Prenups in Bohol :D

it all started with a simple chat with mr. karl de leon. :) they (m&k) came from an outing in boracay with threelogy and i told him i havent been to bora before. from there, the idea of having an out of town prenup was born. :)

the original plan was to go to bora for prenup since fotogra has a wedding there in aug... sobrang swerte tlaga kasi im going home to manila on the dates that they're in bora... but we (lui and i) were concerned with the costs of having an out of town prenup...

but with another stroke of luck cebu pacific launched their piso fare promo!!! grabe... blessing tlaga!!! so we decided to go, who can fight destiny ika nga nila? hahaha. but during another chat session with karl, i asked him "bora or bohol po?" and he answered "bohol tayo!" mimi also said that bohol is one of the places in her list that she wants to shoot. so bohol it is :D (plus the fact that i super duper love bohol) hehe...

so we booked the tickets and made reservations in the hotel. we're on our way. there is no stopping us! :D

aug 11 - lui and i arrived a day earlier than mimi and karl. (since both of them are still in bora at that time) instead of going straight to bohol, we decided to stop over cebu and just take the ferry to tagbilaran... we arrived there at 8am with nothing planned... hehe we didnt know where to go! buti na lang a friend of lui met us and toured us around. hahaha naging instant tour guide pa cya!!! funny thing was, he didnt know where to bring us din! talk about a tourist in your own country... or city for that matter.:D bwahahaha... but we went to magellan's cross and sto nino church to look at the structures. after that we went to the taoist temple and had lunch... around 1pm we were on our way to the pier for the ferry to bohol :D

taoist temple in cebu

when we arrived in bohol, we didnt know what to do... we didnt even know how to get to the hotel. hahaha talk about unprepared... so we asked the guard at the pier where we can find a taxi and they suggested that we just hire a van... nakakatawa kasi parang he said a magic word kasi a guy suddenly appeared "van? van po??? san po kayo?" hahaha... ang galing meron yatang bionic ears. bwahahaha... when we asked him how much going to dumaluan he said "P400 lang po" us, being kuripot and all, thought that that was too much so we said, "manong magtatanong muna kami sa taxi" well, what a waste of time that had been coz the taxi also quoted us 400 bucks... in the end, lui decided to take the van "ksi nauna naman kayo" as he said to the van driver. :) since they were quite nice, we later on decided to hire them for the next day tour.

dumaluan hotel view from the beach

aug 12: mimi and karl in tagbilaran! :D our van drivers "philip" and "ian" (philip ian, kaano-ano mo sila?) offered to pick them up at the airport and meet us in the hotel. (included in the tour fee o diva? bait.) so we met up with mimi and karl and asked them to settle their things in our room first since their room was not ready yet... so they went to our room and opened their atache case and began taking out gadgets... grabe!!!!! feeling ko i was watching a movie... lam nyo yung movies when the soldiers pick up their guns and start loading them with bullets and strapping themselves with different kinds of ammos?? ganun!!! ganun feeling ko bwahahaha... they had so many gadgets that i was so amazed just looking at them assemble everything nahiya naman ako sa 350d ko. hehe after that we headed out to start our prenups! :D eto na!!!

we went to the following spots:

1. baclayon church - good thing the mass just ended hehe so there were no people around... but bad thing coz they closed the church door, so we were only able to shoot outside. funny thing was, someone came up to us and asked us if they can take our picture... photography student daw cya... o diba? instant models pa kami. bwahahaha! :D

baclayon church

2. pantalan near baclayon church - i have to give it to them, they really have sharp eyes... karl saw the pantalan when we were shooting at the church and asked the driver to take us there. ang ganda... hehe! white vs blue always a nice combo :D

lui jumping at the pantalan hahaha!

