables will have a beige/cream tablecloth with a turquoise runner.

our beachy wedding

Even before I knew our wedding was going to be at the beach, I knew that I would be using turquoise as one of my theme colors. 

Aquamarine is my 2nd favorite color and my birth stone.

I needed something to neutralize these bright colors, so I decided to add Ivory.

and because I'm such a nice fiancée (hehe), I wanted to incorporate Tommee's favorite color, too. (good thing this goes with anything..) 

so, our color motif is Turquoise, Aquamarine, and Ivory with touches of black..

the OC couple's wedding first steps

I am OC. Tommee is OC. Therefore, it's not a surprise that we're an OC couple. I was due to leave for the US 2 weeks after we came home from Boracay. I wasn't really sure how long I was going to stay there, so we had to work out our plans, including the wedding preparations.

During those 2 weeks, we talked mostly about our budget and the guest list. At first, we really wanted an intimate wedding (if it was possible, just the 2 of us and witnesses) but it wasn't doable considering how big our families were. Next, we pinpointed which aspects of the wedding we were willing to really spend on. So, we narrowed it down to 3 - the food (of course!), the photography (memories), and the videography (again, memories).

While I still had a lot of free time in California, I began to scout for a photographer and videographer through the internet. This wasn't easy especially when you only their website to base everything on. I am lucky enough to have a very hands-on fiancé. I did all the research and prepared questions for the supplier and he was the one who met up with them and talked "business."

For our photographer, he interviewed a couple of well-known wedding photographers, but somehow, he never felt OK with any of them. One of them was so obnoxious that when Tommee asked him about his style of photography, his answer was "I can't explain it to you, you won't know what I'm talking about, you won't understand"  - WTF, right?!

Anyway, I don't know how I ended up at this photographer's website, but I think it had to do with a special art he does with his photographs. This photographer is Jomel Gregorio and he produces Tintography. According to his website, http://www.jomelgregorio.com, tintography is "a contemporary photographic art where the fusion of digital art and conventional hand painting are aesthetically combined in one beautiful picture." See example here

As for the videographer, I really wanted to get Jason Magbanua - he's considered the leading videographer in the Philippine wedding industry- unfortunately, he was way over our budget. So that was put on hold for a while because I couldn't seem to find one who, at least, had the same style as Jason. 

We decided to hire a wedding coordinator because we were having a destination wedding. As OC as I am, I was being realistic about setting up my wedding outside Metro Manila. Besides, my main reason for getting one was because I wanted everyone to enjoy and not have to worry about doing anything for the wedding. During our scouting of location, only one name was mentioned by every single hotel and resort in Boracay - Amanda Tirol. Apparently, she's the queen of weddings in Boracay, having planned and coordinated her own wedding in Boracay. Since then, she's handled hundreds of weddings there, so we didn't even question it. Tommee met up and interviewed her and told me all about it through SKYPE (which was our main form of communication then). We decided to book her and so far, she's done a good job coordinating with me.

Now, thanks to Amanda, we were able to get a videographer with the product to match Jason Magbanua. These guys (and girl) 

actually apprenticed for Jason Magbanua, and what's great about them is they live near Boracay - they're from Iloilo- and they fit right in our budget. Such a young and talented bunch and I'm so grateful to Amanda for recommending them.

So, the OC part. Tommee and I have excel sheets of almost every aspect of our wedding. These excel files are constantly updated by the both of us. I made my own wedding checklist because I wasn't satisfied with the checklists I got online. I basically consolidated all the good checklists I got and made it my own. This checklist is evolving as I move along my wedding plans. As Tommee says it, "Suyen organizes the shit out of everything." So there.

location, location, location

When we decided to get married, this was what we were doing right before..

I'm not sure if you can tell, but it didn't look like we were gonna have a life-changing talk then.. 

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to get married on the beach.. I don't know where I got the idea, but I really never pictured myself getting married in a church. I didn't know how that was going to work out since I was Catholic, but I just said I'll figure it out (haha). I couldn't believe it when Tommee told me that he wanted a beach wedding, too! We decided to have a beachfront wedding (we're allowed to do this because Tommee has been a Christian since he was young, while I have been a baby Christian since May 2008).. YEY! (another sign I was meant to be with this guy, I guess haha)

We had no qualms about having it in Boracay. We love Boracay enough to vacation there twice in less than a year, so why not?

2 days of our Boracay vacation was spent scouting out hotels & resorts for a wedding venue and checking out wedding packages..

We checked out the FF places:

- Boracay Regency

- Boracay Mandarin

- Friday's Resort

- Waling-Waling

- Pearl of the Pacific

- Discovery Shores

We actually never considered Discovery Shores as a venue because we honestly thought that there wasn't anything special about it from the front, but whatever made us go in there and ask, we will be grateful for. When we entered their lounge/dining area, I finally saw why they charge people that much to stay there.. It was beautiful inside, just unimposing outside. Out of all the wedding packages, we thought they had the best deal to offer, besides, we initally clicked with their events coordinator, Gel Sunga.

so there, not even a week after deciding to get married, we already had our location.