into the homestretch

wow, the 4th week of december (dec. 19-25) was a week that i probably haven't gotten over.

the misalette was approved, thank heavens! one less thing to worry about. next was how do i format it into a mini-booklet? no time to refresh my knowledge on ms publisher. so, i browsed thru the files of my ever-reliable egroup, W@W and lo & behold an angel or fellow w@wie uploaded a guide on how to create a misalette! at first, everything was going great until, i couldn't follow the format! i don't know what happened or where i went wrong but, i ended up doing it manually. as in, i printed each page then, taped it onto a piece of paper that had the dimensions of a misalette. so, if you'd see the copy for reproduction that i have, you'd never believe that i was able to come up with enough copies, 85-90 copies to be exact. but i managed to finish the copies on the 28th and marlet offered to staple them for me and bring them to the chapel. whew!

while i learned that the misalette was approved, i had to check with the parish office what the checklist for the ceremony was. upon marlet's insistence, i asked them who'd be bringing the candles, fruits, wine and host for the offertory. i was told what to bring but i forgot to inform them that we weren't going to have a unity candle. a unity candle is becoming a popular addition to a ceremony nowadays. the couple lights a big candle together signifying two people who become one hence, the unity candle. i may be going ahead of my story but this was a problem a few minutes before the ceremony when the secretary from the parish office was aking about the unity candle. i told them there wasn't any unity candle because we weren't having it in the ceremony. it wasn't mandatory; it's optional. thank god for marlet who handled the situation by informing them that it wasn't included. when i asked her, "do i NEED to have a unity candle?" she said no and for me that was it. end of discussion, problem solved.

next, florist and make-up artist! now where on earth would i find one? again, w@w gave me the answer i needed: julie baun. julie was a make-up artist for abs-cbn and now does weddings. i based my decision to get her on the reviews i gathered from w@wies who were lucky enough to become her clients. there are always two sides to a story and there was also negative feedback about her but after weighing everything, i decided to get in touch with her and check if she was still free for the 30th. i texted her and she responded by asking me to call her. it turns out that she was pencil-booked for the 30th but the wedding was in pangasinan and she hadn't heard from the client yet. we talked and i found myself establishing great rapport with her. she's very kind and she knows what she's talking about when it comes to make-up. i ended up booking her without any trial session. wow! that was such a huge risk for me. but i said, i feel it's right so, go for it girl!

that very same night, she dropped by gotcha and we talked about what i wanted her to do, what my problem areas were, what package i would be getting and other stuff. i made a d.p. and what's amazing is she also had a florist so the flowers weren't a problem anymore as well! juile is an angel!

the day ended with amazing progress on the wedding preps. my secondary sponsors and bridesmaids got their gowns and ricky and i had a christmas dinner with our friends at the cafe next door. all this in one day... god, and it was only the beginning...