3. loboc river - we shared one ferry/boat with a lot of people and i was really apprehensive about the shoot.. feeling ko kasi pagtitinginan kami ng mga tao... good thing was, at the end of the river there was a children's choir who was performing for the tourists, that opened an opportunity for us... hehe (dali habang walang nakatingin!!!) it was hard to take shots on the boat because of limited space but i believe m&k were able to pull it off. syempre sila pa!!!

children's choir at loboc river... wonder if i can get them for my wedding? :D

4. loboc museum - this wasnt part of the tour but again, karl asked the driver to bring us to the museum... the museum was quite old... medyo scary nga e... but mimi and karl were unstoppable... they went scurrying and searched the place for good spots. they kept asking each other "may nakita ka?" "ako may nakita ako" hehe it was fun watching the masters at work :D

5. man-made forest - this one, i asked mimi if we can stop and take pictures here during one of our chat sessions... i so love this place. it's just so enchanting... so we did... although it was hard to take pictures because we were by the road and cars can come anytime... nakakatawa na naman kasi there were by-standers and they asked our driver and tour guide if we were artistas hahaha etong loko lokong ian said to them that we were models... hahaha heller?? pwede ba yun??? two fat models? i dont think so man... hahaha but nevertheless, they still took pictures of us. hahaha funny talaga!! :D

the enchanting forest

6. tarsier... we just went there to take a look at the cute tarsiers. we did take a couple of shots but i dont know how that will turn out. hahaha

cutest tarsier hehe

7. chocolate hills - what is a trip to bohol without choc hills? (as singaporeans say: "die die must go lah!" hehehe) grabe... we did a lot of jumping and climbing there that we were sweating all over the place!! especially lui kasi pawisin tlaga cya. (sebo!!!) hahaha... but we had fun. :D good thing the weather was on our side and the clouds were just great!!! very good as backdrop. hahaha

beautiful backdrop

8. dumaluan beach - last stop for the day.... hahaha we did a lot of funny things here. we were just laughing and laughing the whole time!!! good thing it was low tide so we had a lot of area to play around with... sabi ko nga kay mimi kahit di pala umulan mababasa kami... coz we were wet as in drenched. coz we lied on the sand, ran, jumped and everything you can think of. hahaha but it was soo fun :D

dumaluan beach in the morning

aug 13: the next morning we had a short photo session with the beach as back drop.. sobrang nice nung beach. :D grabe mimi asked us to run by the shore. ang sakit sa paa!!! hehehe but it was fine of cors laugh trip na naman haha

taking a shot of lui's havs :D

so there, haba na naman nitong post ko... anu vah!!! hehehe. as of the moment, im still waiting for the prenup pics from mimi and karl. :) it has only been less than a week pa lang naman... but knowing the ever atat me, i cant wait for it. im just dying to see it!! napapanaginipan ko na nga e. hahahah... (i was able to take a sneak peak at some of the photos and i was so amazed!!! galing nila...pramis... no bias)

overall here are our ratings for the suppliers:

a. lui's friend, erwin: 5!!! he was so nice to tour us around even though he didnt have to
b. philp and ian: 4. they were so nice :D they didnt overcharge us and they let us take our time during the shoots :)
c. dumaluan hotel: 3 expensive! hahaha... plus the water tastes like salt haha.
d. dumaluan beach: 4 beautiful :D
e. makeup artist: 5+!!! love your own ;p
f. bohol: 5+++++++ i love bohol... and i will always love bohol :D
g. mimi and karl: 10+++++++++ ang galing galing nila. basta ang galing nila!!! they were so patient with us and they withstood the heat and the strain of 3 succeeding photo shoots. kudos to them... saludo talaga ako. bow bow bow...
h. my canon 350D: 100++++ now that it has mimi and karl's touch. hahahaha!!!!

mimi and karl hard at work albeit the scorching heat! :D

karl and lui pose while mimi takes a sample shot haha

our great photographers!!! (sorry out of focus... candid kasi. feeling mimi ako hahaha)

PLEASE VISIT: www.mimiandkarl.com for the prenup pics :) (i love it!!!)

pic of my bouquet :)

here's the picture of my bouquet :) let me know what you think ;p

there are going to be some changes... we're going to add more red and orange equador roses and we're going to change the yellow callas to mango callas (as suggested by Tisha of Balay Kandila) :)

My August trip to Philippines...

