in Diplomatic Incidents, How-Tos, Personal Musings

Marriage: How we got our dream wedding without breaking the bank

Almost Diplomatic - carolific - Diplomat’s Wife - Wedding - Wedding Planning - Affordable - Alvin Malasig

Everyone at my wedding! (Well, almost! Francis, our photographer, was obviously taking the shot)

Four things: Lots of research, careful planning, friends and family who love us dearly, and a teeny tiny bit of luck

When my husband proposed on February 2013, we got into planning our wedding right away. We had a theme, a budget in mind, and 8 months to get everything in place. Sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it? But truth be told, wedding planning isn’t as bad and excruciating as some people might think. It was actually a breeze for the both of us. (I didn’t turn into a bridezilla at any point in the planning and even on the wedding day!)

Almost Diplomatic - carolific - Diplomat’s Wife - Wedding - Wedding Planning - Affordable - Alvin Malasig

Nope. No bridezilla! Although I did cry on our wedding day – a lot.

With a husband who gets a kick out of planning along with friends and family who were ever so supportive, we got what we always wanted. A very classy (if I may say so myself) and intimate wedding with just our closest family and friends where we were able to talk, laugh, and mingle with everyone which made everything just oh-so special.

Plus, we were also able to go on a honeymoon in Singapore and Bali within the wedding budget! How much did everything cost? Php 250,000 (Conversion rates: MYR1=Php11.04, EUR1=Php51.92, USD1=Php45.69)! Which is basically unheard of in the Manila wedding circuit these days.

**In case you’re looking into having your honeymoon in the Philippines, you can check out this post by Honeymoon Backpackers!**

Almost Diplomatic - carolific - Diplomat’s Wife - Wedding - Wedding Planning - Affordable - Sofitel

In fact, someone who writes for a wedding magazine found out about our wedding, saw the photos, and was eager to write about it for a feature on intimate weddings. However, when I told him how we did everything by ourselves and how much money we saved by not going through planners and all the people in the wedding business, he told me he couldn’t write about it anymore. Why? Because the magazine will lose advertisers. 😛

So I won’t go into detail about everything as this is not a timely wedding guide anymore since it was two years ago. But I hope what you read here will be great advice to anyone who’s in the planning stage! 🙂

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