My fiance and I attended the Philippine Wedding Summit at the PICC Forum yesterday. The bridal fair was organized by Themes & Motifs.
This was not our first wedding fair–we’ve attended around 4 or 5 of these event since we got engaged but we’ve never booked anyone before. We went to the fairs for “research”–we talked to suppliers and got their average rates so we could come up with a realistic budget. Yesterday was the first wedding fair we went to with concrete plans of booking several suppliers. Our targets were suppliers for (1) invitations, (2) flowers, (3) my fiance’s barong suit and (4) edible wedding favors.
After seriously considering several suppliers for our invitations, my fiance and I decided to do the invitations ourselves. We both know how to use photoshop and I love doing lay outs so all we have to worry about is the printing. Both of us don’t want to shell out that much money on invitations alone. Call it frugal but we just don’t find spending over 10 thousand pesos for 200 invitations practical.
We found a florist–Flowers of May. Yes, they’ve had some negative feedback from other brides from w@w but since I’m not really particular about flowers that much, no biggie. I really don’t want to go to Dangwa to haggle with the shops there. I decided on a white bridal bouquet with blue accents: white carnations and white roses with blue hydrangeas. For the mothers and my maid of honor, I asked them to make bouquets of yellow and orange roses. For the bridesmaids, wrist corsages with yellow and orange roses as well. Why the wrist corsage? Because they’re going to be carrying something else during the bridal march…
My fiance has been adamant about having a butterfly release during our wedding (he attended a wedding once where the couple released butterflies during the reception and he just loved it). If it was just me, I really didn’t want to use butterflies because I pity the poor things. We compromised by having the butterfly release outside the church as we make our exit–an alternative to confetti. This way, he still gets his butterfly release and I would be comforted by the fact that the butterflies would still fly away to the “natural” world instead of being stopped by closed doors and windows at our reception venue. The butterflies will be placed in small baskets (which we still need to scout for at Divisoria) and will be carried by our bridesmaids. Double-purpose.
It was probably fate that Acclaim Butterflies was among the suppliers at the bridal fair. We booked them immediately.
As mentioned in previous blog posts, both my fiance and I want edible favors to give away to our guests. We stumbled on the Theobroma booth; it’s a supplier that specializes on Belgian chocolates. We thought that they were expensive and we were pleasantly surprised at their rates. My fiance and I tried their chocolates and we loved them so much that we booked them on the spot. The good thing is that we kept within our budget for the wedding favors plus I wouldn’t need to slave over the packaging.
We didn’t find a supplier for my fiance’s barong. I’m that worried since my fiance already has an idea on how he wants his barong suit to look like. We just need to find someone who will make the barong within our budget.
All in all, it was an experience. It was the first time we booked anyone during an actual wedding fair. The discounts we got were way worth the travel to PICC.
mac&hazel 