Warning: I am drafting this blog entry while im still on the flight going back to Singapore, so please pardon any grammatical error or typo errors. I really want to sleep, but I cant since there are a lot of turbulence going on… (after last time’s scare, I’ll never be able to sleep thorugh a turbulence ever again) :)

Another warning: this will be veryyyy verryyyy long. But I’ll try to cut back as many words as possible… hehehe

I went back to the Philippines last Aug 7. Lui also managed to take leave from his work so that he can join me with some meetings with our suppliers… This is a good thing… most of the time kasi I just meet with the suppliers on my own and just let him know what had been agreed upon through mail or phone calls. Though I try to keep him up to date, sometimes I do tend to forget some details that I know I should tell him hahahaha. Hindi po sadya pramis :)

Anyway… It has been a long and hectic week for us!!! We didn’t even let the storm/typhoon stop us! Hehe.. No rain is too hard and no flood is too high… :D Here’s a preview of what had happened for the past week :)

Aug 7 – arrived in the phils… I had just woken up from my morning nap and realized that I had a message from clarice… she was asking me where she can call me so I gave her my home phone number. After a while, her assistant Mae called and asked if we can discuss the menu for Josiah’s for the food tasting… grabe groggy groggy pa ako that time!!! Haha… pero I still managed to concentrate as Mae started to read off from the list of food and I tried my best to choose the the food that I think would be the best for our reception… (lahat kasi mukhang masarap!!) hehe hopefully I chose correctly hahaha… bhala na si batman.

Aug 8 –I woke up early because we had a series of meeting with suppliers… but I was so upset when I saw how dark the sky was. Hay naku mega baha to! And not to mention traffic!!! And knowing Lui, there’s no way he’s going to drive us around in that rain… I can already sense that we’re not going to get anything done that day… With a spark of (OH NO… cebu pacific is doing their soo baduy on-flight games… camman… it’s 9:38pm!!! Let the people sleepppp!!!!) hope, I asked my mom to ask my aunt if we can borrow their FX and driver na din (classes at all levels were suspended). Luckily, my aunt agreed. But by then, Lui and mom were already discouraging me to proceed with any of the meetings. Especially the trip to dangwa… but I stood my ground and told them NO – we are going no matter what... anu bah.. don’t they realize how hard it is to set appointments with these suppliers??? And clarice is not even backing out, so why should we??? So finally I was able to persuade Lui to go on with the wedding preps albeit the rain and flood… bwahahaha

So first stop was DANGWA to meet the ever famous Mang Boy Mahusay… grabeee baha cya… well it wasn’t that deep naman pero baha tlaga cya! Hahaha. But there was no stopping me… I was a bride to be on a mission. Hahaha Si lui, medyo nandidiri pa… haha OC kasi… pero he went with us pa din.. as if he had a choice. :) (I found out later on that Lui was struck by the fact that clarice didn’t have any kaartehan… coz she was the first one to tread the flood hehe as in diretso lang cya. Kakatuwa tlaga) When we arrived in Dangwa, a man approached us and began assisting Clarice. It was Mang John, the ever reliable assistant of Mang Boy … Clarice began telling him what sort of flowers we needed for the bouquet and Mang John immediately went to search for the flowers. After a while, Mang Boy arrived…. I cant help but think “So this is Mang Boy”… hehe well, all I can say is, he looks like a very big teddy bear… hahaha. He doesn’t look that scary for me. Maybe because he was so nice to Clarice and I can see how he respects and pampers Clarice…:) (side kwento lang: apparently there was a fire in Mang Boy’s place that morning that’s why he was late… no worries, no one was hurt in Mang Boy’s family… but the funny thing was, he was saying that the first thing he grabbed was his stack of yellow papers. Hahaha… sabi nya kasi nandun daw mga orders, mhirap naman na mawala yun bwahaha so funny talaga. Inuna pa daw nya yun kesa sa asawa nya… but later binalikan naman din daw nya asawa nya… hahaha. Kwela tong si mang boy tlaga…) so after a while, mang john proceeded to create my bouquet… initially my bouquet was supposed to be red galla roses… but I told clarice that I don’t want a full red bouquet, it just doesn’t suit my personality… I don’t know para sa akin it seems so posh and serious, which I don’t think I am… I wanted a colorful / lively bouquet. So we settled for red equador roses, orange equador roses, yellow cybidiums and yellow calla lillies… When Mang John was creating my bouquet, I was trying my best not to peek. I wanted to be surprised… I wanted to see the bouquet when it was completed so that ill know how ill feel about it.. yung tipong mapapa “wow” kaya ako or yung “okay ah”… so finally when mang john handed me the bouquet, the only reaction I had was “ang ganda!!!” I literally gushed over the bouquet… I soo loved it!!! Even Lui liked it… sabi nga nya first time lang daw nya naappreciate ang bouquet hahaha.. funny talaga tong si Lui.. clarice also loved the bouquet… she kept saying “ang ganda ng bouquet mo… ganda tlaga…” even the people in dangwa were borrowing my bouquet so that they can take pictures of it to show their clients. Hahaha… I guess that’s a good sign that my bouquet is indeed maganda :D So after settling the contract (yes, the equally famous yellow paper hehe), paying for the mock bouquet, settling the downpayment and three cute coke saktos later, we headed to Unifair…

