The Accidental Wedding Planner part 1

It all started one afternoon at Shangri-La Mall. I was off to meet up with Lu-Ann when I ran into Mina, a former student of mine.

After the usual niceties, Mina started to talk about Josche - another former student - and how she's getting married this December. The wedding planner in me kicked in, and I told Mina to tell Josche that if she needed any help in sourcing materials or suppliers, let me know.

Then, from behind Mina, a pretty, petite girl popped up. She introduced herself and said:

"Hi, I'm Ana. Ako, ikakasal din ako sa December. Puwede din bang magpatulong sa cake?"

Of course, I said yes. I directed her to the Dexter's website and told her to choose a design that she liked. And that's where it started.

From talking about cake designs, our conversations expanded to color schemes, and eventually, we started to conceptualize a central theme for her wedding. Her parameters were simple:

1. It was a day wedding in Tagaytay
2. She wanted a red and green color scheme

At first, I thought that red + green + December = Christmas themed wedding. But that would be too obvious. So, we decided to keep the color scheme, but give it a twist. A country twist, in particular. And we decided on using country iconographies to match the colors. And we ended up with this:

Green = Granny Smith Apples
Red = Roses

And that was the springboard for the entire theme. And we first brought the theme to life on the invite.



Yesterday, the big day finally came and I was in Tagaytay bright and early to deliver the cake and supervise the florist at the church. Their wedding ceremony was held at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish - a parish that is special to me because I was a Lourdesian and we'd have our retreats in this place way back in high school. But according to the sacristan, the retreat house is now a reception hall, and Lourdes has a new retreat house in Batangas.



The church is currently being spruced up for Christmas, and it's a good thing that most of the painting work was already done. They need to replace some of the stained glass windows, though.



Our Lady of Lourdes is a big church, so the arrangements should also be big in scale. We chose Greek-inspired pedestals and urns, then filled them with assorted white flowers. To add height to the entire arrangement, we added calla lilies and sword leaves. This is one of my favorite arrangements - especially for big churches.



While we were setting up, I could already hear some of the guests gasping at the size of the arrangments. One guest even remarked: "Ang engrande naman ng mga bulaklak sa kasal na ito."



We kept the color scheme in white since Our Lady of Lourdes has a lot of dark wood. Plus, the simple and elegant color scheme matched Ana's simple and elegant wedding gown.



While the wedding ceremony was underway, I quickly ducked out of the church and went to Discovery Country Suites to finish assembling the cake and arranging the flowers. Again, we kept the cake white, and placed a lot of colorful floral arrangements all throughout the cake. This play of white and color made for a very interesting cake.



Since red and green is quite stark, we decided to add some complementary colors to the arrangements. For the couple's table, we added touches of pink and yellow. Stargazers always add a bold statement to a floral arrangement.



For the guest tables, we added pink carnations to the predominantly red rose and green mum arrangements. It made the arrangement elegant, but still light and breezy.





And as a final touch, we gave out Granny Smith Apples as souvenirs. This ties in the Granny Smith Apple and Red Rose theme.



Overall, I was very happy with the results of the wedding. It was one of those cozy, personal and chic celebrations. And what made me even happier was the message that I received from the bride this morning:

"Hi Lester, Good Morning. Thank you soooo much for everything. =) What would I do without you? =) I'm so glad that I met you. You're a great help to us. Once again, on behalf of my husband, Thank you so much. =)"

(This message is verbatim. All my friends know that I DO NOT do smiley faces. Hahaha.)

The funny thing was, the wasn't the only accidental wedding planning I did yesterday. But the other one deserves its own post.