When we got to UNIFAIR, there wasn’t a lot of people assisting us… But a male, which I am assuming is the boss approached us and asked if we needed help… but clarice told him that we’ll just look at some of the samples and try to select from there :) so after a few debates, we finally settled on our invite layout… it was simple… just the way we wanted it.. plus it was cheap! Only P60 per set… oki na diba?? So we just settled the layout of the invitation and told the lady/owner that the details, to follow na lang (still have to settle the list of ninongs and ninangs) hihihi headache eto!

After unifair, we went to Trinoma to have lunch.. (yum yum recipes so sarap!!!) there, Clarice ran through all the details (again) with Lui and myself. This time just to make sure that Lui is agreeable with everything we have discussed and decided on our previous meetings… Luckily, Lui didn’t have any major objections naman…:)

We had a 4pm meeting with BALAY KANDILA so around quarter to 4, we headed to Balay’s office somewhere in QC (I think it was QC.. it was raining so hard I cant see where we were going!) When we got there, I can see all the props being set up in the garage… I was quite amazed… it looks more like a production outfit more than an event stylists’ office (not that I know how an event stylists’ office looks like bwahahaha)… anyway, we waited for Tisha to arrive… when she did, I was so delighted to see that she’s very nice and bubbly as well, not as intimidating as Roland. Hehehe… Unfortunately, Roland couldn’t join us because he was preparing for a set up the next day… tisha went through all the details with us once more… I was a bit surprised that she changed almost all the setting that Roland had described during our first meeting… but it still had the same flavor, but a bit different. but still okay for us… tisha also loved my bouquet and gave some suggestions on how to “beautify” my bouquet even more… surprisingly, lui was so willing to take on the suggestions eventhough it will entail more costs. That’s how much he loved the bouquet hahaha. Clarice and Tisha also took pictures of my bouquet… sabi nila pwede na daw pang WE :) (I am soooo happy!!!). when we finally settled the details, we paid the downpayment and went to our next meeting… the meeting that I have been waiting for… our meeting with Alex Franco (yey free cake hahaha… ill finally be able to try that cake!!!)

Our meeting with ALEX FRANCO was supposed to be at 6pm but it was slated to 7pm because we had so much fun discussing the details with tisha hehehe… anyway, we met Alex at his famous office/meeting place – Chowking Pioneer. Hehe… what can I say, that meeting was the most unique meeting I ever had!!! Feeling ko tlga si Alex Franco is Mary Poppins personified. Hahaha… Kasi ganito yun… Alex started with showing us pictures and pictures of his beautiful cakes… so that we can have an idea on the design that we want… also he discussed with us the different flavors and suggested which flavor to choose (we chose b&w for all the 5 layers :))… so after settling our cake design and flavors, he began his lecture on how to slice the cake… the lecture started with him drawing a perfect circle in a bond paper.. then he told us how big the slice of cake should be… he told us that no matter what, we have to make sure that the slice of cake should not fall… meaning everybody should be able to see the different layers of the cake and so that the photographers and videographers will be able to take pictures of how beautiful and colorful the cake looks like. Haha grabe pressure ito!!! Anu bah… so when he asked us who was going to be in charge of slicing, I immediately volunteered Lui… ayaw ko nga… bka pagalitan pa ako ni alex franco hahaha… :) after that, he took out a veryyyyy looonnngg knife from his brief case. Grabe medyo nashock ang lola nyo hahha… ang haba nung knife… ganun daw tlaga yung gagamitin for the slicing!!! Yikes. :) after that, he demonstrated on how we should slice the cake… sabi nya matigas daw yung cake so medyo mahirap… he showed us this sawing motion… ngek parang naglalagari ng kahoy hahahaha… then after that, he took out a fork and yung thing you use to take out a slice of cake… (what do you call it nga ba? Yung triangle in shape??)hehe kumpleto tlaga sa props tong si Alex. the he again demonstrated on how to transfer the slice from the cake to the plate, again, he asked who will be in charge of transferring the slice of cake, again, I happily volunteered lui. Hahaha :) Alex told me not to worry coz he’ll give me a role. Sa loob loob ko sabi ko “naku po kahit wag na po… ill be happy eating the cake na lang. hahaha” eventually he told me that I am in charge of holding the plate and assisting Lui lang. whew… I think that I can manage. :D hihi… anyway, the meeting ended with Alex handing us the sample cake (let me at that cake!!!) I couldn’t wait to get home and try the cake. Hehe… (masarap cya… as in pramis!) I really like Alex Franco, he’s soooo nice. And you can really tell that he’s so proud of his cake… you can just sense it ;p

Aug 9 – We were scheduled for a food tasting with JOSIAH’S in their Marikina office. We met Clarice and Tisha in Mcdonalds near Sta Lucia and convoyed going to Josiahs… buti na lang at nandun sila Clarice coz if not, we would have gotten lost! Ang layo!!! (well we did get lost on our way back to civilization hehehe…) The food tasting went well… there was primavera, seafood carbonara, chicken teriyaki, grilled sole fish, lengua and mongolian bbq. Ang sarapppp!!! As in sobra… just thinking about it now makes my stomach growl… sarap sarap talaga… I loved the mongolian bbq and the fish. The best tlga!!! Yum… since we are not getting a lot of the ammenities we managed to get their hanging cocktails worth 7k… we also got their dessert buffet for free coz we booked them when they were still having their promotion! :D ang saya. The owners of josiahs were there during the meeting and they were really nice… :) ms ghet also suggested that instead of fettucini for primavera, we should change the pasta to spaghettini. Mas masarap daw…:) o diva? Then we also got to sample their new creation – strawberry cheesecake! Ang sarap!!! Haha linoloko nga ni lui si ms ghet na feel free to have sample/testing on our wedding daw. Hahaha. Loko tlaga yun… tawa tawa lang naman si ms ghet:)

We were supposed to have our hotel-hopping after the food tasting but since medyo napatagal din because of chikahan (clarice, tisha and ms ghet are good friends so you can just imagine the chikahan and jibbing that’s going on hahaha) we decided to just to the hotel-hopping the next day.

Aug 10 – hotel-hopping! So kapagod… we went to pan pacific, hyatt, century, trader’s and g hotel… amongst the five hotels, I like pan pacific best… though it’s the most expensive (aside from hyatt) but it was nice and looks so cozy… we’re now choosing between traders and pan pacific… so if you can suggest which one, help naman po… hehe kasi si lui, he wants traders ako pan pacific… hehe…

Oki dito muna. Ill post another blog for our prenups in bohol!!! Eto lang masasabi ko… sobrang saya!!! As in super duper saya. Hahaha… cant wait to see the pics!!!

(by the way, ill be posting some of the pics soon) hehe